Newspeak

Newspeak is the language of Oceania, a fictional totalitarian state and the setting of the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), by George Orwell. To meet the ideological requirements of English Socialism (Ingsoc) in Oceania, the ruling Party created Newspeak, a controlled language of restricted grammar and limited vocabulary, meant to limit the freedom of thought — personal identity, self-expression, free will — that threatens the ideology of the régime of Big Brother and the Party, who have criminalized such concepts into thoughtcrime, as contradictions of Ingsoc orthodoxy. In 'The Principles of Newspeak', the appendix to the novel, George Orwell explains that Newspeak usage follows most of the English grammar, yet is a language characterised by a continually diminishing vocabulary; complete thoughts reduced to simple terms of simplistic meaning. Linguistically, the contractions of Newspeak — Ingsoc (English Socialism), Minitrue (Ministry of Truth), etc. — derive from the syllabic abbreviations of Russian, which identify the government and social institutions of the Soviet Union, such as politburo (Politburo of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union), Comintern (Communist International), kolkhoz (collective farm), and Komsomol (Young Communists' League). The long-term political purpose of the new language is for every member of the Party and society, except the Proles — the working-class of Oceania — to exclusively communicate in Newspeak, by A.D. 2050; during that 66-year transition, the usage of Oldspeak (Standard English) shall remain interspersed among Newspeak conversations. Newspeak is also a constructed language, of planned phonology, grammar, and vocabulary, like Basic English, which Orwell promoted (1942–44) during the Second World War (1939–45), and later rejected in the essay 'Politics and the English Language' (1946), wherein he criticizes the bad usage of English in his day: dying metaphors, pretentious diction, and high-flown rhetoric, which produce the meaningless words of doublespeak, the product of unclear reasoning. Orwell's conclusion thematically reiterates linguistic decline: 'I said earlier that the decadence of our language is probably curable. Those who deny this may argue that language merely reflects existing social conditions, and that we cannot influence its development, by any direct tinkering with words or constructions.' The political purpose of Newspeak is to eliminate the expression of the shades of meaning inherent to ambiguity and nuance from Oldspeak (Standard English) in order to reduce the language's function of communication, by way of simplistic concepts of simple construction — pleasure and pain, happiness and sadness, goodthink and crimethink — which linguistically reinforce the State's totalitarian dominance of the people of Oceania. In Newspeak, root words function as nouns and verbs, which reduced the vocabulary available for the speaker to communicate meaning; for example, think is both a noun and a verb, thus, the word thought is not functionally required to communicate the concepts of thought in Newspeak; hence, the English word thought is not in the Newspeak vocabulary. As personal communication, Newspeak is to be spoken in staccato rhythm, using short-syllable words that are easy to pronounce, which generates speech that is physically automatic and intellectually unconscious, thereby diminishing the possibility of critical thought occurring to the speaker. English words of comparative and superlative meanings and irregular spellings were simplified into the regular spellings of Newspeak; thus, better becomes gooder and best becomes goodest. The prefixes plus- and doubleplus- are used for emphasis, plusgood meaning 'very good' and doubleplusgood meaning 'superlatively good'. Adjectives are formed by adding the suffix –ful to a root-word, e.g. goodthinkful means 'Orthodox in thought.'; while adverbs are formed by adding the suffix –wise, e.g. goodthinkwise means 'In an orthodox manner'. The grammar of Newspeak has two characteristics: (i) Interchangeable linguistic functions of the parts of speech; at any time, any word can be used and made to function as a noun, as a verb, as an adverb, as an adjective, etc.; (ii) Inflectional regularity in the construction of usages and of words; the preterite and the past participle constructions of verbs are alike, each ends in –ed; hence, the Newspeak preterite of the English word steal is stealed, and that of the word think is thinked. Newspeak has no antonyms, therefore the prefix 'Un–' is used to indicate negation; the Standard-English word warm becomes uncold, and the moral concept communicated with the word bad is expressed as ungood. When appended to a verb, the prefix 'un–' communicates a negative imperative mood, thus, the Newspeak word unproceed means 'do not proceed' in Standard English.