Among this UN stuff, the tendencies he identifies are worst in the use of language to more or less deliberately obscure meaning or fulfill a formula. Under the section 'Insincere language and its uses', Orwell links the deterioration of language with the broader conditions of existence in dictatorships, as stellar cases of writing where declared and true intentions are different. We are supposed to be promoting democratic governance (another discussion), but we can't mention undemocratic practices; we only work at the invitation of governments so we have to keep them sweet. In public presentation, which is my part of the job, bad things are either left out or euphamised into obscurity. It's not surprising - propaganda, not news, journalism or communications. But I worry that this extends from the way public documents are written to the way that private things are written (I have seen examples of both honesty and obscurity in internal communcations), and even to the way that private communcations are spoken.
I started writing this instead of getting around to writing an acceptable paragraph on UNDP in the Caucasus. In a piece of self-censorship, the clause about ongoing and past conflicts in the region went, because I know it will later be excised and I'm in complaining, not active mood.
Orwell writes ('The invasion of ready-made phrases', near the end):
But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought. A bad usage can spread by tradition and imitation even among people who should and do know better. The debased language that I have been discussing is in some ways very convenient. Phrases like a not unjustifiable assumption, leaves much to be desired, would serve no good purpose, a consideration which we should do well to bear in mind, are a continuous temptation, a packet of aspirins always at one's elbow.Meetings are full of empty phrases, particularly irritating when these present non-action as action (we will (enthusiastically! with great commitment!) wait for the results of the consultation). The aspirins are most conspicuous (yet unacknowledged) in planning and reporting on activities, although it's maybe a stretch to link this to language. Nobody has time or money to properly judge achievements based on well-designed and measurable indicators(!), but failing to acknowledge this at the front, a set of outcomes and outputs and others is in place, and a project is judged successful if the right number of the right sort of people received training in the right thing. There is no space for meaningful, honest evaluation of activities, so logframes of standard results and indicators - with their own language - are the convenient way of joining the dots. Never mind that the numbers were out of order. (Eyes opened for the next post, A defence of jargon...)
Talking of language: ChinaWhat do you do with a load of dead dolphins? Is it wrong to eat them?
5 comments:
I disagree with him about the naming of plants. Using the Latin allows people all over the world to know what is being described.
Otherwise I look forward with great anticipation to your prose reflecting these words of wisdom.
You're not unright, although to be fair he doesn't mention plants. i think the colloquial name with latin in brackets is fine.
As for my prose, I feel this may have not unbeen a not unstupid not nonpost to not not post. But the good structuralist forgives me, don't you know? ... One day I'll be a writer, but propaganda pays more reliably.
I think Orwells essay is very important. My dad got me to read it when I was at uni and its certainly a good think to keep in mind.
That said I don't think that even Orwell manages to achieve his ideal in all his prose.
Also its a tricky line for a writer to walk. If you are writing in the 1st person for example to exclude cliche is to exclude realism unless you are only going to write very idiosyncratic characters.
Language is a tool and and one argument is that a tool works if it achieves what their user intends them to do. In this argument, if propaganda etc... achieves the aims of its user then it is sucessful.
Orwell at his worst is often a propagandist and occasionally a racist one at that. At his best he is sublime (I say this having not even read 1984 but I have read lots of his essays, animal farm and down and out in paris and london so I do get a relitively authoritive POV on this). What works for the reader or for timelessness etc... is when the tool plays its user and not the other way round, when the hammer shapes the metalwork, when the chisel shapers the carving, when the harp plays itself. Orwells thoughts on language help us to create langauge that is powerful, relivent and free of many flaws or percieved flaws, it helps us to avoid being tired or cliched or dishonest, it helps us to achieve possibilities where we may be guided by our tool and not use the tool to fashion what we want.
Some of his techniques and suggestions might help us to make more effective propaganda (at least for the minority of readers who are actively interested in langauge) but as for helping us to achieve the impossible to define qualities that make something "good" and avoid it being "bad" they are only useful in so far as they make us consider quality, not as complete and definitive rules to follow.
My feeling, or insinct is, that truth is what makes writing good. In this essay Orwell does achieve this, but as with anything that is true, it doesn't cancel out a great many other truths.
I think different writing has different purposes and so different rules apply. I also think that there is no way of making something manipulative just by getting rid of the bad habits of language. And by getting rid of todays bad habits you destroy tomorrows innovations.
Personally, though I think this essay is important, required reading for anyone who works with words and is very perceptive and engaging, I tend to find Orwells prose to be pretty ugly, sometimes he has a wonderful parapgraph or two, and his essays are often great from start to finish, but his prose in general is, far too aware of itself and far too stilted by forms of grammer and punctuation that have not lasted and slow down the reading rather than engage it.
Of course it stands alone, though it is quirky that one should write well about writing but not write well (if you see what I mean). Not having read anything by GO in a long time, I make no further comment. He does say in this essay though that there is no guarantee that following his doctrine means writing well, and no suggestion that there is only one way of so doing. Rather that some things are overwhelmingly a bad idea, particularly for journalists.
I also think his emphasis on thinking, with regard to metaphors, is important and accurate. Just look at the case of a friend of mine whose mother, during an argument, called him a son of a bitch. There's a phrase whose metaphorical value is long forgotten.
I expect to be proved wrong, but the innovations based on cliches I fear will fill a smug and half-brained space on the shelves, and moreover not require cliches to be in common use. But you're right, different purposes, different rules.
(Very small changes can make huge differences. Before the first hlaf of the last paragrpah was chopped down and moved up two paragraphs, the ending of my last article made clear sense and maybe had some poignancy, but having to pretend that nothing bad has ever happened means that paranoia and the need to not offend wins, and the article ends up limp and without any writerly touch.)
I think thats really really nice that someones mother called them a son of a bitch. Thats the sort of unthinking use of metaphors I can get behind. Lovely.
Dead metaphors are realistically how people speak and they are useful tools for communication, but in general I am with Orwell on them. I like to either resusitate them by sticking an extra unnexpected bit in them, subvert them (which reminds people they used to be alive) or else find other metaphors to use. That said I am not saying I don't use them all the time in blogs or whatever.
Orwell isn't one to use dead metaphors though, thats something he can't be accused of. Over formal and unemotive prose is about the worst he does. He knew his linguistic theory and got every comma in the right place... but at what cost? Sometimes, I would argue, to my modern and unrefined eye at least, the cost is a lack of readibility.
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