Eclecticology (Ray Saintonge) wrote in part:
Maveric149 (Daniel Mayer) wrote:
>Again blacklisting terms is *very* bad and reminds
me of something I read
>in the appendix of the book 1984 in which Orwell described Newspeak. The
>goal of the totalitarian state in 1984 had with Newspeak was thought
>control: By dropping certain terms from the language the concepts behind
>those terms would fall away from the conscious thoughts of people.
>Eliminating the word "freedom" for example, would help to stop the
>transmission of freedom-oriented ideas and thus would ease any want in the
>population for it.
Orwell's society did not ban the word
"freedom". It just reserved the
right to insist that you understood it in a politically correct way.
Totalitarian principles are more effectively spread when the subject
population believes that it has freely adopted those ideas.
Point of information:
I read 1984 again just last month, and this very word
(well, the adjective "free") is addressed in the appendix.
Newspeak /did/ ban the word "free" (in its political sense) /entirely/.
They did /not/ merely insists that you call Ingsoc free and dissent unfree.
They wanted to make it /impossible/ for somebody to say something like
"Hold on a minute -- maybe Ingsoc is not free after all!".
A big point of Newspeak -- and how it went /beyond/ efforts in the USSR --
was the elimination, not merely restriction, of terms, for this reason.
BTW, the word "free" did survive in Newspeak, but in a different sense.
You could say "My apartment is not free of cockroaches.",
but not "My life under Ingsoc is not free." -- /that/ would be meaningless.
All in all, comparing Newspeak to political correctness
is a huge exaggeration -- Newspeak just goes beyond
anything that has occured in the real world (and thank goodness!).
That was part of Orwell's point -- the other part of his point
being that Newspeak might not be such an exaggeration in 1984.
(Thank goodness that it still is!)
-- Toby