George Orwell's Politics And The English Language

In George Orwell’s work, Politics and the English Language, Orwell makes many points as to why the English language is collapsing, especially in political writing. Impropriety in the English language has been passed about much like tradition and has not seemed to have stopped. Ambiguity in political writing has made it dry with no imagery in the words or metaphors used, which is often done incorrectly. Orwell uses several phrases from other professors and politicians as examples to explain why they are lacking imagery, pretentiousness, and what he described as 'ugly' wording/phrasing. Dying metaphors are the first main topic he touches upon, he noted that many political writers often used dying metaphors such as "toe on the line", without …show more content…
Often we use words that lack meaning due to the over usage of them, mainly words that can have an opposite meaning. Words such as life and death, or words such as romantic and hate. With the lack of meaninglessness in words it becomes difficult to have imagery while reading through. Imagining your words and writing can bring clarity to your writing and eliminate any vagueness between yourself and the reader. Stale words can make the reading dry with no mental images, though adding metaphors without much thought towards them will not create a proper image. One of the worst places for lack of imagery was in political writing and speeches. Orwell encourages questioning yourself during the writing process, asking questions such as usage of simple words and phrases, the use of mental images, and words to express your thoughts. Your thoughts will help create phrases for you, ready-made phrases are simple, as not much thought has to go into them and you don't have to go searching for the words. In all forms of political language, no matter the party, there is always vague and lies sound as truth. Politician phrases are designed so there are no images in