Nineteen Eighty-Four By George Orwell

The dystopian novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four, written by George Orwell depicts a totalitarian society under which language has enormous power and influence. Language is used for propaganda such as the Party slogan, ‘War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength’ as well as for the manipulation and control of thought. The Party creates its own language, newspeak, which is ‘the only language in the world whose vocabulary gets smaller every year’. Destroying language and reducing the number of words works in the Party’s favour because it renders thoughtcrime impossible and hence reduces any chance of revolt or belief against the Party as well as creates a public that supports the Party ideology and has complete belief in it.

The Party