Politics and the English Language by George Orwell is a detailed rhetorical analysis over the English language, regarding its faults and problems. Orwell demonstrates his points by giving examples of passages that suffer from the problems of the English language and giving solutions to those problems. Overall, he points out that the modern English prose is vague, confusing, and difficult to read.
Regarding the newfound vagueness of the English language, Orwell states, “This mixture of vagueness and sheer incompetence is the most marked characteristic of modern English prose, and especially of any kind of political writing.” This quote is showing how political writings are unclear and contradicting. Some of the ways that Orwell suggests to fix this problem is to never use a long word where a short one will do, cut out words if possible, and use active voice rather than passive voice.
Another problem Orwell found was that many writings seem to lack meaning. In his essay Orwell says, “In certain kinds of writing...it is normal to come across long passages which are almost completely lacking in meaning.” His comments are trying to convey that certain writings have confusing meaning due to long passages. The author seems to have no explanation for why they wrote like they did. English writing seems to throw meaningless …show more content…
In his essay, Orwell states, “...modern writing at its worst does not consist in picking out words for the sake of their meaning and inventing images in order to make the meaning clearer. It consists of gumming together long strips of words which have already been set in order by someone else...” Orwell is saying that political writings put long pointless sentences together which makes the material complicated. The author thinks that using big words will convey the point better, rather, the opposite is true. If the author used less words and active voice it would make essays easier to
Regarding the newfound vagueness of the English language, Orwell states, “This mixture of vagueness and sheer incompetence is the most marked characteristic of modern English prose, and especially of any kind of political writing.” This quote is showing how political writings are unclear and contradicting. Some of the ways that Orwell suggests to fix this problem is to never use a long word where a short one will do, cut out words if possible, and use active voice rather than passive voice.
Another problem Orwell found was that many writings seem to lack meaning. In his essay Orwell says, “In certain kinds of writing...it is normal to come across long passages which are almost completely lacking in meaning.” His comments are trying to convey that certain writings have confusing meaning due to long passages. The author seems to have no explanation for why they wrote like they did. English writing seems to throw meaningless …show more content…
In his essay, Orwell states, “...modern writing at its worst does not consist in picking out words for the sake of their meaning and inventing images in order to make the meaning clearer. It consists of gumming together long strips of words which have already been set in order by someone else...” Orwell is saying that political writings put long pointless sentences together which makes the material complicated. The author thinks that using big words will convey the point better, rather, the opposite is true. If the author used less words and active voice it would make essays easier to