Newspeak Totally Explained

Everything about Newspeak totally explained

Newspeak is a fictional language in George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. In the novel, it's described as being "the only language in the world whose vocabulary gets smaller every year." Orwell included an essay about it in the form of an appendix in which the basic principles of the language are explained. Newspeak is closely based on English but has a greatly reduced and simplified vocabulary and grammar. This suits the totalitarian regime of the Party, whose aim is to make any alternative thinking ("thoughtcrime") or speech impossible by removing any words or possible constructs which describe the ideas of freedom, rebellion and so on. One character says admiringly of the shrinking volume of the new dictionary: "It's a beautiful thing, the destruction of words." The Newspeak term for the English language is Oldspeak. Oldspeak was intended to have been completely eclipsed by Newspeak before 2050.
The genesis of Newspeak can be found in the constructed language Basic English, which Orwell promoted from 1942 to 1944 before emphatically rejecting it in his essay "Politics and the English Language". In this paper he laments the quality of the English of his day, citing examples of dying metaphors, pretentious diction or rhetoric, and meaningless words — all of which contribute to fuzzy ideas and a lack of logical thinking. Towards the end of this essay, having argued his case, Orwell muses:
Basic principles of Newspeak

To remove synonyms and antonyms

The basic idea behind Newspeak is to remove all shades of meaning from language, leaving simple dichotomies (pleasure and pain, happiness and sadness, good thoughts and thoughtcrimes) which reinforce the total dominance of the State. Similarly, Newspeak root words served as both nouns and verbs, which allowed further reduction in the total number of words; for example, "think" served as both noun and verb, so the word "thought" wasn't required and could be abolished. A staccato rhythm of short syllables was also a goal, further reducing the need for deep thinking about language. (See duckspeak.) Successful Newspeak meant that there would be fewer and fewer words -- dictionaries would get thinner and thinner.
   In addition, words with opposite meanings were removed as redundant, so "bad" became "ungood". Words with comparative and superlative meanings were also simplified, so "better" became "gooder", and "best" likewise became "goodest". Intensifiers could be added, so "great" became "plusgood", and "excellent" or "splendid" likewise became "doubleplusgood". Adjectives were formed by adding the suffix "-ful" to a root word (for example, "goodthinkful", orthodox in thought), and adverbs by adding "-wise" ("goodthinkwise", in an orthodox manner). In this manner, as many words as possible were removed from the language. The ultimate aim of Newspeak was to reduce even the dichotomies to a single word that was a "yes" of some sort: an obedient word with which everyone answered affirmatively to what was asked of them.
   Some of the constructions in Newspeak which Orwell derides, such as replacing "bad" with "ungood", are in fact characteristic of agglutinative languages, although foreign to English. It is also possible that Orwell modeled aspects of Newspeak on Esperanto; for example "ungood" is constructed similarly to the Esperanto word "malbona". Orwell had been exposed to Esperanto in 1927 when living in Paris with his aunt Kate Limouzin and her husband Eugène Lanti, a prominent Esperantist. Esperanto was the language of the house, and Orwell was disadvantaged by not speaking it, which may account for some antipathy towards the language.}} The underlying theory of Newspeak is that if something can't be said, then it can't be thought.
   Examples of Newspeak, from the novel, include: "crimethink"; "doubleplusungood"; and "Ingsoc" .They mean, respectively: "thought-crime"; "extremely bad"; and "English Socialism", the official political philosophy of the Party. The word "Newspeak" itself also comes from the language. Note that all of these words would be obsolete and should be removed in the "final" version of Newspeak, except for "doubleplusungood" in certain contexts.
   Generically, Newspeak has come to mean any attempt to restrict disapproved language by a government or other powerful entity.

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