Psychological Manipulation Through the Debasement of Language in Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four

Jeremy Sideris

The dystopian notion of power as held and enforced by the state is of primary importance in George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949). It is not enough to understand that within Orwell's novel an autocratic regime oppresses its populace. Rather, the significance of Orwell's implicit and explicit discussions concerning the dystopian abuse of power is fully realized when his literary treatment of the basic human will to communicate is analyzed by the reader as a vehicle of oppression. Orwell's study of power, then, assumes more than the role of adding so much color to this dystopian tale. In addition to presenting power as a means of controlling language, and thereby thought, the anti-utopian nature of Nineteen Eighty-Four intrinsically acts as a twentieth-century contrast to the Humanist writings of Sir Thomas More: Orwell's novel expresses "the mood of powerlessness and hopelessness of modern man just as the early utopias expressed the mood of self-confidence and hope of post-medieval man" (Fromm 259). Furthermore, Nineteen Eighty-Four serves a didactic purpose, a warning of man's dehumanization as a result of what Orwell perceived to be the fascist antagonism of contemporary ideological dogma (i.e. Stalinist state capitalism).

Orwell's description of state power is multi-layered and ironic. In Nineteen Eighty-Four, the state that seeks orderly rule and the state that abuses its citizens without regard for justice are one-in-the-same; for in Orwell's dystopia, Oceania, "power means the capacity to inflict unlimited pain and suffering on another human being"(Fromm 263). While the wholesale violence inflicted upon the Oceanians by their authoritarian government is indeed superfluous, its role as a tool for repression is more than a "hideous ecstasy of fear and vindictiveness, a desire to kill, to torture, to smash faces with a sledge hammer"(Orwell 16). Outward violence expressed by Orwell's dystopia bespeaks of a larger agenda. The regime's assumption "that man has an intense striving for love, for justice, for truth, for solidarity...affirms the strength and intensity of these human strivings by the description of the very means they present as being necessary to destroy them"(Fromm 261). Therefore, because Orwell's dystopian government realizes that human desire is a key factor in the intensity of the Man's wants, repression by the state is used as much for the suppression of individual desire as for keeping order in the populace.

Outwardly, this notion of power as a multi-faceted tool capable of both keeping peace and eliminating human desire is reminiscent of the imagined suppression of the ultimate source of desire, Pride, as described in Thomas More's Utopia (1516). Both More and Orwell envision this suppression of desire taking place within the context of language, "at least so far as thought is dependent on word"(Orwell 246); for it is through words that man is able to express his desirous thoughts. The placing of words together to form what society views as "truth"

then takes on added importance: The weight of a person's words are based solely on the merit of their worth to the state; words exist in "an extreme form of pragmatism in which truth becomes subordinated to the Party"(Fromm 263). Inwardly, however, the process of altering discourse through which More's utopian and Orwell's dystopian worlds quell desire among their citizens are of a systematically opposite nature.

In Utopia, More asserts that the end result of language, when used as a tool by the state, is enlightenment. While More's version of enlightenment can be taken to mean a ready acceptance of state dogma, on pain of forced servitude, the path to this enlightenment remains relatively benign. Language in the form of lecture, conversation, and reading is actively encouraged by the Utopian state: "Every child gets an introduction to good literature, and throughout their lives a large part of the people, men and women alike, spend their leisure time in reading"(More 49). This state-sponsored education is enhanced by

"an established custom of giving public lectures at daybreak, attendance at these lectures is required only of those who have been specially chosen to devote themselves to learning, but a great many other people, both men and women, choose voluntarily to attend." (More 37)

Furthermore, the Utopians are required to "begin every lunch and supper with some reading on a moral topic, but [to] keep it brief lest it become a bore"(More 44). Likwise, they "amuse themselves with conversation"when relaxing (More 38) .

It is in these descriptions of state-sponsored language usage that More's employment of discourse as a rhetorical vehicle is most evident. His description(s) of the Utopian citizenry's constant immersion in accepted dogma suggest an alteration of language: By being encouraged (via instruction and the threat of force) by the state to accept its rhetoric as true, at the exclusion of outside or "foreign"rhetorics, a societal norm is suggested, developed, and perpetuated. This norm, quite simply, implies that state rhetoric is truth. Because the Utopian populace speaks only state rhetoric, they can be made to believe that they only speak the truth. Likewise, as the state encourages its citizens to speak its rhetoric often, the people can be made to feel that they speak the truth often. More is then left to insert his imagined state's ambitions into the state's rhetoric for these desires to be realized. That More wishes these ambitions and the corresponding rhetoric to incur only good upon the people (e.g. the elimination of destructive sin of Pride) reveals the ideal, or utopian, nature of his made-up world.

Of greater importance, however, is the revelation that, despite More's good intentions, acceptance of the Utopian state's rhetoric actively involves premeditated and enforced tyranny over language. The Utopian's implied freedom to speak does not necessarily mean that they have the freedom to make these words dependent on their own thought: A Utopian is

"not allowed to express his opinions to the 'common people' but is encouraged to talk with priests and other important persons. 'For they are confident that in the end madness will yield to reason.' If he tries to talk to anyone else, the punishment is death. Fear is a weapon in Utopia as in Oceania, and unacceptable thoughts are 'madness.'" (Hewitt 131)

In essence, Utopians are allowed only a very limited range of language and thereby thought.

A state's desire to do good for its citizenry marks the essential difference between the utopian and dystopian processes of altering language for the sake of the state. Orwell's use of language in Nineteen Eighty-Four, an "anti-utopia, like its parent the utopia, showed the vitality and versatility of the form not simply as a vehicle for social and political ideas but as a literary expression of genuine power"(Kumar 27). That Orwell's literary expression of this power involves a dystopian, totalitarian domination over language is evident; for his presentation of language suppression employs "such relentless brutality and terror that many have doubted whether he really intended at all to offer a realistic portrait of a functioning state"(Kumar 67). Far from being a gratuitous series of violent scenes, Orwell's inclusion of terror into the state's language alteration process is indicative of the overall dystopian mechanism in general; like the human will, thought atrophies under a systematic program of suppression.

It is in this dystopian mechanism of thought suppression via language alteration that Nineteen Eighty- Four is particularly converse to the ideals found in Utopia. Granted, the state of Utopia is based partly on tyranny of language, but More's genuine desire for the betterment of Man presupposes any wholesale abuse of power. As the only unfeigned desire of the Oceanian government is the consolidation and perpetuation of its unlimited power, there can be no such presupposition similar to Humanist More's. Because the Oceanian regime takes no intrinsic interest in its populace save to "make it appear that it is possible to dehumanize man completely, and yet for life to go on,"the energy that More's state would spend to "enlighten"the people is instead used by the Oceanian regime to extend, however cruelly, its already considerable power (Fromm 266). Therefore, the reader finds in dystopian Oceania little of Utopia's questionably benign attempts to impart state dogma through seemingly pleasant discourse.

This is not say that Oceania is devoid of a process for imparting state rhetoric as a means of indoctrinating its citizens and thus maintaining control. On the contrary, the regime's efforts to instill its rhetoric are much more pervasive and intrusive than those detailed in More's Utopia. Orwell crafts the Oceanian state's attempts to impart its dogma via the alteration of language, the same means of rhetorical transmission employed in Utopia. True to its dystopian nature, however, language alteration in Nineteen Eighty-Four serves a decidedly anti-utopian purpose: To negate mental and spiritual enlightenment, specifically being "designed not to extend but to diminish the range of thought"(Orwell 247). Orwell calls this thought-atrophying language "Newspeak."

Whereas More's application of language was that of a tool used to positively voice his utopian state's rhetoric, the preoccupation of Oceania's Newspeak was to affirm the regime's utter control over its citizens' original means of expressing reality, what Orwell calls "Standard English,"or "Oldspeak":

"The purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a medium of expression for the world-view and mental habits proper to the devotees of Ingsoc, but to make all other modes of thought impossible." (Orwell 246)

Subsequently, by controlling the peoples' language, and thereby the ability to discern the truth with words, the state assumes a certain power over reality. As interpreted by the regime, "all reality is ideological"(Kumar 67).

In the subjugation of the Oceanians' language, the state transforms ideology into truth, and the state's rhetoric presumably becomes the vehicle for that truth: "Reality exists in the human mind and nowhere else...whatever the Party holds to be truth is truth. If this is so, then by controlling men's minds the Party controls truth"(Orwell 263). Similarly, the regime's rhetorical power over reality allows it to form the sole opinion of what are lies.

The foremost motivation of Orwell's static, dystopian state is the maintenance of its power, both rhetorical and real. Without hesitation, the state enforces the reality it tyrannically imposes on its people through rhetoric (i.e. signs that warn of "Big Brother"watching you), and physical force (i.e. torture, execution). Understanding that the state will stop at nothing to hold on to its authority, the reader can assume that the regime openly creates lies ("WAR IS PEACE...IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH") in order to maintain what the state forces the populace to regard as the truth (Orwell 17). Although these state-sponsored lies often contradict each other, Oceanians are manipulated to accept the lies' language as dogma or face execution. Again, this manipulation is achieved through the state-sponsored alteration of the Oceanian's language:

"Newspeak, indeed, differed from almost all other languages in that its vocabulary grew smaller instead of larger every year. Each reduction was a gain, since the smaller area of choice, the smaller temptation to take thought. Ultimately it was hoped to make articulate speech issue from the larynx without involving the higher brain centers at all. This aim was frankly admitted in the Newspeak word duckspeak, meaning 'to quack like a duck.'" (Orwell 254)

Whereas More's use of language alteration attempted to hide the authoritarian nature of his imaginary utopian state with the illusion of open discourse, descriptions of ease of life, and overall contentment, such is not the case in Nineteen Eighty-Four. Orwell gives the reader no cause for illusion. Rather, he presents Oceanian life under the regime as short, subject to wholesale cruelty and deceit.

The alteration of language in Orwell's dystopian state is like so much political jargon: "Designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind"(Orwell 177). It is precisely this brutally enforced jargon that makes Oceania a nation of "men who act like machines"(Fromm 267). The alteration, or conversion, of language from an ordered set of rules to express the truth to "duckspeak"further demonstrates that if a man

"has surrendered his independence and integrity completely, if he experiences himself as a thing which belongs either to the state, the party or the corporation, then two plus two are five or 'Slavery is Freedom,' and he feels free because there is no longer any awareness of the discrepancy between truth and falsehood." (Fromm 265)

The rationality of Man, then, is directly proportional to the limit of his ability to explicate the truth using his powers of verbal communication, the wellspring of his thought. Orwell's dystopia strips man of his freedom to speak, and thus denies him the ability to develop complex thoughts, making him a slave to men more clever than he.

Like More's Utopian, Nineteen Eighty-Four's typical Oceanian is not full of pride, does not seek luxury, and strives to be an efficient worker. The Utopian and the Oceanian are creations of opposite, but interrelated utopian and dystopian (anti-utopian) literary traditions. Ironically, they are essentially the same being. That they come from contrasting traditions is readily apparent: The Utopian supposedly lives in an ideal state, an earthly paradise, while the Oceanian dwells in a hellish world marked by mental and spiritual depravity. What then accounts for the similarities in what should be two very different characters?

While the worlds of More's Utopia and Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four are essentially different, the level of psychological manipulation through the debasement of language both authors employ necessarily isn't. In each story, the state regime systematically changes language, in terms of both perimeter and message, always with the precise goal of shaping society in mind.

Language is debased, or otherwise limited to the point of being severe control by the state. That both societies apparently have the same type of simple proletariat worker should come as no shock: Both Orwell and More actively create situations in which these characters must be humble workers or face severe punishments. Separating More's utopia from Orwell's dystopia is the notion that the former wrote of his paradise as a call for a communal society as a benefit to man and the later as a satirical, didactic warning against More's vision.

Works Cited

Hewitt, Janice. "More to Orwell: An Easy Leap from Utopia to Nineteen Eighty-Four."George Orwell. Eds. Courtney T. Wemyss and Alexej Ugrinsky. New York: Greenwood Press, 1987.

Kumar, Krishan. Utopianism. Great Britain: U of Minnesota P, 1991.

More, Sir Thomas. Utopia. Norton Critical Edtions. Ed. Robert M. Adams. New York: Norton, 1987.

Orwell, George. A Collection of Essays. Garden City, New York: Anchor Books, 1954.

---. Nineteen Eighty-Four. Afterword by Erich Fromm. New York: Penguin, 1949.

Works Consulted

Bhat, Yashoda. Aldous Huxley and George Orwell: A Comparative Study of Satire in Their Novels. New Delhi: Sterling Publishers Private Limited, 1991.

Bolton, W.F. The Language of 1984: Orwell's English and Ours. Knoxville, Tennessee: U of Tennessee P, 1984.

O'Brien, Connor Cruise. Writers and Politics. New York: Pantheon Books, 1965.