Politics is meaningless Essay

George Orwell wrote an essay entitled â€Å"Politics and the English Language† in 1946 scrutinizing the modern written English because of its ugliness and inaccuracy. Political prose according to him is composed to create lies seem true, make committing crime honorable, and present the gas phase into solid one. This simply means that the language used in political prose is fuzzy and has no meaning because it conceals the truth rather than showing it and this even influences those writers who have no intention to hide the truth and this uncertain prose covers the writer’s idea. Imitation disseminates the bad writing habits and is also criticized by Orwell. He believes that writers must change this habit into deep thinking on what they say because deep thinking is an essential step to political regeneration. Five examples of text are selected by Orwell, they show different iniquity in one’s mind which the readers undergo today. They are Harold Laski that shows five negative in 53 words; Lancelot Hogben has mixed metaphor; an essay on psychology in Politics is meaningless; a communist pamphlet views a collection of stale phrases and a letter in Tribune, the meaning is not suited to the words. He recognizes many frauds and twisting of the meaning from these texts which he categorizes as â€Å"Dying Metaphors†, â€Å"Operators or Verbal False Limbs†, â€Å"Pretentious Diction†, and â€Å"Meaningless Words. † Orwell notice that pompous latinized style is used by the modern prose writers instead of definite terms and to prove this, he contrasts the parody in â€Å"modern English† to an essential biblical sermon. According to him, concept affects language and language can be affected by concept. To keep from the kind of flaws that he mentions, Orwell proposes six rules to follow, everybody could learn all of them but of course still commits mistake. He also clarifies that he prefers to use language rather than the literary use of language as an implement for showing and not for hiding the thought. Lastly, he even accepts that though he has suggested many things about this topic still he recognizes that he has his own flaws and sometimes he even commits the same errors. Work Cited Orwell, George. â€Å"Politics and the English Language† ( 1946 ) http://orwell. ru/library/essays/politics/english/e_polit