Newspeak
'Politically Correct', 'Progressive' Impoverishment of Language
I have added the following to my Culture War Encyclopedia…
Newspeak
(noun, proper)
In the fictional story 1984 by George Orwell, to serve their agenda, those in power impose new terms in what is called Newspeak to replace terms in English, or what is called Oldspeak that have the potential to be what some today call problematic. As the official language, Newspeak is carefully designed to condition people to think how and what those in power want them to think.
Oldspeak ranges from informal speech, which might be frowned upon, to forbidden speech, which is be reported to the Thought Police. In 1984, as in real life, the use of old, naturally evolving speech versus new, artificially imposed speech delineates friend from foe. It is the difference between those who are sufficiently submissive to Big Brother and those who harbor ownlife or individualism and are thus a threat to the homogeneity of the herd. In other words, those who use too much Oldspeak and not enough Newspeak are looked at with suspicion or accused of being agents of the enemy in much the same way that people in real life who use ‘problematic’ speech or hate speech are suspected or accused of being racist, transphobic, ableist, alt-right adjacent, or even alt-right, far-right, fascist, and so on.
Orwell warned of the use of language to manipulate and control people. He saw this play out in his own time and warned us of how this might be applied in the future. Writing in 1948, he set his story in 1984 which is roughly when politically correct language was first pushed into the public sphere and used to discriminate between the politically correct and the politically incorrect.
In real life, as in 1984, the real nuts and bolts work of changing language is conducted in some specialized department or bureau in academia and/or government. At the Ministry of Truth (which is the government’s propaganda department), the main character, Winston Smith, whose job it is to alter the archives of past news reports, is told by a comrade named Syme, who is part of a team working on the new edition of the Newspeak dictionary,
‘We’re getting the language into its final shape—the shape it’s going to have when nobody speaks anything else. When we’ve finished with it, people like you will have to learn it all over again.
A single invented term in Newspeak is meant to replace multiple terms in Oldspeak. This results in a decrease in the number of words one can speak. So, as in real life, new politically correct terms are literally created but, speaking figuratively, Syme goes on to say,
You think, I dare say, that our chief job is inventing new words. But not a bit of it! We’re destroying words—scores of them, hundreds of them, every day. We’re cutting the language down to the bone. The Eleventh Edition won’t contain a single word that will become obsolete before the year 2050.’…
‘It’s a beautiful thing, the destruction of words…
Don’t you see the beauty of that, Winston? It was B.B.’s idea originally, of course,’ he added as an afterthought.
A sort of vapid eagerness flitted across Winston’s face at the mention of Big Brother. Nevertheless Syme immediately detected a certain lack of enthusiasm.
In the story, such a thing, if taken too far, could be reported to the authorities. Failure to display an acceptable facial expression is called facecrime. As I write this entry at the end of 2022, we are seeing precursors to the idea that people must show outer expressions of their enthusiastic acceptance (internalization) of the official (uni)party line. Below is an example.
Soon we will see more and more examples of people being vilified for having the wrong facial expressions with regard to political matters. Back to the story,
‘You haven’t a real appreciation of Newspeak, Winston,’ he said almost sadly. ‘Even when you write it you’re still thinking in Oldspeak. I’ve read some of those pieces that you write in ‘The Times’ occasionally. They’re good enough, but they’re translations. In your heart you’d prefer to stick to Oldspeak, with all its vagueness and its useless shades of meaning. You don’t grasp the beauty of the destruction of words…
‘Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it…Every year fewer and fewer words, and the range of consciousness always a little smaller. Even now, of course, there’s no reason or excuse for committing thoughtcrime. It’s merely a question of self-discipline, reality-control. But in the end there won’t be any need even for that…‘Has it ever occurred to you, Winston, that by the year 2050, at the very latest, not a single human being will be alive who could understand such a conversation as we are having now?’…
‘By 2050—earlier, probably—all real knowledge of Oldspeak will have disappeared. The whole literature of the past will have been destroyed. Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Byron—they’ll exist only in Newspeak versions, not merely changed into something different, but actually changed into something contradictory of what they used to be. Even the literature of the Party will change. Even the slogans will change. How could you have a slogan like ‘freedom is slavery’ when the concept of freedom has been abolished? The whole climate of thought will be different. In fact there will be no thought, as we understand it now. Orthodoxy means not thinking—not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.’
In the appendix to 1984, Orwell writes,
The Principles of Newspeak
Newspeak was the official language…and had been devised to meet…ideological needs...It was expected that Newspeak would have finally superseded Oldspeak (or Standard English, as we should call it) by about the year 2050. Meanwhile it gained ground steadily, all Party members tending to use Newspeak words and grammatical constructions more and more in their everyday speech…
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. It was intended that when Newspeak had been adopted once and for all and Oldspeak forgotten, a heretical thought…should be literally unthinkable, at least so far as thought is dependent on words. Its vocabulary was so constructed as to give exact and often very subtle expression to every meaning that a Party member could properly wish to express, while excluding all other meanings and also the possibility of arriving at them by indirect methods. This was done partly by the invention of new words, but chiefly by eliminating undesirable words…Newspeak was designed not to extend but to DIMINISH the range of thought, and this purpose was indirectly assisted by cutting the choice of words down to a minimum…In Newspeak it was seldom possible to follow a heretical thought further than the perception that it WAS heretical: beyond that point the necessary words were nonexistent.
Hence, we see all the positions on the wide range of the political compass - outside of the narrow extreme authoritarian left - reduced to the narrow term/concept “far right”.
The appendix continues,
…a Party member called upon to make a political or ethical judgement should be able to spray forth the correct opinions as automatically as a machine gun spraying forth bullets. His training fitted him to do this, the language gave him an almost foolproof instrument…
So did the fact of having very few words to choose from…Each reduction was a gain, since the smaller the area of choice, the smaller the temptation to take thought. Ultimately it was hoped to make articulate speech issue from the larynx without involving the higher brain centres at all.
In 1984, Newspeak was imposed via incrementalism, that is, by steps. In real life, the term ‘crippled’ was replaced by ‘handicapped’ which was replaced by ‘disabled’ which is being replaced by ‘differently abled’. To use the term ‘disabled’ is to be looked upon with suspicion. To use ‘handicapped’ or ‘crippled’ is to engage in ableism which is bad because it marginalizes differently abled people by placing them lower than others on an ableist hierarchy.
The imposition of politically correct language upon the public began decades ago and continues to this day with no sign of abating ever.
A recent example of this Newspeak agenda comes from Stanford University in the form of their “Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative”, published on December 19, 2022 which describes itself as such…
The Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative (EHLI) is a multi-phase, multi-year project to address harmful language in IT at Stanford. EHLI is one of the actions prioritized in the Statement of Solidarity and Commitment to Action, which was published by the Stanford CIO Council (CIOC) and People of Color in Technology (POC-IT) affinity group in December 2020.
The goal of the Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative is to eliminate* many forms of harmful language, including racist, violent, and biased (e.g., disability bias, ethnic bias, ethnic slurs, gender bias, implicit bias, sexual bias) language in Stanford websites and code.
The purpose of this website is to educate people about the possible impact of the words we use. Language affects different people in different ways. We are not attempting to assign levels of harm to the terms on this site. We also are not attempting to address all informal uses of language.
This website focuses on potentially harmful terms used in the United States, starting with a list of everyday language and terminology.** Our "suggested alternatives" are in line with those used by peer institutions and within the technology community.***
At this point in their text, they footnote…
***These are a list of our sources:
Brandeis Suggested Language List
They issue the following infantilizing message in large bold lettering…
Content Warning: This website contains language that is offensive or harmful. Please engage with this website at your own pace.
They then provide their list of language categories. Each item on the list expands to include an explanation and a table of harmful terms, suggested replacements and to provide some context. For example, under ‘Ableist’ they write,
Ableist language is language that is offensive to people who live with disabilities and/or devalues people who live with disabilities. The unintentional use of such terms furthers the belief that people who live with disabilities are abnormal.
Beneath that they list terms such as ‘handicapped parking’ which they replace with ‘accessible parking’ and comment,
Ableist language that trivializes the experiences of people living with disabilities
One would think that a term like ‘paraplegic’ would not be considered ‘problematic’ or indicative of wrongthink, but they do and want you to instead say,
person with a spinal cord injury, person who is paralyzed
Why one is better or worse than the other is a mystery left unsolved. They offer context but it is of no help. In fact, it raises more questions. They claim the term ‘paraplegic’…
generalizes a population of people while also implying that people with disabilities are not capable.
Notice that they are using the now politically incorrect term ‘disabilities’ rather than ‘different abilities’. Whoopsie! Notice also that they state that it is somehow wrong to acknowledge that some people, such as paraplegics, are not capable of some things, such as walking. They do not explain how or why it is wrong, however.
In their opinion piece about this, the Editorial Board of the Wall Street Journal wrote,
“Gangbusters” is banned because the index says it “invokes the notion of police action against ‘gangs’ in a positive light, which may have racial undertones.” Not to beat a dead horse (a phrase that the index says “normalizes violence against animals”), but you used to have to get a graduate degree in the humanities to write something that stupid.
The Daily Mail’s piece on this includes the following chart…
Here’s a couple of examples from the Daily Mail’s article,
The site also suggests replacing 'Karen' with 'demanding or entitled White woman', while a 'child prostitute' could be changed to a 'child who has been trafficked'.
Here’s an other example. They want you to stop using the term ‘trigger warning’ (because it could trigger someone) and to replace it with the term ‘content note’ because, they say, the term ‘trigger warning’ might give a person stress about whatever it is they want to be warned about.
Notice that they are defeating the purpose of issuing a trigger warning. As I tweeted to them…
They have so far not responded. Consider this,
It’s almost as if there is an agenda to render Western society weak, helpless, pathetic, ignorant and easily conquered intellectually, economically and militarily (see military, woke in The Culture War Encyclopedia). One could argue that entities such as the CCP or the FBI use things like Tik Tok or Twitter intentionally to influence Western people to be more 'woke' and hence weaker, less rational, more emotional, depressed, less likely to have healthy families. But leaving aside the question of whether such organizations could have the competency to succeed in such efforts, it may be that no such conspiring would be necessary anyway.
This may be unconscious. It seems fair to say that fields such as psychology establish that the subconscious mind can apparently orchestrate situations that take one by surprise and that one must deal with involuntarily. It seems as if our own subconscious mind can conspire against us and subvert our conscious will. It seems that this happens on the scale of societies as well.
At any rate, whatever the conscious intentions involved may be and however honest or duplicitous they may be, such efforts to implement such Newspeak are misguided at best. Some would say they are bound to be disastrous. That’s not to say it can’t be funny. For lots of laughs, see the Newspeak terms derived from such efforts as Stanford University's Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative and others that can be found throughout The Culture War Encyclopedia.
Also see…
“Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative” by Stanford University (December 19, 2022)
“The Stanford Guide to Acceptable Words” by The Wall Street Journal (December 19, 2022)
“American, grandfather, brave and master: Words Stanford University includes in its index of 'harmful language' because they are 'ableist, sexist or racist'” by The Daily Mail (December 20, 2022)
“Stanford University Releases List of ‘Harmful’ and ‘Racist’ Words to Eliminate – Including ‘American,’ ‘Grandfather,’ and ‘Long Time, No See’” by The Gateway Pundit (December 20, 2022)
Thank you,
Justin Trouble
Liberty, My Right ∴ Truth, My Sword
Laughter, My Shield ∴ Knowledge, My Steed
Love, My Solace ∴ Honor, My Reward