Politics and the English Language: By George Orwell Hardcover book - Couverture rigide

Orwell, George

Couverture rigide

ISBN 10 : 2382261064 ISBN 13 : 9782382261064

Editeur : Sahara Publisher Books, 1946

Synopsis

" Politics and the English Language " (1946) is an essay by George Orwell that criticised the "ugly and inaccurate" written English of his time and examines the connection between political orthodoxies and the debasement of language.
The essay focuses on political language, which, according to Orwell, "is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind". Orwell believed that the language used was necessarily vague or meaningless because it was intended to hide the truth rather than express it. This unclear prose was a "contagion" which had spread to those who did not intend to hide the truth, and it concealed a writer's thoughts from himself and others Orwell encourages concreteness and clarity instead of vagueness, and individuality over political conformity. Remedy of Six Rules
Orwell said it was easy for his contemporaries to slip into bad writing of the sort he had described and that the temptation to use meaningless or hackneyed phrases was like a "packet of aspirins always at one's elbow". In partiar, such phrases are always ready to form the writer's thoughts for him, to save him the bother of thinking-or writing-clearly. However, he concluded that the progressive decline of the English language was reversible [ and suggested six rules which, he claimed, would prevent many of these faults, although "one could keep all of them and still write bad English". Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print. (Examples that Orwell gave included "ring the changes", "Achilles' heel", "swan song", and "hotbed". He described such phrases as "dying metaphors" and argued that they were used without knowing what was truly being said. Furthermore, he said that using metaphors of this kind made the original meaning of the phrases meaningless, because those who used them did not know their original meaning.

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: Sahara Publisher Books
• Date d'édition: 1946
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 2382261064
• ISBN 13: 9782382261064
• Reliure: Relié
• Nombre de pages: 46
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: non disponible