Newspeak

Newspeak is a concept from the book 1984 by George Orwell. Newspeak is a language that was created for the book. It is based on English, which is referred to as Oldspeak in the novel. In the book, Newspeak is the language that was created to be used in Oceania, a state that was formed by the union of multiple smaller states. Oceania is a state that is ruled by a dictator named Big Brother, where the citizens have very few rights and must obey incredibly strict and unfair laws.

In the novel, this language was made by members of Ingsoc (English Socialism), the political party that rules Oceania. Ingsoc is also referred to as "the Party". The language was made to meet the requirements of Ingsoc's ideology. Newspeak is a language that limits the grammar and vocabulary to reduce or eliminate ambiguity or complexity as a means to limit Critical thinking. This results in the people not being able to question whatever the Party tells the society.

Newspeak also limits a person's ability to clearly communicate abstract concepts, such as a person's identity, way of showing their personality to others and ability to choose between different possible plans, which are thoughtcrimes, acts of personally relying on one's self that deny the practices that Ingsoc collectivism accepts. In the novel's appendix, "The Principles of Newspeak", Orwell explains that Newspeak follows most rules of English grammar, yet is a language whose vocabulary grows smaller each year. Complete thoughts are reduced to simple terms that simplify concepts or issues so that their fine details and complexities are lost. The political contractions of Newspeak — Ingsoc (English Socialism), Minitrue (Ministry of Truth), Miniplenty (Ministry of Plenty) — are similar to 20th century contractions from German and Russian, such as Nazi (Nationalsozialist), Gestapo (Geheime Staatspolizei), politburo (Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union), Comintern (Communist International), kolkhoz (collective farm), and Komsomol (communist youth union). Newspeak contractions usually are syllabic abbreviations (syllabic abbreviations are usually formed from the initial syllables of several words) that are meant to hide the speaker's ideology from the speaker and the listener.

For example, the word for "bad" becomes "ungood" in Newspeak. It becomes a word simply meaning the opposite of "good", with the prefix "un-" meaning "not".

Development of Newspeak

As a constructed language, Newspeak is a language of planned phonology, limited grammar, and finite vocabulary, much like the phonology, grammar, and vocabulary of Basic English (British American Scientific International Commercial English), which was proposed by the British studier of languages Charles Kay Ogden in 1930. As a language limits the grammar and vocabulary to prevent complex constructions and ambiguous usages, Basic English was designed to be easy to learn, to sound, and to speak, with a vocabulary of 850 words composed specifically to facilitate the communication of facts, not the communication of abstract thought. Moreover, being employed by the BBC to spread propaganda during the Second World War (1939–1945), Orwell saw the cognitive and communication-related weaknesses of Basic English, because, as a language with limited grammar and vocabulary, its constructions limit the ability to speak, write and think properly. In the essay "Politics and the English Language" (1946) and in "The Principles of Newspeak" appendix to Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), Orwell discusses the communication function of English and contemporary ideology-related changes in usage during the 1940s. In the novel, the linguistic decay of English is the central theme about language-as-communication.

In the essay, that Standard English had characteristics that were determined to be metaphors that stopped existing, inappropriate choice of words, and highly figurative rhetoric, which he mocked with the term doublespeak, the unclear language that arises from cognitive dissonance, and Orwell concludes that as: "I said earlier that the decadence of our language is probably curable. Those who deny this [decadence] may argue that language merely reflects existing social conditions, and that we cannot influence its development, by any direct tinkering with words or constructions."

That the decline of English had a correlation with the decline of intellectualism among society, and thus facilitated the manipulation of listeners and speakers and writers into resulting political chaos.

The story of Nineteen Eighty-Four explains the connection between authoritarian régimes and doublespeak language, earlier discussed in "Politics and the English Language":

When the general atmosphere is bad, language must suffer. I should expect to find — this is a guess, which I have not sufficient knowledge to verify — that the German, Russian and Italian languages have all deteriorated in the last ten or fifteen years, as a result of dictatorship. But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.

— George Orwell, "Politics and the English Language", 872–874

In contemporary political usage, the term Newspeak is used to verbally assault an opponent who introduces new definitions of words to suit their political agenda.

Principles

To eliminate the expressing of ambiguity and fine details from Oldspeak (Standard English) to reduce the English language's communication functions, Newspeak uses constructions of language that are so simple that ambiguities and finer details are lost. For example, the separations of pleasure vs. pain and happiness vs. sadness. Such separations produced the language-related and political concepts of goodthink and crimethink that reinforce the government system of The Party onto the people of Oceania. The long-term goal of The Party is that, by 2050, Newspeak would be the language understood and spoken by everyone in Oceania, except for the Proles, the people in Oceania who perform physical work for a living.

In Newspeak, English words that are root words (Primary lexical units of words, which carry the most important aspects of meaning and cannot be reduced into smaller parts. When a word is lexical, it is referring to the vocabulary, words, sentences or word parts of a language) function both as nouns and as verbs, which reduces the vocabulary available for the speaker to communicate meaning; e.g. as a noun and as a verb, the word think makes the word thought unnecessary and preventing the speaker from communicating the the idea of thoughts, which are the results of intellectualism, which is the belief that knowledge is derived from pure reason. As a form of communication tied to a person, Newspeak is spoken in rhythm resembling staccato (Staccato is a word that is used to describe musical notes that are short and separate when played), using short words that are easy to pronounce, so that speech is physically automatic and unconscious in a intellectual manner, by which the ways that a Newspeak user behaves avoid critical thinking. English words of meanings referring to things that are used to show that something is "more big" or "even more big" in addition to spellings that were not standard were made easier; thus, better would become gooder and best would become goodest. The Newspeak prefixes plus– and doubleplus– are used for emphasis, e.g. pluscold means "very cold" and doublepluscold means "very very cold". Newspeak forms adjectives by attaching the suffix –ful to a root word, e.g. goodthinkful means "Orthodox in thought"; while adverbs are formed by adding the suffix –wise, e.g. goodthinkwise means "In an orthodox manner".