George Orwell's Impact On The English Language

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Throughout history of written and spoken language, there is constant change and evolution of meanings of words and the sentiments it holds. As we have seen, the English language has notably changed and not for the better. Orwell disputes these changes that have greatly impacted the English language and provides four key forms in which the language has been altered over time, specifically, in politics. Dying metaphors, operators or verbal false limbs, pretentious diction, and meaningless words have all taken a toll on the way one communicates in politics today by creating deceptive, unclear, loose-interpretation, and ultimately, lose of sentiment and meaning to the words that are used today. The first example provided is the dying metaphors we now see in speeches and how they have lost their sentiment. Originally, metaphors were presented in a way that invoked vivid image. Unfortunately, these metaphors are no longer effective but are still used as fill in words to keep the flow of a speech. For example, in a popular speech given by Mohamed Nasheed, he explains, "The…show more content…
Just like Orwell, Machiavelli's writing style consist of straight forward concepts and expression. As far as political ideology, there is a distinct difference between the two. In Orwell's piece, he writes "'political writing becomes the defense of the indefensible, most political writing is bad, where it is not the author is usually a rebel who expresses his private opinions". While this could be true of Machiavelli's piece, he himself contends that "men who embrace the ideal, while rejecting the real, will only accomplish their ruin". Machiavelli also stresses that in order to reign effectively one must be dishonest and feared, while not being hated, to become victimized. To accomplish this, rhetoric is often used in a way to manipulate language, which was exactly what Orwell warns

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