Newspeak

Newspeak is an idea from the book 1984 by George Orwell. Newspeak is a language that was made for the book. It is based on English. English is known as Oldspeak in the story. In the book, Newspeak is the language that was made 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. The citizens have very few rights. They must obey incredibly strict and unfair laws.

In the story, this language was made by members of Ingsoc (English Socialism), the political party that rules Oceania. Ingsoc is also known as "the Party". The language was made to meet the requirements of the ideology of Ingsoc. 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 the ability of a person to clearly talk about abstract ideas, like the identity of a person, way of showing their personality to others and the ability to choose. The three previously mentioned ideas are thoughtcrimes, acts of personally relying on one's self that deny the practices that Ingsoc collectivism accepts. In the appendix of the story, "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 ideas 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, like 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 first syllables of several words) that are meant to hide the ideology of the speaker 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). Basic English 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 made specifically to facilitate the communication of facts, not the communication of abstract thought. Orwell was 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 talks about the communication function of English and contemporary ideology-related changes in usage during the 1940s. In the story, 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. 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 made the manipulation of listeners, speakers and writers into resulting political chaos easier.

The story of Nineteen Eighty-Four explains the connection between authoritarian régimes and doublespeak language, talked about earlier 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 word 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 communication functions of the English language, 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 ideas 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) work both as nouns and as verbs. This reduces the vocabulary available for the speaker to communicate meaning. For example, as a noun and as a verb, the word think makes the word thought not necessary. This prevents the speaker from talking about the the idea of thoughts. The idea of thoughts is the result of intellectualism. Intellectualism is the belief that knowledge comes 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 short musical notes that are separate when played), using short words that are easy to say, so that speech is physically automatic and unconscious in an intellectual manner, by which the ways that a Newspeak user behaves avoid critical thinking. English meanings of words referring to things that are used to show that a thing 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". Adverbs are formed by adding the suffix –wise, e.g. goodthinkwise means "In an orthodox manner".

Thought control

The mental purpose of Newspeak is to make all thoughts that are against Ingsoc "literally unthinkable" as the act of speaking. As constructed, Newspeak vocabulary communicates the exact expression of sense and meaning that a member of the Party could wish to express, while excluding literal and figurative meanings that are not important, eliminating the ways of lateral thinking (indirect thinking), which allow a word to have additional meanings. The linguistics-related act of making Oldspeak easier so that it could become Newspeak was realized with new words or phrases, the elimination of words that were not wanted by Ingsoc, and the elimination of meanings that are not accepted for political reasons.

The word free still existed in Newspeak. This word was only used to talk about the absence of a thing, or that a thing is without some other thing, e.g. "The dog is free from lice" or "This field is free of weeds". The word could not mean free will, because having the ability to choose was no longer supposed to exist in Oceania. The restrictions of the vocabulary of Newspeak allowed the Party to effectively control the minds of the population, by allowing the user only a very narrow range of spoken and written thought. Hence, words like: crimethink (thought crime), doublethink (accepting contradictory beliefs), and Ingsoc communicated only what they seemed to mean, rather than what they also could mean.

In the story of Nineteen Eighty-Four, the character Syme, who studies the vocabulary of Newspeak, talks about his opinion on his work as an editor on the latest edition of the Newspeak Dictionary:

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 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.

Vocabulary

Newspeak words are sorted into three distinct classes: the A, B, and C vocabularies.

The words of the A vocabulary describe the normal ideas of the activities that a person's normal life consists of (e.g. eating and drinking, working and cooking). It consists mostly of English words. The amount of words is small compared to English. The meaning of each word is "far more rigidly defined" than in English.

The words of the B vocabulary are in a carefully-planned way built for political purposes to bring across complex ideas in a simple form. They are compound words and noun-verbs with political importance that are meant to force on people and put in Oceania's people the correct mental attitudes needed/demanded by the Party. In the add on, Orwell explains that the very structure of the B vocabulary the fact that they are compound words carries idea-based weight.

The large number of contractions in the B vocabulary--for example, the Ministry of Truth being called Minitrue, the Records Department being called Recdep, the Fiction Department being called Ficdep, the Teleprogrammes Department being called Teledep--is not done simply to save time. As with examples of compound words in the political language of the 20th century--Nazi, Gestapo, Politburo, Comintern, Inprecor, Agitprop, and many others--Orwell states that the Party believed that shortening a name could "narrowly and slightly in a detailed way" change a word's meaning. Newspeak is supposed to make this effort a conscious purpose:

[...]Comintern is a word that can be uttered almost without taking thought, whereas Communist International is a phrase over which one is obliged to linger at least momentarily. In the same way, the associations called up by a word like Minitrue are fewer and more controllable than those called up by Ministry of Truth. This accounted not only for the habit of abbreviating whenever possible, but also for the almost exaggerated care that was taken to make every word easily pronounceable.

The B words in Newspeak are supposed to sound pleasant, while also being easily sayable, in an attempt to make speech on anything political "short, sharp sounds and not changing in pitch" and, in the end, hide from the speaker all idea-based content.

The words of the C vocabulary are scientific and technical terms that add to the language-based functions of the A and B vocabularies. These words are the same scientific terms in English, but many of them have had their meanings stiff/not flexibleified to attempt, as with the A vocabulary, to prevent speakers from being able to express anti-government thoughts. Distribution of the C vocabulary is limited, because the Party does not want the people to know more than a select few ways of life or techniques of production. Because of this, the Oldspeak word science has no equal term in Newspeak. Instead, these words are simply treated as specific technical words for speaking of technical fields.

Grammar

Newspeak's grammar is greatly simplified compared to English. It also has two "outstanding" features: almost completely (able to take the place of each other) language-based functions between the parts of speech, meaning any word can function as a verb, noun, adjective, or adverb, and large amounts of regularity in the ways that word meanings change in the construction of usages and of words. Regularity in the ways that word meanings change mean that most irregular words are replaced with regular words combined with prefixes and suffixes. For example, the preterite and the past participle constructions of verbs are alike, with both ending in -ed. Because of this, the Newspeak preterite of the English word steal is stealed, and that of the word think is thinked. Also, the past participles of swim, give, bring, speak, and take were, (match up each pair of items in order) swimmed, gived, bringed, speaked, and taked, with all irregular forms (such as swam, gave, and brought) being eliminated. The additional (helping) things (including to be), regular pronouns, demonstrative adjectives, and relative pronouns and adverbs still inflect irregularly. They mostly follow their use in English, but the word whom and the will and should tenses are dropped, whom being replaced by who and will and should by will and would.

Prefixes

• "Un-" is used to show negation, as Newspeak has no non-political antonyms. For example, the standard English words warm and hot are replaced by uncold, and the moral idea communicated with the word bad is expressed as ungood. When added to the suffix to a verb, the prefix "un-" communicates a negative very important mood. This way, the Newspeak word unproceed means "do not move forward" in Standard English. In the case of unperson, the 'un' shows that the person officially never existed or, in other words, never was a person.
• "Plus-" is an intensifier that replaces very and more. This way, plusgood replaces very good and English words like great.
• "Doubleplus-" is an intensifier that replaces very and superlatives. For example, doubleplusgood replaces words like fantastic and excellent.
• "Ante-" is the prefix that replaces before. This way antefiling replaces the English phrase "before filing".
• "Post–" is the prefix that replaces after.
• "Up–" and "Down-" are prefixes which relate to things above or below a frame of reference. This may be literal, or it could be figurative, like in the case of upsub (submitting (a thing, usually) to a higher authority).
• "Good-" and "Crime-" are prefixes which relate to idea-based correctness. Compare goodthink (idelogically-correct thought) and crimethink (any anti-Ingsoc thoughts).
• "Old-" shows a usually insulting reference to the times before Ingsoc like Oldspeak (pre-newspeak Standard English) or oldthink (a kind of thinking that has since then been permanently stopped by the Party).
• "Mal-" shows means a mistake that goes against the Party. For example, any old quotes or reports from Party sources which go against the current truth expressed by the Party are called malquotes and malreports.

Suffixes

In spoken and written Newspeak, suffixes are also used in the elimination of irregular conjugations:

• "-ful" changes any word into an adjective, e.g. the English words fast, quick, and fast are replaced by speedful and slow is replaced by unspeedful. Goodthink is changed to goodthinkful.
• "-d" and "-ed" form the past tense of a verb, e.g. ran becomes runned, stole becomes stealed, drove becomes drived, thought becomes thinked, drank becomes drinked, and goodthink is changed to goodthinked.
• "–ing" forms the present participle of a verb, e.g. goodthinking (actively practicing goodthink).
• "-er" forms the more comparison of an adjective, e.g. better becomes gooder.
  • "-er" also forms the verbal noun, e.g. goodthinker (one whom practices goodthink)
• "–est" forms the most comparison of an adjective, e.g. best becomes goodest.
• "-s" and "-es" change a noun into its plural form, e.g. men becomes mans, oxen becomes oxes, and lives becomes lifes.
• "-wise" changes any word into an adverb by eliminating all English adverbs not already ending in "-wise", e.g. quickly becomes speedwise, slowly becomes unspeedwise, carefully becomes carewise, goodthink is changed to goodthinkwise, and words like fully, completely, and totally become fullwise.

Therefore, the Oldspeak sentence "He ran very quickly" would become "He runned doubleplusspeedwise".

Newspeak vocabulary

This is a list of Newspeak words known from the story. It does not include words carried over directly from English with no change in meaning, nor does it include regular uses of the listed affixes (e.g. unbellyfeel) unless they are especially significant.

The novel says that the Ministry of Truth uses a language (used by experts) "not actually Newspeak, but consisting mostly of Newspeak words" for its internal memos. As many of the words in this list (e.g. "bb", "upsub") come from such memos, it is not certain whether those words are actually Newspeak.

ante — the prefix that replaces before

artsem — artificial insemination

bb — Big Brother

bellyfeel -- the blind, positive acceptance of an idea

blackwhite -- to accept whatever one is told and ignore the facts. In the story, it is described as "to say that black is white when [the Party says so]" and "to believe that black is white, and more, to know that black is white, and to forget that one has ever believed the opposite". (See also 2 + 2 = 5)

crimestop -- to rid oneself of or not understand thoughts that go against Ingsoc's belief systems

doubleplusgood -- the word that replaces Oldspeak words meaning "excellently good", like excellent, fabulous, and fantastic

doubleplusungood -- the word that replaces Oldspeak words meaning "excellently bad", like terrible and horrible

doublethink -- the act of believing two opposing ideas

duckspeak -- To quack like a duck usually showing one's delivery of Newspeak, delivered without any active thought from the speaker, sounding very much like nothing but noise, but very clearly fully in line with Party belief systems. "It is one of those interesting words that have two opposing meanings. Applied to an opponent, it is unfair treatment, applied to someone you agree with, it is praise." - Syme, Newspeak word-lover.

equal -- the same in amount. Not used in the sense of having equal rights or freedoms.

facecrime -- a facial expression which shows that one has committed thoughtcrime

Ficdep -- the Ministry of Truth's Fiction Department

free -- the lack of a thing. "having a free mind and free thinking" and "politically free" have been replaced by crimethinkful.

fullwise -- the word that replaces words like fully, completely, and totally

goodthink -- a word that means the same as "political correctness" and "a politically correct thought" as defined by the Party

goodsex -- sexual intercourse only for making babies, without any physical pleasure on the part of the woman, and strictly within marriage

goodwise -- the word that replaces well as an adverb

Ingsoc -- The political belief systems of the Party, before now known as 'English Socialism'.

joycamp -- labour camp

malquoted -- incorrect representations of the words of Big Brother and of the Party, often used to give a good reason for a rewrite of historical records

Miniluv -- the Ministry of Love, where the secret police throw questions at and torture the enemies of Oceania (torture and persuasion)

Minipax -- the Ministry of Peace, which fights war for Oceania

Miniplenty -- the Ministry of Plenty, which keeps the population in constant serious money problems (starvation and restricting food amounts)

Minitrue -- the Ministry of Truth, which manufactures permission by way of lies, propaganda, and distorted historical records, while supplying the proles with man-made culture and entertainment

Oldspeak -- Standard English

oldthink -- ideas from the time before the Party's revolution, like the ability to see things without prejudice and rationalism

ownlife -- a person's non-social desire to enjoy quiet aloneness and the desire to not be like others

plusgood -- the word that replaces Oldspeak words meaning "very good", like great

plusungood -- the word that replaces "very bad"

Pornosec -- the porn production section of the Ministry of Truth's Fiction Department

prolefeed -- popular culture for entertaining Oceania's Proles

Recdep -- the Ministry of Truth's Records Department, where Winston Smith rewrites historical records so they go along with the Party's goals

rectify -- the Ministry of Truth's polite word or phrase for distorting a historical record

ref -- to refer (to someone or something)

sec -- part/area

sexcrime -- a sexual socially wrong behavior, like unmarried sex, cheating on spouses, oral sex, and homosexuality. Any sex act that moves away from Party orders to use sex only for government approved baby making

speakwrite -- a machine that changes speech into text

Teledep -- the Ministry of Truth's communications Department

telescreen -- a two-way television set with which the Party spies upon Oceania's population

thoughtcrime -- describes the personal beliefs that are opposite to the accepted beliefs of Ingsoc

thinkpol -- the Thought Police, the secret police force of Oceania's government

unperson -- a person who killed and whose existence is erased from history and memory

upsub -- an upwards submission to higher authority

See also

• 2 + 2 = 5
• Algospeak
• Authoritarian socialism
• Glossary of the Greek military junta
• Glossary of Nazi Germany
• Groupthink
• Inclusive language
• Language and thought
• Linguistic determinism
• Linguistic imperialism
• Logocracy
• LTI – Lingua Tertii Imperii ("The Language of the Third Reich")
• Philosophy of language
• Politics and the English Language
• Political Correctness
• Sapir–Whorf hypothesis
• Soviet phraseology
• Un-word of the year

Fiction:

• Ascian language
• Nadsat

Further reading

• Burgess, Anthony. Nineteen Eighty-Five. Boston: Little Brown & Co, 1978. ISBN 0-316-11651-3. Anthony Burgess discusses the plausibility of Newspeak.
• Green, Jonathon. Newspeak: a dictionary of jargon. London, Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1985, 1984. ISBN 0-7102-0673-9.
• Klemperer, Victor. LTI - Lingua Tertii Imperii: Notizbuch eines Philologen.. Original German language editions.
• Klemperer, Victor & Watt, Roderick H. LTI - Lingua Tertii Imperii: A Philologist's Notebook. Lewiston, New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 1997. ISBN 0-7734-8681-X. An annotated edition of Victor Klemperer's LTI, Notizbuch eines Philologen with English notes and commentary by Roderick H. Watt.
• Klemperer, Victor & Brady, Martin (tr.). The language of the Third Reich: LTI - Lingua Tertii Imperii: A Philologist's Notebook. London, UK; New Brunswick, NJ: Athlone Press, 2000. ISBN 0-485-11526-3 (alk. paper). Translated by Martin Brady.
• Young, John Wesley . Totalitarian Language: Orwell's Newspeak and Its Nazi and Communist Antecedents. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1991. ISBN 0-8139-1324-1. John Wesley Young wrote this scholarly work about Newspeak and historical examples of language control.
• The Principles of Newspeak
• George Orwell's 1984