In George Orwell’s dystopian 1984, the denuding of language is achieved through the state terror of the Party. But in 2024, has corporate jargon and self-help speak left us just as verbally impoverished?
In George Orwell’s 1984, the idea behind Newspeak, a drastically narrowed official vocabulary, is to control the range of thoughts people have. Limit the language and you limit critical thinking, abstract concepts, the ability to debate and dissent. And so, each year, the number of permitted words shrinks.
Modern English is not like this. Our sentences are often compressed by the limitations of social media, but our vocabulary remains plentiful. However, Newspeak is also “marked by euphemism, circumlocution, and the inversion of customary meanings”, and this is very familiar in today’s world of soundbites, jargon and corporate gibberish. We are inundated by words and phrases whose function is not to clearly communicate meaning, but often the very opposite. For instance, where once we had opinions, we now demonstrate thought leadership. Where once people were selfish, now they are narcissists. And instead of looking to the future, we move forward.
