Newspeak

 Newspeak

In George Orwell’s 1984 the language newspeak is arguably one of the main forms of brainwashing. This works by slowly diminishing the vocabulary until the language is so bare-boned that room for thought can’t fathom to exist.

Whilst this is not like languages today some of the aspects are still similar. We tend to shorten phrases in our language today our formal form is not how we speak in our everyday lives. For example, we wouldn’t say, “I would like to invite you to my house tonight” rather “we would say do you want to come over tonight”. Newspeak eliminates the language down to a basic structure where there is no formal and informal way of language. It’s universally simple. 

There are a couple articles claiming that newspeak is much like our language now. These articles don’t speak of newspeak in a grammatical structure but rather as language being an expression an extension of our identity. The argument of these articles is that our language is limited by social constructs. We aren’t able to express ourselves as some words are profane or certain dialects are belittled compared to others. Newspeak physically rids of vocabulary and in turn limits thoughts and society opposes expressiveness in language to a point where fear becomes a factor.