He most explicitly expressed these opinions in his essay “Politics and the English Language” (Orwell, Politics).

Orwell was very fond of the English language and felt strongly about writers abusing it by their dishonest rhetoric and linguistic incompetence. Tibbetts writes, “Orwell’s views on English were broadly and humanistically based” (Tibbets). Photo by tim rich and lesley katon, Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0īefore anything else, however, we should pay some attention to the way Orwell himself approached language. Additionally, Orwell’s literary development will be touched on, and the language of Nineteen Eighty-Four confronted with his other novels Burmese Days and Animal Farm. This essay will concentrate on the language of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, its impact on the readers’ perception of individual social classes and the book itself, and the issue of whether it would stand up to its scrutiny under the stylistic guidelines Orwell laid out in his essay “Politics and the English Language”. At the same time, opting for overly formal language may make one indifferent to or detached from the reader, and texts rich with figurative language may be so pompous that their meaning is invariably lost under the layer of adjectives and metaphors. A whiff of colloquialism, despite being reader-friendly, might be viewed as a sign of sloppiness. The Importance of Language in George Orwell’s NovelsĬhoosing a proper style is one of the most crucial aspects of writing. The essay is published with the kind permission of the faculty. Written under the supervision of Lisette Allen, M.A., and submitted on, this essay was part of my total coursework at the Department of Anglophone Literatures and Cultures at Charles University’s Faculty of Arts.

Orwell essay on language