A major theme of George Orwell’s 1984 is that the deterioration of language, or rendering words meaningless, makes people unable to think the thoughts necessary to preserve their liberty, leaving them susceptible to being controlled by lies.

Orwell also warned of this in his 1946 essay Politics and the English Language, in which he asserted that two poor attributes were plaguing modern writers: ‘The first is staleness of imagery; the other is lack of precision…’ These, he wrote, are caused by an over-reliance on ‘worn-out metaphors which have lost all evocative power’ and ‘the elimination of simple verbs; instead of being a single word, such as break, stop, spoil, mend, kill, a verb becomes a phrase’ such as render inoperative, militate against, and prove unacceptable.

Examples of the first include terms like ‘stand shoulder to shoulder with’, ‘play into the hands of’, ‘Achilles’ heel’, and other phrases that most modern writers would hardly blink at. Examples of the second include phrases like ‘render inoperative’, ‘militate against’, and ‘prove unacceptable’. These pre-packaged or overly technical expressions leave no impression on the mind, and the result is dreary writing.

Orwell observed that these tendencies were making modern writing and speech drearier because the words ‘do not point to any discoverable object…’ Anyone who reads old books knows that people no longer write and speak the way they did in the past. Today, concern for precision and clarity of meaning is considered odd, if not actively discouraged, which, sadly, leaves many young people unable to advance from their state in life because they are unable to communicate their ideas and feelings (despite the twelve years they spend inside classrooms supposedly learning how to read and write).

Political speech is no exception to these maladies. The result, Orwell observed, was that: ‘The word fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies something not desirable. The words democracy, socialism, freedom, patriotic, realistic, and justice, have each of them several different meanings which cannot be reconciled with one another.’ Political discourse seems to never move beyond the simplistic and reductive, and the words of politicians can mean pretty much anything.

Consider, for example, the narrow sense in which ‘health’ has been defined by the authorities these past few years, as though the only indicator of health is not having Covid. Never mind the wounds that were inflicted by the constant fear-inducing propaganda, lockdowns, being unable to farewell loved ones, threats of ostracism, and job losses. Governments congratulated themselves for protecting ‘public health’ and ‘keeping everyone safe,’ in part because terms like ‘public health’ were defined in a narrow sense.

C.S. Lewis offered a similar warning to Orwell in his 1944 essay in The Spectator titled The Death of Words, in which he wrote, ‘I can think of one word – the word Christian – which is at this moment on the brink. When politicians talk of Christian moral standards they are not always thinking of anything which distinguishes Christian morality from Confucianism or Stoic or Benthamite morality.’ Even in 1944, the word Christian was becoming a word that meant something different to each person, and could therefore be deceptively deployed for political purposes.

Consider what Australian politicians mean when they speak of Judeo-Christian values. Would a return to these values mean outlawing sodomy, divorce, and contraception? I doubt many advocates of these nebulous values would say so. Do these politicians have anything concrete in mind, or are Judeo-Christian values simply a nostalgic notion meaning ‘good’, a kind of conservative equivalent of saying that we must pursue ‘equity’? If politicians were expected to provide a definition of Judeo-Christian values, I suspect it would often be a jumbled assortment of ideas more related to classical liberalism, and even progressivism from a past era, than biblical ethics. As Orwell wrote ‘the whole tendency of modern prose is away from concreteness’ which means it is towards nothing. The great theologians and philosophers of the past sought precision and clarity of thought and expression with faith in Christ’s words, ‘The truth shall set you free.’ Since our culture now cares so little about truth, language suffers with the quality of our thoughts.

Mechanical, empty speech on the one hand and sentimental, opaque rhetoric on the other are the hallmarks of Australian political and bureaucratic discourse and are suited to those whose words are intended to ‘make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind’, as Orwell noted. Consider whether this passage from Orwell’s essay reminds you of any contemporary Australian politicians:

‘One often has a curious feeling that one is not watching a live human being but some kind of dummy: a feeling which suddenly becomes stronger at moments when the light catches the speaker’s spectacles and turns them into blank discs which seem to have no eyes behind them… The appropriate noises are coming out of his larynx, but his brain is not involved as it would be if he were choosing his words for himself…’

We witness much of this dummy-like behaviour these days, resulting in disengagement from political discussion. Elected and non-elected officials stared vacantly into television cameras and delivered banal remarks like ‘trust the science’ and ‘we’re all in this together’ and people believed it. As Orwell wrote ‘political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging, and sheer cloudy vagueness’ to mask its bleak reality.

‘Defenceless villages are bombarded from the air… the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers.’

Governments coerce workers into receiving an experimental vaccine to keep their job: this is called keeping everyone safe. Confused young people are permanently disfigured by the medical industry who leave them with wounds that will never heal: this is called gender-affirming care. Traditional marriage is demonised while abortion, divorce, pornography, and promiscuity are upheld as essential to our wellbeing: this is called personal liberation. Babies are killed in the womb for the sake of convenience: this is called reproductive healthcare.

To quote Orwell again, ‘When the general atmosphere is bad, language must suffer.’ Whether language disintegrates because society is dysfunctional or the dysfunction is the result of imprecise language (and therefore thought) is too complex to explore here, but Orwell proposes a way out of the malaise. When writing, ‘let the meaning choose the word, and not the other way about’ ask yourself, ‘What am I trying to say, and what is the simplest way to communicate it?’ Orwell also provided six ‘rules’:

• ‘Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.’ The reader’s attention will wane.
• ‘Never use a long word where a short one will do.’ Resist the temptation to impress the reader with your eloquence.
• ‘If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.’ It’s painful, but the flow of your writing will improve.
• ‘Never use the passive where you can use the active.’ This gives your writing a sense of urgency that keeps the reader’s attention.
• ‘Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.’ Some theologians use obscure Greek or Latin phrases to impress you with their erudition. It’s distracting.
• ‘Break any of these rules sooner than say anything barbarous.’ Don’t be afraid to trust your instincts.

If, as Orwell thought, ‘the present political chaos is connected with the decay of language’ then ‘one can probably bring about some improvement by starting at the verbal end’. Think carefully about what you mean when you write and speak, and your thoughts will become clearer. Read old books whose authors cared for precision and understood the joy of crisp communication, such as Orwell and Lewis. Don’t rely on empty, ready-made phrases but examine what you are saying so that your meaning is clear.

If the truth will set you free, then writing with precision, and the searching that entails, can, in some temporal sense, save us. If our thinking can be regenerated, then our lives and our culture can, too.