George Orwell's 1984
The linguistic criticism of Nineteen Eighty-Four has focused primarily on Newspeak as a language (Flammia 1987: 28-33, Harris 1987: 113-119) and on Orwell's ideas about the relationship between language and thought (Kress and Hodge 1979: 144-150). It has largely ignored, however, the literary language Orwell used in writing Nineteen Eighty-Four. Indeed, the few critical remarks about Orwell's use of language have generally been negative - sometimes attributing the dull, monotonous, dry writing style to Orwell's career as a journalist (Ringbom 1973: 11-12, Petro 1982: 95, Bloom 1987: 1-2) or to the phlegmatic topic of his novel. Irving Howe (1982: 321), for example, writes that the style of 1984, which many readers take to be drab or uninspired or sweaty, would have been appreciated by someone like Defoe, since Defoe would have immediately understood how the pressures of Orwell's subject, like the pressures of his own, demand a gritty and hammering factuality. The style of 1984 is the style of a man whose commitment to a dreadful vision is at war with the nausea to which that vision reduces him. So acute is this conflict that delicacies of phrasing or displays of rhetoric come to seem frivolous - he has
[positive assertion of agency] b. (NEF 180) The funny thing is I made sure it was full. There was a long, naggingNOMINALIZATION argument that went round and round, withNOMINALIZATIONS shouts, whines, tears, remonstrances, andNOMINALIZATION bargainings. But it was no use, he could not remember. Howe (1982: 324), more than other critics, is sensitive to the thematic import of the loss of agency: Oceanic society may evolve through certain stages of economic development, but the life of its members is static, a given and measured quantity that can neither rise to tragedy nor tumble to comedy. [ordinary intransitive verb] b. (NEF 7) If he could have been certain that O'Brien was lying, it would not have seemed to matter. But it was perfectly possible that O'Brien had forgotten the photograph. John - would should could ought to needs to might tried to - slap the table. No mark appeared on the paper: instead, next moment, a huge blob of ink flopped off the nib and ruined the front page. He had pulled her down onto the ground, she was utterly unresisting .
Common topics in this essay:
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Francis Kucera,
PASSIVE VOICE,
SENTENCES John,
Defoe Defoe,
SHIFTS John,
Winston Julia,
PASSIVES Bill,
PERFECT ASPECT,
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Acceptance Essays
