Tuesday, February 15, 2011

Newspeak's unique style

The newspeak is the language that the people spoke in Oceania. The basic idea behind Newspeak was to remove all shades of meaning from language. Winston has become a master at Newspeak because he works all day editing articles and receiving brief messages in the language. One example of Newspeak is when Winston receives the message :

"times 3.12.83 reporting bb dayorder doubleplusungood refs unpersons rewrite fullwise upsub antefiling

In Oldspeak (or standard English) this might be rendered:

The reporting of Big Brother's Order for the Day in The Times of December 3rd 1983 is extremely unsatisfactory and makes references to non-existent persons. Rewrite it in full and submit your draft to higher authority before filing."

This example of Newspeak shows it's unique style of abbreviation. When i first read it i thought it was a pretty smart idea especially for a publishing company such as the one that Winston is working in.

These are some examples of modern day abbreviations to compare with
those of Oceania

1 comment:

  1. What is the Party's purpose in abbreviating language? Do you agree or disagree that they can eliminate/limit thought by limiting language?

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