Newspeak

In George Orwell's dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (published in 1949), Newspeak is the fictional language of Oceania, a totalitarian superstate. To meet the ideological requirements of Ingsoc (English Socialism) in Oceania, the Party created Newspeak, which is a controlled language of simplified grammar and restricted vocabulary designed to limit the individual person's ability to think critically or to articulate subversive concepts, such as personal identity, self-expression, and free will. In Oceania, such thoughts are thoughtcrimes that contradict Ingsoc orthodoxy. In the appendix to the novel, "The Principles of Newspeak", Orwell explains that Newspeak follows most rules of English grammar, yet is a language characterised by a continually diminishing vocabulary; complete thoughts are reduced to simple terms of simplistic meaning. The political contractions of Newspeak — Ingsoc (English Socialism), Minitrue (Ministry of Truth), Miniplenty (Ministry of Plenty) — are similar to German and Russian contractions in the 20th century, such as Nazi (Nationalsozialist), Gestapo (Geheime Staatspolizei), politburo (Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union), Comintern (Communist International), kolkhoz (collective farm), and Komsomol (communist youth union). In Newspeak, the contractions often are syllabic abbreviations that hide the ideological content of speech from the speaker and the listener. In contemporary political usage, the term Newspeak is used to impugn an opponent who, the attacker claims, is introducing new definitions of words to suit his or her political agenda. Orwell was interested in linguistic questions and questions pertaining to the function and change of language. This can be seen in his essay "Politics and the English Language" (1946) as well as in the Appendix to Nineteen Eighty-Four. As in "Politics and the English Language", the perceived decline and decadence of the English language is a central theme in Nineteen Eighty-Four and Newspeak.