Orwell's Newspeak?

[Da Blob]

In George Orwell's masterpiece 1984, there is a character, a bureaucrat whose job is to eliminate all of the "unnecessary" words from the language and to help create Newspeak.

Someone has seemingly brought that concept to life
How many words have been replaced by the Newspeak term, ______ - challenged?
(my favorite is motivationally - challenged, an oxymoron in itself. It gets rid of words like lazy, slothful, parasitic, Good-for-nothing, lay-about, sluggard, etc)

So, we, INTPians have never applied our selves to Newspeak, but if we did, how many words could We eliminate?

I have to admit ______ - challenged is a tough one to beat, but I think we can find a few to surpass it...


http://www.newspeakdictionary.com/

 

[echoplex]

I have stopped becoming bored, and have instead been enthrallment-challenged.

The late comedian George Carlin made a very good point about all of this when he explained how our language has evolved how it describes the stress soldiers experience in war situations:

"I don't like words that hide the truth. I don't like words that conceal reality. I don't like euphemisms, or euphemistic language.

And American English is loaded with euphemisms. Cause Americans have a lot of trouble dealing with reality. Americans have trouble facing the truth, so they invent the kind of a soft language to protect themselves from it, and it gets worse with every generation.

For some reason, it just keeps getting worse. I'll give you an example of that. There's a condition in combat. Most people know about it. It's when a fighting person's nervous system has been stressed to it's absolute peak and maximum. Can't take anymore input. The nervous system has either (click) snapped or is about to snap.

In the first world war, that condition was called Shell Shock. Simple, honest, direct language. Two syllables, Shell Shock. Almost sounds like the guns themselves. That was seventy years ago.

Then a whole generation went by and the second world war came along and very same combat condition was called Battle Fatigue. Four syllables now. Takes a little longer to say. Doesn't seem to hurt as much. Fatigue is a nicer word than shock. Shell Shock! Battle Fatigue.

Then we had the war in Korea, 1950. Madison avenue was riding high by that time, and the very same combat condition was called Operational Exhaustion. Hey, were up to eight syllables now! And the humanity has been squeezed completely out of the phrase. It's totally sterile now. Operational exhaustion. Sounds like something that might happen to your car.

Then of course, came the war in Viet Nam, which has only been over for about sixteen or seventeen years, and thanks to the lies and deceits surrounding that war, I guess it's no surprise that the very same condition was called Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Still eight syllables, but we've added a hyphen! And the pain is completely buried under jargon. Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

I'll bet you if we'd of still been calling it Shell Shock, some of those Viet Nam veterans might have gotten the attention they needed at the time. I'll betcha. I'll betcha."

 

[EditorOne]

A few years back I had a stint as an extra in a Civil War movie. It was about a prison, and the deep background was made to look crowded in wide shots with the use of several hundred live-size cutouts of prisoners, in front of which a few people would walk to create the illusion of seething crowds. These cutouts had to be moved around from time to time, and the call would go out for help in moving "the flat people." One day the second director assembled everyone on site, got himself lifted up on a camera boom, and told us complaints had been made about how one class of workers on site was being mocked. From now on, he said, there were no "flat people" on our site. Henceforth they were to be respectfully called "dimensionally challenged."

 

[Ermine]

This doesn't apply directly to your question, but concerning newspeak, am I the only one getting nervous about the masses' increasingly small vocabulary?

 

[Da Blob]

This doesn't apply directly to your question, but concerning newspeak, am I the only one getting nervous about the masses' increasingly small vocabulary?

you mean, Like, some of them knowing only one, F__king, adjective...?

 

[Seducer of the Homeless]

This would be very bad...

Language has such a rich and vast amount of words. old, new, specialist, poetic, offensive, humourous, descriptive........we should only expand.

basically, Ermine - I share your fear

 

[Seducer of the Homeless]

....although the whole 'Newspeak' thing seems very satirical

 

[Mars]

Da Blob
and like one other word like like? liek do you get it?

SotH
and such a beautiful satire it is. unfortunately it seems that the majority don't seem to understand the sensual movement of thought displayed through a competent linguist. that, is a rare occurence unfortunately.

while I find the newspeak idea interesting I think it can only practicably applied in forming a foundation for direct communication, something akin to computer language. I think, maybe ok ok I know nothing about coding language.

However, Think if you will of all the innuendo that would be lost, words like flaccid would cease to exist. Sure the sanitation of concepts and topics is rampant. After all 'It's not the atrocities of war that scare me, but the unseen horrors of peace' [forgotten origin]. and if it can be called vivisection instead of unanaesthetised surgery/research/amputation it will be. so until then I suppose someone has to keep them honest.

 

[Sapphire Harp]

It could be advancing on another front, too...

http://xkcd.com/547/
​

 

[Madoness]

Modern newspeak

'Fat' - Replaced by 'Enlarged physical condition caused by a completely natural genetically-induced hormone imbalance'. Of course, this is very difficult to say in one breath-- so people will find it easier to not say it at all. The term "fat" is simply too short and to direct.

So people really do have a sense of humor Even with this newspeak. But uhm... did it not also have theory that when words are abolished, they cannot be thought of? So if we abolish words describing emotions, we cannot feel emotions at all.

By 2050—earlier, probably—all real knowledge of Oldspeak will have disappeared. The whole literature of the past will have been destroyed. Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Byron—they'll exist only in Newspeak versions, not merely changed into something different, but actually contradictory of what they used to be. Even the literature of the Party will change. Even the slogans will change. How could you have a slogan like "freedom is slavery" when the concept of freedom has been abolished? The whole climate of thought will be different. In fact there will be no thought, as we understand it now. Orthodoxy means not thinking—not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.

 

[Da Blob]

Modern newspeak


So people really do have a sense of humor Even with this newspeak. But uhm... did it not also have theory that when words are abolished, they cannot be thought of? So if we abolish words describing emotions, we cannot feel emotions at all.

Ooh! we will still experience them, we just will never be able to talk coherently about them...
Hmmm this part may have already happened (?)

Speaking of Orwell, do you ever get the impression that this forum is a lost chapter from Animal Farm?

 

[Ermine]

^ How to you see it fitting in?

 

[Da Blob]

^ How to you see it fitting in?

I do not know, perhaps there needs to an Animal Farm II based on this forum. It's been forty years since i read the book, myself, but I get a deja vu experience sometimes on this forum, like history is repeating itself.

Can particular personas on this site be matched, one to one with characters out of Animal Farm? If I could find a copy of the book, I would re-read it if only to answer that question...

EDIT: that might be a very good thread. A dramatic/theatric updated Animal Farm
with various INTPians playing appropriate roles - kinda like these RPG games...