Orwell and the English Language

I first read George Orwell’s Politics and the English Language when I was 14, and thoroughly enjoyed it. I’m a contrarian by nature, and I grinned as Orwell rounded upon the thoughtless political writing of his day, reprimanding his contemporaries for their meaningless, pretentious language. When he urged that language should be simple and apt, I nodded wisely; and when he gave six rules for writing, I followed them zealously.

Yet when a friend showed me the essay the other day, I became surprised and surpriseder. Orwell, I found, had employed the very type of writing he’d derided. He had not only broken his own six rules, but he’d made more blunders besides—blunders he never spotted in his writing or his contemporaries’.

Let’s use the very first paragraph of his essay as an example. We’re going to pull it apart, focusing on its three big problems, and then put it back together again. If you’re not interested in picky editing, just jump ahead to the point where I give my version of the paragraph. Then we’ll finish by considering how both Orwell’s successes and his failures proved his point. Anyway, here’s the paragraph. Take a moment to read it through.

Most people who bother with the matter at all would admit that the English language is in a bad way, but it is generally assumed that we cannot by conscious action do anything about it. Our civilization is decadent and our language — so the argument runs — must inevitably share in the general collapse. It follows that any struggle against the abuse of language is a sentimental archaism, like preferring candles to electric light or hansom cabs to aeroplanes. Underneath this lies the half-conscious belief that language is a natural growth and not an instrument which we shape for our own purposes.

Problem 1: Orwell used useless words

Orwell did recognise this problem—his fourth rule was ‘If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.’ But he broke his rule an awful lot. There are lots of complicated modifiers in this paragraph, like the half-conscious belief, and many of them are unnecessary. Let’s get rid of them. We could also cut the first 12 words. They’re the very sort of meaningless throat-clearing that Orwell railed against. Cutting them makes the paragraph start out better, with the punchy The English language is in a bad way. In total we get:

Most people who bother with the matter at all would admit that The English language is in a bad way, but it is generally assumed that we cannot by conscious action do anything about it. Our civilization is decadent and our language — so the argument runs — must inevitably share in the general collapse. It follows that any struggle against the abuse of language is a sentimental archaism, like preferring candles to electric light or hansom cabs to aeroplanes. Underneath this lies the half-conscious belief that language is a natural growth and not an instrument which we shape for our own purposes.

Problem 2: Orwell hid his characters and their actions

I don’t think Orwell knew he’d done so, but he’s hidden the main characters and their actions. The main characters of the paragraph are language and most people/us, but we don’t appear too much. Instead Orwell uses pseudo characters like the argument and the belief that language is a natural growth. These odd characters should really be verbs: the argument runs should be we argue; language is a natural growth should be language grows naturally. By turning those odd characters back into verbs, we also recover the character doing the action.

The English language is in a bad way, but it is generally assumed most of us assume that we cannot do anything about it. Our civilization is decadent, and we argue that our language — so the argument runs — must share in the collapse. It follows We conclude that any struggle struggling against the abuse of language is a sentimental archaism, like preferring candles to electric light or hansom cabs to aeroplanes. Underneath this lies Yet we think this because the belief we believe that language is a natural growth grows naturally and is not an instrument which we shape.

Problem 3: Orwell didn’t state his argument with the clearest logic

Orwell was all for writing with clear logic, but it’s difficult to do. We read into our writing what we want our readers to get out of it. We can always see the logic in our own writing, and we assume that everyone else will too. Fortunately for our purposes right now, we’re coming to Orwell’s work not as the writer, but as readers, so if he uses odd, idiosyncratic language, we’ll spot it. If he expresses his argument in meandering way, we’ll feel it. Let’s look at three examples.

Firstly, naturally was an unhelpful word for Orwell to use. He’s using the word to mean ‘shaped by civilisation’. But it’s not so obvious that civilisation shapes language that we could describe the process as natural. It’s probably better to leave natural out of the argument altogether.

Secondly, he expresses his argument in the negative, saying that we mistakenly believe ‘language grows naturally and is not an instrument that we shape’. But if you’re not paying careful attention, it’s just too easy to think that it’s Orwell—not us—who thinks that ‘language [...] is not an instrument that we shape’. Orwell, of course, thinks that we do shape language. So let’s make the negative a positive.

Last, the logical flow of the paragraph feels circuitous. To see this, let’s underline the places where Orwell talks about whether we can affect language, embolden the places where he says that civilisation affects language, and red-ify the places he talks about the health of language. Here are his four sentences:

(1) The English language is in a bad way, but most of us feel assume that we cannot do anything about it.

(2) Our civilization is decadent, and we argue that our language must share in the collapse.

(3) We assume that it’s futile to struggle against the abuse of language because it’s futile to struggle against progress of civilisation;

(4) Yet we think this because we believe that civilisation influences language and we don’t.

We can now see that the three main topics are distributed pretty randomly throughout the paragraph. We’d do better if we grouped them. Let’s corral the underlined bits (about us affecting language) into the first and last sentences, and the emboldened bits (about civilisation affecting language) into the middle sentences.

My version

Putting his argument more usefully, we might write:

The English language is widely abused, but most of us think we cannot do anything about it. We assume that the health of our language is determined by the health of our civilisation. We suppose that our language must decay because our civilisation is decadent. But we are wrong. We shape our language too, and we can shape it for the better.

And without the markings:

The English language is widely abused, but most of us think we cannot do anything about it. We assume that the health of our language is determined by the health of our civilisation. We infer that our language must decay because our civilisation is decadent. But we are wrong. We shape our language too, and we can shape it for the better.

Now go back and read Orwell’s paragraph. What now feels odd about the original? Is there anything you prefer about his version?

Here’s what I think. You serve your readers best when you argue clearly (so they understand your writing) and with charm and wit (so they enjoy and remember your writing). But we must be charming and witty in service of our argument. This, I think, is where Orwell went wrong: his original paragraph was conversational and vivid, but his idiom and imagery made his argument less clear. My paragraph, by contrast, is clear and streamlined, but my writing’s flavourless. Better still would be to incorporate the best of both: for an Orwell to write more clearly, or for someone like me to write more charmingly.

However, both Orwell’s success and failure prove his point

Orwell repeats these three mistakes throughout his essay. He’s forever hiding his characters and their actions. He regularly uses words in a windy way. Many of his arguments are stated in an unhelpful or stumbling manner. It’s annoying, and it weakens his case.

But I’m not here to sneer. I know that it’s hard to write and think clearly. Orwell knew it too. He writes in his essay:

Look back through this essay, and for certain you will find that I have again and again committed the very faults I am protesting against.

In a sense, his failures only proved him right: we all pick up the bad habits of our contemporaries, and those habits are insidious. But his successes proved him right too. We can shape our language. Orwell managed to overcome many of the bad habits he’d picked up, and his essay has helped many people other people overcome them too. If I can see mistakes in his writing, it’s partly because he first helped me to see the mistakes in my own.

Taking Leave of their senses

This week I received one of the most inadequate pieces of writing I have ever encountered. The Electoral Commission has just sent a Referendum Voting Guide to every home in the UK (you can find the PDF here). Alongside the Guide’s painstaking explanation of how to fill in the ballot paper, the Remain and Leave campaigns were given a page each to present their cases. Given the vast resources of each side and given the enormous consequences of the referendum, you would hope that they had both crafted something lucid and incisive.

Vote Remain made a good effort, at least. Their page is bold and clear and colourful. Under three bracing headings (STRONGER, SAFER and BETTER OFF) they’ve listed a few brisk and specific points, points which they’ve backed up with apt statistics. Whether you think they’re right or wrong, you can tell what they think and you know why they think it.

Vote Leave’s pitch, however, is bewildering, moronically argued, and frequently illiterate. It begins with the heading Some facts, a heading as unhelpful as it is unpromising. This is the only heading on the entire page, and it introduces an ugly morass of paragraphs.

The first paragraph is written in a juvenile tone. It begins by warning us about the ‘extra people’ who’ve migrated to the UK:

More than a quarter of a million people came to UK from the EU in the last 12 months … If this continues for a decade, there will be over two million extra people. EU law means all members must accept ‘free movement of people’. Many migrants contribute to society. They also affect public services.

… they coughed, disapprovingly. Vote Leave could have reasoned that EU immigration has hurt the UK and crippled the NHS. Instead, they have condemned immigration so ambiguously and hedged their condemnation so effectively that they have made immigration look kind of appealing. Maybe they worried that a sharper attack on immigration might make them seem xenophobic. But I think they’ve settled for something worse: they’ve made no argument at all.

The next paragraph continues in the same vague vein. The EU is growing., it opens, with accidental positivity. It goes on,

When we joined, there were 9 member states, the most recent being Romania, Bulgaria and Croatia. Five more countries are in the process of joining, including Turkey. When they join, they will have the same rights as other members.

So … what? Vote Leave could be implying that we shouldn’t be in the same club as backward and dangerous countries like Romania and Turkey. Or they might be complaining again about immigration. They could just be vaguely insinuating because they don’t know what else to say. But I can’t tell. Vote Leave should be advancing their most persuasive case, but I don’t even know what they’re saying. And whatever they are saying, they again undermine it, this time by making the reader feel glad for Turkey. When Turkey joins, it will get equal rights! Hurrah! Who isn’t for equal rights?

Two paragraphs down, and Vote Leave’s argument against the EU comprises a few half-hearted insinuations, and lots of strangely positive comments. This is ludicrous. Vote Leave is backed by CEOs, MPs, and cabinet ministers. They’re ardent, smart, and they have a lot of money. What in the world were they thinking?

More than a third of the remaining morass is devoted to explaining that we pay the EU £350 million each week. Vote Leave likes the sound of this so much that they state it four times, in four different sentences, repeating themselves almost word for word. They never, however, estimate whether our economy benefits from our EU membership—whether our money is well-spent. They simply seem to be against spending money. Should we stop investing £1.7 billion in education each week, just because £1.7 billion looks like a large number? Their case is just thin, too thin.

All that remains of their argument is a soup of eleven different points (and a grammatical mistake and a typo), slopped at random into two short paragraphs. This haphazardness makes the paragraphs baffling to read, and their contents impossible to remember. And while most of the paragraphs’ points are good, many of them are hurried, and none is backed up in any way.

And that’s it. That’s the case that Vote Leave’s £3m campaign has presented to every home in the UK: a fumbling mess that could pass for some year 10’s geography homework. I can’t understand how or why this happened. Michael Gove or IDS could’ve tapped out something more intelligent and more persuasive in 5 minutes flat. And if some able person wasn’t available, there must at least have been some decent campaign material that could have just been reused. It’s confounding.

I enjoy beating on unclear writing, but what really bothers me is the damage that it does. It turns people off and makes them feel stupid or bored or cynical. For the good of democracy, we the people need to hear clear and credible debates. In the Brexit debate, the Voting Guide was a unique opportunity. No other document will be sent to everyone in the UK in which both sides make their own case in their own words. Every home in the country might have seen Leave and Remain’s best points clearly stated side by side. What better chance could there have been for people to sit down and weigh things up? As it is, Leave has scarcely made any argument, to the disadvantage of us all.