1984: What George Orwell warned us about

The Manipulation of Language & Doublethink - what they mean today

1984 is considered one of the most important books of the 20th century, and often in every conversation there is about tyranny, authoritarianism, and fascism, this book is brought up – not only as a warning but also usually as a sign that the person discussing the book has read it (but sometimes they actually have not).

This, of course, makes sense. 1984 is a book that shows us the grim reality of a world divided into three mega-nation states that are in a perpetual state of war. The story is set in what is present-day England, but in 1984 is part of the nation-state of Oceania, following the character of Whinston. 1984 is at its fullest an authoritarian regime, probably one of its truest forms. Citizens are constantly being watched by “Big Brother”, the head of the nation, with telescreens absorbing everything they do or say. Information is controlled and manufactured by the Ministry of Truth, where the past is constantly rewritten to match the events of the future. Perpetually caught in a system of oppression, surveillance, and misinformation – 1984 shows a world where there is no personal freedom. That is at least what the book seems like on the surface. 

But Orwell shows us a world where the chains on an individual go far deeper. Winston, in the book, says: There were “[a]lways eyes watching you and … voice[s] enveloping you. Asleep or awake, indoors or out of doors, in the bath or bed— [there was] no escape. Nothing was your own except the few cubic centimeters in your skull.” But as the book progresses, we see that even that isn’t true. In 1984, politics lay, not in the control over a person’s actions or speech, but over the control of one’s thoughts. Orwell shows a society that quenches the very substance from which thoughts and opinions come – language.

Language is the mode in which we express but more importantly, in which we think. The manipulation of language is the manipulation of thought. In Orwell’s 1984, “Oldspeak” or Standard English, is stripped to the bone to become “Newspeak”, the official language so depleted that even committing a “Thoughtcrime” would be impossible, since they would have no words to describe their emotions. Without the vocabulary to validate a feeling, without words for concepts such as “freedom” and “liberty”, they do not exist. The degradation of the dictionary, of language, is an assault on our thinking capacity and range. 

In North Korea, according to Yeonmi Park, an escapee, and activist, the core reason why there is no uprising against the state, the reason why there is no revolution is that language is also drained there too. How do people in a country know what freedom is if they don’t know what it means to be a slave? How do they know what love or compassion is, if those words were only used to describe their Great Leader? How did they not know that Kim Jong Un cannot read their minds if they were fed the Bible but with his name in it instead? How did they know they have an identity if the only way to indicate themselves was by saying “we”? If there are no words to describe it, it does not exist. Concepts such as love, freedom, identity, and liberty are not human instincts. Nothing is ingrained in human knowledge. It is taught through language, and without it, it cannot be true

But George Orwell added another twist to this concept of the diminution of language. In the world of Oceania, the Ministry of Truth continuously edits the past to meet up with the present, where history and fact are constantly manufactured. The Ministry of Peace deals with matters of war. Joycamps is the name of the concentration camps where some prisoners were detained. And the most nightmarish one of them all, the Ministry of Love, where political prisoners were tortured. If “War is Peace and Freedom is Slavery”, then what is war and peace, what is freedom and slavery? This verbal irony (truth = lie, peace = war, love = torture) degrades the meaning of language. This is an example of “doublespeak”, where words are not used to convey meaning but to undermine it. 

“Doublespeak” leads to another important concept in the book: “doublethink”.

Doublethink is when you do or say something contradictory to what you believe. It is the cognitive dissonance in which you reject your perception of reality to accept the authorized version. A famous example is believing that “2+2 = 5” even though it goes against everything you know. But the most important ingredient of doublethink is to forget the feeling of knowing it is incorrect. With the manipulation of language, the use of doublethink becomes more fervent. The privacy of one's thoughts is violated, twisted to match that of the authoritarian worldview. This is the true politics behind George Orwell’s book – the war over perception – making sure that even those “few cubic centimeters in your skull” could be twisted, subtly, to not be your own.

But the concept of “doublethink” is more powerful than George Orwell could have ever imagined. 

We are now living in a world where we have information all the time. We are free to access anything that we want online. George Orwell was wrong, it seems because things didn’t turn out that bad. It sounds far-fetched, something that would never really happen to us. But 1984 was never a prediction, it was a warning – and we need to listen to that now. 

Even in a democratic society like ours, George Orwell warned us about the manipulation of language. In his essay, “Politics of the English Language”, he discussed how the subtle nuances in language can change our perceptions. People could use pretentious words to bring out supposed authority or use euphemisms and convoluted sentences to hide atrocities (for example ethnic cleansing, decolonisation or enhanced interrogation techniques).

Language can be twisted to influence behaviour – with hyper-focused advertisements telling us what products to use, how we should feel, what we should or should not be eating or wearing, or how our body and face are supposed or not supposed to be like. 

But what is scarier is that we are living in a world where we are constantly swimming in information, but hardly any of it is as nuanced as what is actually happening. We have telescreens watching us all the time that we carry around and voluntarily bought from an Apple Store. We have “facts” tailored to our tastes by the Ministry of Truth in our world (ie. Google, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and cable news). Political campaigns, activists and extremism make it seem like like issues and their solutions lie on one side of the spectrum or the other when the real picture is much more complex.

This is an era in which we are constantly fed back the same ready-made phrases and words copied from the internet again and again – making it easier for us to escape the effort of thinking critically about anything. Facts are being distilled into nothingness, into slogans that do not acknowledge the nuanced reality of events with implications that are far more than we can imagine. Rather than having only one authority for information, we hardly have any – which is letting us go about our lives confused and unaware. 

George Orwell could not have imagined this world. His book was written where an era like this did not exist. We are more interconnected than ever, but because of that, it has brought with it a hard nationalism and populism movement, with more extremism and xenophobia instigated by Social Media feeding us one side of the story. Fake news is everywhere, so much so that it has become almost virtually impossible to differentiate what is true and what is not. And with extremism, there is “cancel culture” and shutting down the opinions of others that do not match one's one.

We are living in a world where we get information shallowly, believe almost everything we see (tailored to our tastes by algorithms), and do not waste a second to “cancel” celebrities whose views do not align with ours. There is no room or space to have honest and open conversations about anything slightly controversial – instead, there is an immediate from everyone else to shut you down if any such idea or thought is expressed – especially now by the far left.

The far-left or “wokeness” tries to be inclusive to everyone, but by doing that, they are shutting down the voices of people who have valid concerns. A brilliant example of this was brought up in a podcast limited series called “The Witch Trials of J.K Rowling” in which the author and the controversies around her have been discussed in great depth (both proponents of and against her views). It shows the danger we are in as a society, where we are drowning in information but hardly any knowledge – where critical thinking, honest and open discussions are being silenced to match a single truth that is supposedly “inclusive”.

The left has made it seem that art with aesthetic value, with cultural relevance, is that which meets a set expectation in identity politics. When people who are humanitarian, who believe in human rights and in the acceptance of all come across this extremism from a side in which they lean towards, they begin to doublethink – they shut down their own beliefs and thoughts to conform to those of influencers with authority.  Social Media and people on these platforms, especially those trying to reinforce a political ideology, are making people “doublethink”. They make it seem that their beliefs and ideologies are the ultimate truth, and those who believe in something contrary to theirs or question the foundations of their thought, these voices are stifled and labeled as “bigotry”.

When we do not have important conversations, when we do not speak openly about issues, question assumptions – not to put scrutiny on people’s identities but to understand and define terms that are complicated and versatile – we are risking the loss of democratic thought, of the fight against a single dictated truth, of the very food for change and action: critical thought. People cannot grow or change through oppression and hate. People who have ideas that may be hurtful or prejudiced often do not know what they do is wrong – it is often that the root of their ideology has become the root of their identity. It is essential that if progress is made, the willingness to allow someone to grow and to think – to have access to all sides of information and the truth is important. 

But it is not all gloom and doom. We still have the capacity to stop this doublethinking that we have normalized in society. Fortunately, our language is not becoming reduced to “Newspeak”. And yes, although we may be constantly watched by the Big Brothers of social media, with our own personalized “Ministry of Truth” in our phones, we still have the liberty to express ourselves and to communicate. And although we may be caught in a vicious cycle of instant gratification and the degradation of information and its authenticity – we have the individual power to stop ourselves from falling down this trap. We have the power to use this extremely powerful device that we call the internet to fully and truly understand the world around us. We have a currency that is extremely powerful and unhampered — the currency of language. 

Language is the mode in which we think, communicate, and express ourselves. It is the tool that shapes our thoughts into reality, that sparks innovation and brilliance, a lens to explore the human condition. But more than a tool, it is a living, breathing, thriving thing that can be twisted and manipulated — used to anger and destroy as much as it is used to create and love.

Language is at the very root of our society – human civilization and development – everything that we know today is because of how powerfully nuanced our mode of communication is. It is a necessity, not only to preserve this but to constantly utilize it – to keep it thriving – to ensure that words do not lose their true meanings.

We must be wary of the manipulation of language, and what that has meant for civilizations. It was the manipulation of language that resulted in Hitler’s rise to power. It was the manipulation of language that shut and controlled the thoughts of their subjects in the world of 1984 and present-day North Korea. And even in social media, it is this twisting and turning of words, and the extraction of information from its context, that is splitting us apart.

With the use of words and communication, with the ability to connect to billions of people in a single touch, we must not fall into a trap in which we shut down the use of language or thought. It is essential to be open to what people think, to listen to what they have to say – even if there are disagreements and to discuss ideas and opinions. We must ensure that the food of politics, thoughts, and society is nurtured and expressed. 

Everything down from our daily interactions to the discussion of the highest ideals in the world is brought out through language. It is our duty and necessity to keep it thriving, to ensure that language is used creatively, imaginatively, and uniquely — that its nuances, its variability, and its expression remain intact. 

Yeonmi Park said something that shook me. She said, “Freedom is fragile. It only took 3 generations of people to turn North Korea into George Orwell’s 1984”. 

Freedom is fragile – but if we persist, with language, critical thought, and expression – we can live in a world where knowledge, rather than ignorance, is strength.

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Sources of inspiration (and information):

1. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/07/1984-george-orwell/590638/

2. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/may/10/1984-george-orwell

3. https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20180507-why-orwells-1984-could-be-about-now

4. Orwellian