Lisette
December 25th 07, 06:42 PM
the texture of
the words, with their harsh sound and a certain wilful ugliness which
was in accord with the spirit of Ingsoc, assisted the process still
further.
So did the fact of having very few words to choose from. Relative to our
own, the Newspeak vocabulary was tiny, and new ways of reducing it were
constantly being devised. Newspeak, indeed, differed from most all other
languages in that its vocabulary grew smaller instead of larger every
year. Each reduction was a gain, since the smaller the area of choice,
the smaller the temptation to take thought. Ultimately it was hoped to
make articulate speech issue from the larynx without involving the
higher brain centres at all. This aim was frankly admitted in the
Newspeak word duckspeak, meaning ?to quack like a duck?. Like various
other words in the B vocabulary, duckspeak was ambivalent in meaning.
Provided that the opinions which were quacked out were orthodox ones, it
implied nothing but praise, and when the Times referred to one of the
orators of the Party as a doubleplusgood duckspeaker it was paying a
warm and valued compliment.
The C vocabulary. The C vocabulary was supplementary to the others and
consisted entirely of scientific and technical terms. These resembled
the scientific terms in use today, and were constructed from the same
roots, but the usual care was taken to define them rigidly and strip
them of undesirable meanings. They followed the same grammatical rules
as the words in the other two vocabularies. Very few of the C words had
the words, with their harsh sound and a certain wilful ugliness which
was in accord with the spirit of Ingsoc, assisted the process still
further.
So did the fact of having very few words to choose from. Relative to our
own, the Newspeak vocabulary was tiny, and new ways of reducing it were
constantly being devised. Newspeak, indeed, differed from most all other
languages in that its vocabulary grew smaller instead of larger every
year. Each reduction was a gain, since the smaller the area of choice,
the smaller the temptation to take thought. Ultimately it was hoped to
make articulate speech issue from the larynx without involving the
higher brain centres at all. This aim was frankly admitted in the
Newspeak word duckspeak, meaning ?to quack like a duck?. Like various
other words in the B vocabulary, duckspeak was ambivalent in meaning.
Provided that the opinions which were quacked out were orthodox ones, it
implied nothing but praise, and when the Times referred to one of the
orators of the Party as a doubleplusgood duckspeaker it was paying a
warm and valued compliment.
The C vocabulary. The C vocabulary was supplementary to the others and
consisted entirely of scientific and technical terms. These resembled
the scientific terms in use today, and were constructed from the same
roots, but the usual care was taken to define them rigidly and strip
them of undesirable meanings. They followed the same grammatical rules
as the words in the other two vocabularies. Very few of the C words had