Mark Myers
December 25th 07, 09:26 PM
their meaning, but from their structure.
So far as it could be contrived, everything that had or might have
political significance of any kind was fitted into the B vocabulary. The
name of every organization, or body of people, or doctrine, or country,
or institution, or public building, was invariably cut down into the
familiar shape; that is, a single easily pronounced word with the
smallest number of syllables that would preserve the original
derivation. In the Ministry of Truth, for example, the Records
Department, in which Winston Smith worked, was called Recdep, the
Fiction Department was called Ficdep, the Teleprogrammes Department was
called Teledep, and so on. This was not done solely with the object of
saving time. Even in the early decades of the twentieth century,
telescoped words and phrases had been one of the characteristic features
of political language; and it had been noticed that the tendency to use
abbreviations of this kind was most marked in totalitarian countries and
totalitarian organizations. Examples were such words as Nazi, Gestapo,
Comintern, Inprecorr, Agitprop. In the beginning the practice had been
adopted as it were instinctively, but in Newspeak it was used with a
conscious purpose. It was perceived that in thus abbreviating a name one
narrowed and subtly altered its meaning, by cutting out most of the
associations that would otherwise cling to it. The words Communist
International, for instance, call up a composite picture of universal
human brotherhood, red flags, barr
So far as it could be contrived, everything that had or might have
political significance of any kind was fitted into the B vocabulary. The
name of every organization, or body of people, or doctrine, or country,
or institution, or public building, was invariably cut down into the
familiar shape; that is, a single easily pronounced word with the
smallest number of syllables that would preserve the original
derivation. In the Ministry of Truth, for example, the Records
Department, in which Winston Smith worked, was called Recdep, the
Fiction Department was called Ficdep, the Teleprogrammes Department was
called Teledep, and so on. This was not done solely with the object of
saving time. Even in the early decades of the twentieth century,
telescoped words and phrases had been one of the characteristic features
of political language; and it had been noticed that the tendency to use
abbreviations of this kind was most marked in totalitarian countries and
totalitarian organizations. Examples were such words as Nazi, Gestapo,
Comintern, Inprecorr, Agitprop. In the beginning the practice had been
adopted as it were instinctively, but in Newspeak it was used with a
conscious purpose. It was perceived that in thus abbreviating a name one
narrowed and subtly altered its meaning, by cutting out most of the
associations that would otherwise cling to it. The words Communist
International, for instance, call up a composite picture of universal
human brotherhood, red flags, barr