George Orwell’s Politics And The English Language

His argument: The English language has become ugly and inactive due to the foolishness of our thoughts and our way of expressing them. This decay has further led to the decay in society.

Cases of Irony:

1. “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.”The essay itself can be considered satirical: satirizing the English language and its foolishness. Therefore, by employing the faults he is simultaneously criticizing, Orwell clearly is making an ironic sense out of it. To commit the same faults he is protesting against is quite ironic, but at the same time, boosts the argument of this essay by serving as a clear example of the writing he is criticizing.

2. “A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus: What am I trying to say? What words will express it? What image or idiom will make it clearer? Is this image fresh enough to have an effect? And he will probably ask himself two more: Could I put it more shortly? Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly? But you are not obliged to go to all this trouble.”It’s quite ironic that Orwell is criticizing and, at the same time, recommending the reader tips to avoid bad writing, while his own essay is an example of a bad piece of writing. He is saying that careful writing is both good and bad. If you pay attention to every detail of your writing you might ruin the essence of the writing, but a careless writer might also result in a banal text.

Dying Metaphors (clichés): Worn out comparisons which have lost all evocative power, and are used for simplicity.

Meaningless Words: Words in a passage which almost completely lacking in meaning and do not point toward any object in the context of the sentence.

Pretentious Diction: Words and expressions (mostly foreign) that are used to dress up a simple statement and make it sound more scientific, and the general result is an increase in vagueness.

Ten Steps To Good Writing:

1. Avoid using complicated expressions.
2. Never use a figure of speech you are used seeing in writing.
3. Use a short word rather than a long one, if possible.
4. Avoid loquaciousness as much as possible (cut out as many words you can).
5. Never use passive when you can use active.
6. Avoid using foreign expressions, scientific terms, or other jargons. Instead, use its English equivalent.
7. Revise your writing before publishing in order to ensure best quality.
8. Avoid writing while thinking: think what you are going to write before actually writing it.
9. Evade dressing up simple statements with intricate expressions.
10. Maintain a constant style throughout your writing