Orwell's advice for 2016 race

By Seymour I. "Spence" Toll

In this spring's issue of the literary quarterly the Sewanee Review, author Fred Chappell mentions an essay that he has "reread almost to the point of memorization." He's referring to a piece by the English author George Orwell (1903-1950) titled "Politics and the English Language." Although I have not read it as frequently as Chappell, since first reading it in 1951 as a Yale Law School student in a writing seminar, I have not found a published work on its subject more intelligent and useful.

The expanding news coverage of next year's presidential election is a reminder of another 2016 event whose importance deserves recognition. That will be the 70th anniversary of the publication of Orwell's essay. It is valuable election-time literature because it deals with truth in political writing. An ideal - and fantasized - tribute to Orwell would be if all candidates adopted his instruction about political honesty.

Although political writing was Orwell's subject, his view of its problems and solutions also applies to political speech. That's because the gist of his valuable instruction is that defective thinking produces the same kind of writing, and that is true of speech as well. His concern was the corruption of the English language in the mid-1940s resulting from corrupt thinking. He believed that managing language can and should be a deliberate task; doing it correctly produces clear thinking and truth. Whether from the political left or right, what had happened to political language in Orwell's time was a design "to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind."

In the 1970s, a striking American example of the political corruption of language and truth was the Watergate scandal. It resulted from the break-in at the Washington office of the Democratic National Committee headquarters and the attempts by Richard Nixon's administration to cover up its involvement. The discovery of a conspiracy led to a congressional investigation and the administration pushed back. Nixon's press secretary told a different story every day until he was finally reduced to calling the most recent deception "the operative statement" and the discarded lies "inoperative." The campaign for Nixon's defense was called "Operation Candor," and the question he and his closest advisers asked about incriminating audio recordings was, "Will it play?" rather than "Is it right?"

Orwell's intelligent diagnosis of bad writing is that it's lazy writing, the result of lazy thinking. Writing and speech are loaded with "dying metaphors." Fresh images can aid thinking; stale ones can have the opposite effect, especially if their users don't understand them. We bloat our sentences with what Orwell calls "operators or verbal false limbs." Instead of using the simple verb stop, we say "render inoperative." The blur of the passive voice displaces the clarity of the active voice.

Orwell's discussion of pretentious words that "give an air of scientific impartiality to biased judgments" convincingly applies to political statements so common today. In his time, political murder or Siberian imprisonment were the realities beneath the lie of calling them the "elimination of unreliable elements." Today, waterboarding and other barbaric interrogations get whitewashed with "security considerations."

Orwell effectively illustrates what he had in mind with this example: "I am going to translate a passage of good English into modern English of the worst sort."

"Here is a well-known verse from Ecclesiastes:

" 'I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.'

"Here it is in modern English:

" 'Objective consideration of contemporary phenomena compels the conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity, but that a considerable element of the unpredictable must invariably be taken into account.' "

Orwell's essay also provides invaluable advice:

Don't use figures of speech commonly seen in print.

If a short word works, don't use a long one.

Cut every needless word.

Never use the passive voice if you can use the active.

If an ordinary English word will do the work of a foreign phrase or a jargon word, use it.

"Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous." (Confirmation that Orwell had speech as well as writing in mind.)

Orwell's essay reflects his modesty as well as intelligence. He limited those rules to political writing and speech. In fact, they can usefully be applied to countless other subjects, but none more timely than our coming presidential election.