Newspeak

“ ‘It’s a beautiful thing, the destruction of words. Of course the great wastage is in the verbs and adjectives, but there are hundreds of nouns that can be got rid of as well. (…)

Take “good”, for instance. If you have a word like “good”, what need is there for a word like “bad”? “Ungood” will do just as well – better, because it is an exact opposite, which the other is not. (…) if you want a stronger version of “good”, what sense is there in having a whole string of vague useless words like “excellent” and “splendid” and all the rest of them? “Plusgood” covers the meaning; or “doubleplusgood” if you want something stronger still.

(…) ‘You haven’t a real appreciation of Newspeak, Winston,’ he said almost sadly. ‘Even when you write it you’re still thinking in Oldspeak. (…) In your heart you’d prefer to stick to Oldspeak, with all its vagueness and its useless shades if meaning. You don’t grasp the beauty of the destruction of words. (…)

Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it. (…) Every year fewer and fewer words, and the range of consciousness always a little smaller.”

George Orwell (1949), Nineteen Eighty-Four

I never thought I'd encounter a rejoinder to my earlier post so soon in my reading!