Preoccupied with the ‘decay’ of his mother tongue and the political implications inherent to such a decline, Orwell defines the source of such linguistic decadence as a ‘reduced state of consciousness’ in which the metaphor is dead, and pretentiousness prevails. Want to keep up with our blog? Sign up to get an email notification when we publish new posts.First published in 1946, George Orwell’s commentary on political language remains culturally salient. from Orwell’s “Politics and the English Language” contains his six rules for writing. They have an enduring freshness to them, significant to all times and places. Orwell’s Six Rules are a good reminder to anyone who proposes to communicate accurately. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.

Never use the passive where you can use the active.

If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.

Never use a long word where a short one will do.

Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.

To guide writers into writing clearly and truthfully, Orwell proposed the following six rules: These rules sound elementary, and so they are, but they demand a deep change of attitude in anyone who has grown used to writing in the style now fashionable. Animal Farm had been published the previous August, and Orwell was beginning work on Nineteen Eighty-Four. “Politics and the English Language” reflected Orwell’s great concern with truth and language and how deliberately misleading language is used to conceal disagreeable political facts. Albert Speer, Hitler’s lead architect, said at the Nuremberg trials that “what distinguished the Third Reich from all previous dictatorships was its use of all the means of communication to sustain itself and to deprive its objects of the power of independent thought.” Modern English, especially written English, is full of bad habits which spread by imitation and which can be avoided if one is willing to take the necessary trouble.įrom 1933 until the end of World War II in 1945, the Nazi propaganda machine spread its gospel of violence to acquire and maintain power. In the essay, he offers an argument, and guidance, for clear writing. George Orwell published his essay “Politics and the English Language” in April 1946 after a second world war and one of the most extensive uses of propaganda in an era of mass media.

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