Control of Language Lessining the Likeliness of Rebellion

[Arielle]

By narrowing language and vocabulary, as Syme explains, the Party wishes to remove words from the population's vocabulary, such as "rebel." Such actions will lessen the likeliness of "thought-crime[s]" (46). To the Party, the "destruction of words" (47) is a beautiful thing. In his work with Newspeak Vol. 11, Syme illustrates the main goal of word destruction is to "narrow range of thought" (46). By curtailing frivolous and "fighting" words, the Party seeks to narrow the range of thought altogether, such that eventually, thoughtcrime will be literally impossible.

Will the destruction of words really prevent rebellion or thought crimes? Or will citizens meerely make up new words to communicate such feelings?


I believe that the elimination of words will not prevent such thoughts. Even if the people only communicate in Newspeak, and the Party controls language in Oceania, it would not be possible to narrow the range of thought to eliminate the possibility of rebellion. Therefore, the Party’s ambitions are unattainable.

[Ilana]

Maybe the range of thought will not be narrowed, but the ability to communicate will be curtailed. A person in Oceania might be able to have a rebellious feeling or idea, but there will be no words in their vocabulary with which to spread that idea. If that person tries to communicate the rebellious feeling and spread it, they will be unsuccessful because their meaning will become lost in its translation into Newspeak, and the potential revolution will ultimately fail. So even though the rebellious thoughts might not be stopped, Newspeak will render people unable to communicate or spread them, and that will stop any spread of dissent.

[Park.chunsoo]

The goals of Newspeak would be impossible to achieve in our world. But in the world of 1984, I think it is very possible.

The only way to get the people (the Proles) to rebel against the Party would be to spread ideas of dissent through phamplets and word of mouth. But the lack of proper words to express thoughts of dissent would get in the way of any attempt to organize the people. And if they create new words or use Oldspeak, they will be hunted down, discouraging people altogether to use language to spread the truth.

[Ada]

I agree with both Ilana and Chunsoo. The elimination of words would definitely affect the ability of people to rebel together. Winston mentions that there might be many people like him and Julia, who follow the Party and pretend to believe in its slogans, but secretly are against them. However, it is so risky to confront people about it that it is not possible to know how many people like them exist. Well, with the limitation of communication through further destruction of words, it will be nearly impossible for people like these to band together. When O'Brien recruited Winston into the Brotherhood, one of the first things he did was to give Winston a copy of a book Goldstein had written. If Newspeak were to become the only language people could understand, nobody would be able to read books like the one written by Goldstein. Therefore, there would be no commonality to bind rebels together.