Rhetoric: George Orwell
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| George Orwell [1903-1950] |
Few writers have understood the dangerous elasticity
of language as sharply as George Orwell. In his world, words are never
innocent. They are tools, shaped, sharpened, and even poisoned, by those who
wield power.
Rhetoric at its best is the art of
persuasion. It gives language rhythm, force, and emotional resonance. It can
inspire revolutions, comfort the grieving, and mobilise societies. Mark Antony
used rhetoric effectively to turn the entire Roman rank and file against Brutus
who had been their hero hitherto. We have some remarkable
rhetorician-politicians now.
These politicians remind us that
rhetoric has a darker twin. When it ceases to illuminate truth and begins to
obscure it, rhetoric becomes resounding propaganda: language emptied of honesty
and filled instead with ulterior motives.
Orwell saw this transformation with
disquieting clarity. in his 1946 essay, Politics and the English Language,
he warns how political language is “designed to make lies sound truthful and
murder respectful.” The American President’s reference to the “collateral
damages” of war or Putin’s description of his war on Ukraine as a “special
military operation” or Indian Prime Minister’s claim of having converted the
“Red Corridor” [Maoist regions] into “corridors of green development” are just
a few examples of how words can be stretched, à la Orwell, to justify heinous violations.
Words like freedom, security, reform, and national interest can
be stretched no end. The more abstract the word, the easier it is to distort
it.
In Orwell’s classic novel 1984,
this distortion reaches its logical extreme. The invention of Newspeak is not
just about vocabulary. It is actually about controlling thought itself. If
language is narrowed, thought is narrowed. If certain words disappear, so do
the ideas they once carried. Truth does not need to be destroyed; it can simply
be made unthinkable. Do you recall how the word ‘secularism’ has vanished from
“Congress-mukt Bharat’s” political lingo? That’s just one example.
Political rhetoric makes use of
emotive and persuasive language. Polished phrases, carefully crafted sentences,
and poetic slogans are all effective tools in the hands of our rhetoricians.
They replace clarity with vagueness, and reality with euphemism. Surveillance
becomes national security. Extrajudicial killings become encounters.
Withdrawal of welfare schemes or other benefits become simply rationalisation.
Rhetoric can be put to a lot of good
use too. Orwell himself was a master of it. But his writing is persuasive not
because it manipulates, but because it clarifies. The difference lies in
intention. Honest rhetoric seeks to bring us closer to truth; dishonest
rhetoric seeks to move us away from truth without our noticing.
The tension between rhetoric and
truth is not merely linguistic. It is moral.
We live in a time of rhetorical
orations, catchy headlines, provocative hashtags, and endless streams of
opinion. The speed of communication tends to outrun the discipline of thought.
Outrage is manufactured, as I wrote in an earlier post. Narratives are
engineered. In such a time, truth, patient and often complex, struggles to
compete with what is immediate and emotionally charged.
When rhetoric dominates truth, reality itself becomes negotiable. As ordinary citizens, you and I need to remain alert. And choose precise words, question given narratives, and – thus reclaim language as a means of understanding rather than control.
PS. This post is a part
of Blogchatter A2Z Challenge 2026
Previous Posts in this series
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è Self
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Thanks for this lucid Wittgentenian take on Orwellian Rhetoric. Demagogy would have been a better short cut icon for the dubious and manipulative stretch of Rhetoric as Newspeak, Doublespeak, Obfuscation, Whataboutery, Grand Narrative, Post-Truth and Alternative Construction of Facts and Gas Lighting and the Magical, used by Lubna. Yes. Circumscription and Sharpness are the gifts we need and we need to cultivate in ourselves and others, to Unmask the large swathes of Propaganda. We ourselves have to stand under the Truth, which is Swayamprakasa. Rajiv Gandhi's " When a Big Tree Falls"! and Modi's Puppy being crushed under the car" could be telling imageries from Indian Political Landscape. And Manitalk's Secular Fundamentalism on the Positive Note.
ReplyDeleteIt's good that there have been people like Orwell who have cataloged how language can be weaponized. The more that these schemes come to light, the more of us there are to resist them.
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