The Gaming Den

It's an interesting concept and feels plausible at the surface, but, considering that the general school of linguistic relativity was barely more than a dried stain on a napkin when 1984 came out, it raises this question: with our modern understanding of human linguistics, how much of it truly applies to the real world and how much of it was just a fantastical plot device?

Language-crafting happens all the time. You see it a lot in modern politics, economics, &c. where people craft the argument in favor of their position - the whole Pro-Life/Pro-Choice thing comes immediately to mind.

Language-limiting is another kettle of fish entirely, because humans have a tendency (and this is aggravated in certain cultures, I think) to invent new words. So while you might try to implement Newspeak, and even raise a generation of Little Brothers on it, those kids are almost undeniably going to try to come up with some new word or word combination or meaning.

I guess where the whole thing falls down is that language is not a terribly good instrument of control - you absolutely can have a concept of mayonaise or the color pink or the internal combustion engine without having a word for it, the only real issue is how can you communicate that concept to someone else. So while Newspeak won't really limit people's ability to think freely, which is its premise, it might make it more difficult for people to express themselves freely.

Which is a real-world issue. I think io9 linked up a chart not too many months back showing all the different emotions that are expressable in non-English languages that English really doesn't have an equivalent for - and it's not to say that English-speakers did not feel those emotions, but they didn't have a name for it and so could not express it as succinctly as all that.

Newspeak has lost its feasibility unless you have a country with no internet connectivity. With the ability to make up words and spread them at an unfathomable rate, the ability to control what people say becomes nigh unto impossible (see's AH's link to martian language in the Wikipedia thread).

Newspeak is how corporations and politicians talk now. All the time. The press is full of it because they are corporate owned and mostly parrot political direction.

Leading up to the invasion of Iraq, there was three million people protested in LA, with almost no media coverage. There was also a dozen employees of one of the missile manufacturers ordered out on the street by their building to stand holding pro-war signs with two hundred media people ready to record the event. The News media around the world replayed stories of a country that mostly "supported their president", because of some unrelated poll from the past that asked if you'd support the president in wartime.

Then because terrorism has always been an "existential threat to the freedoms and justice enjoyed in the western world" or whatever, so your freedoms and justice must be removed to protect you from it. Guantanamo is US territory and not US territory as need be, it obeys US law and doesn't obey US law, and the people there can admit their guilt and be imprisoned for life or not admit it and be held in prison for life, unless they're accidentally British or Australian and then they can go home because no one is actually a terrorist at all.

The worst criminal ever (you can tell, he's not allowed lawyers and a trial and stuff) is some guy who leaked some things that "everybody knows anyway so don't bother talking about it" to the press (and the press guy who dares facilitate truth about the wars) and we know this because of the vast volume of stuff leaked about him to the press, which has since turned out to be a bunch of fabricated bullshit anyway.

Companies aren't going broke any more, nor even in financial trouble, no, they have an "Uncertainty in revenue outlook going forward" and shit like that. And people in business actually talk that way now. Because if you obfuscate the reality in your head hard enough it's like it stops being true, at least in your head.

1984 wasn't supposed to be an instruction manual, but it has been. As they say.