George Orwell’s “Politics and the English Language”: euphemisms and metaphors in post-war Britain

Silva, Elisabete Mendes

Publication

George Orwell’s “Politics and the English Language”: euphemisms and metaphors in post-war Britain

2015Conference object

dc.contributor.author	Silva, Elisabete Mendes
dc.date.accessioned	2017-01-16T14:14:43Z
dc.date.available	2017-01-16T14:14:43Z
dc.date.issued	2015
dc.description.abstract	Language and politics are two inextricable concepts for George Orwell, who, writing during and after 2nd Word War Britain, criticizes the vagueness and the excessive use of phraseology and ambiguity in political language. According to the author: “In our own time, political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible (…). Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness.” (Orwell, 2000: 356). In a decaying time where the general political atmosphere was therefore bad, the language was also unscrupulous as it suffered from the schizophrenia, vagueness, metaphorical style and lies that defined politics in post-war Britain. An opponent of inkhorn terms, Orwell loathed the use of the hundreds of foreign words and phrases current in English and believed that the English language, or as he highlights, “Saxon words”, would cover the needs of political writers instead of Latin or Greek or/and other loans. In this paper, we shall analyse Orwell’s 1946 essay “Politics and the English language” from both linguistic and cultural insights, focusing on the English political status quo at the time, as well as highlighting Orwell’s idea of language concreteness.	pt_PT
dc.description.version	info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion	pt_PT
dc.identifier.citation	Silva, Elisabete Mendes (2015). George Orwell’s “Politics and the English Language”: euphemisms and metaphors in post-war Britain. I Colóquio Internacional de Línguas Estrangeiras: de uma língua a outra. Bragança	pt_PT
dc.identifier.uri	http://hdl.handle.net/10198/13797
dc.language.iso	eng	pt_PT
dc.peerreviewed	yes	pt_PT
dc.publisher	Instituto Politécnico de Bragança, Escola Superior de Educação	pt_PT
dc.rights.uri	http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/	pt_PT
dc.subject	English language	pt_PT
dc.subject	Politics	pt_PT
dc.subject	Metaphors	pt_PT
dc.subject	Euphemisms	pt_PT
dc.subject	Post-war Britain	pt_PT
dc.title	George Orwell’s “Politics and the English Language”: euphemisms and metaphors in post-war Britain	pt_PT
dc.type	conference object
dspace.entity.type	Publication
oaire.citation.conferencePlace	Bragança	pt_PT
oaire.citation.title	I Colóquio Internacional de Línguas Estrangeiras: de uma língua a outra	pt_PT
person.familyName	Silva
person.givenName	Elisabete Mendes
person.identifier.ciencia-id	EE12-AC24-227B
person.identifier.orcid	0000-0002-1782-2567
rcaap.rights	openAccess	pt_PT
rcaap.type	conferenceObject	pt_PT
relation.isAuthorOfPublication	c6cfeddd-2444-47cd-bd74-1da763a86608
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