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

Abstract

Language and politics are two inextricable concepts for George Orwell, who, writing during and after the 2nd Word War context in Britain, criticised the vagueness, the excessive use of phraseology and the powerful influence of metaphors 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, p. 356). In a decaying time when the general political atmosphere was therefore negative, the language was also unscrupulous as it suffered from the schizophrenia, vagueness, metaphorical style and lies that defined politics in post-war Britain (Orwell, 2000, pp. 348-9). 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 article, we intend to analyse Orwell’s 1946 essay “Politics and the English language”, focusing on the English political context of that period, as well as to scrutinise Orwell’s idea of language concreteness by delving into metaphorical phraseology and the inkhorn controversy. We will also emphasize Orwell’s contemporary relevance.