Jessica's post

Jessica Carrière-Garwood

Canadian Politic and the English Language

In Politics and the English Language, Orwell claims that “[political language] is designed (...) to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.” In my essay, I intend to support his statement by giving a concrete example from the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Firstly, I will divide the sentence and analyse the words, then I will attempt to raise the meaning of the complete sentence and qualify it as precise or not. Finally, I will relate it to Orwell’s affirmation.

The section 1 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms states that “The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.”

A division of this sentence would make its comprehension easier: “The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms / guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it / subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law / as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.” Later on, I will refer to those divisions as parts.

The words used in this sentence refer to ideas. They do not refer to anything concrete. This creates a confusion since it is hard to agree on their definitions. As an example, the Oxford Dictionary gives many definitions for some important words composing this section such as right, freedom, reasonable, limit, justify, democratic... How can one know their exact meaning? Usually, one has to look at the context, but as I will explain later, this sentence has no context, it is universal. The same dictionnary relates both free and democratic to, among other definitions, a representative government. Therefore, if two different concepts are defined similarly, how can one or the other be precise? The words being the basis of the sentence, it is impossible that one understands clearly a clause made of vague words.

The two first parts of the clause are clear enough. One understands easily that the charter guarantees the rights that are declared in it. Although the words are not very precise, one can understand by refering to the context. Reading the charter, one gets the meaning of the words rights and freedoms. When one reads the totality of the sentence, it becomes difficult to grasp its significance. The two last parts bring the answer to the question when can it be applied? In order to make it universal, not related to any particular situation, the text needs to be vague. Meaningless. What is a reasonable limit? If I understand this clause properly, it is a limit that can be proven to be justified. In my Oxford Dictionary, to justify is to show (a person, statement, or act etc.) to be right or just or reasonable! It goes around! The section 1 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms does not make any sense because it does not refer to any context. It only refers to itself, to its elements. The previous definitions of free and democratic, and reasonable and justified illustrate my point. This law affects the entire country and the people who wrote it did think a lot before. Therefore, this lack of clarity has to be deliberate.

One might think that this clause is deliberately vague to apply to all situations. This is obviously the purpose. However, in my opinion, the aim is not to include everyone in that guaranty of rights and freedoms, but to be able to exclude anyone if needed. Basically, by being so vague, nothing is said, but the citizens feel protected since they cannot be tricked by their peers. Only a law authority can decide where is the reasonable limit. I think this represents what Orwell was saying; for a citizen this charter seems solid and protective, but there is nothing under the words...

Nemanja's Post

Analogy: Orwell’s article and the newspaper article from Montenegro

“Nothing new in Brussels” from Republika, 5th March 2005

As Orwell refers to it in his essay on the connection between the politics and the language in UK, there is a certain level of decline in almost all languages around the globe, not just in English. He mentions several arguments to support his claim and the reasons for the decadency and gives advises in order to improve or at least to get the language back on its previous level as it was before.
Commonly, politicians and other public speakers are keen on picking the whole phrases that have already been said by so many people, making their effort less demanding this way and their job easier. Exactly as Orwell describes, we often use simple, over-used metaphors, meaningless words and above all the foreign diction! In the article I chose to analyse, the author quotes the words of the Montenegrin Prime Minister right before and after his visit to the European Parliament in Brussels and meeting with Mr.Javier Solana. On the conference in Podgorica, the capital of Montenegro, Milo Djukanovic, Montenegrin PM, made a speech one day before the mentioned visit. In it he said:

Montenegro and its democratic government will not be taught a lesson there in Brussels. I will firmly represent the demands of the majority for the earliest independence and the recovering of the Montenegrin sovereignty as well as entering the Europe as a democratic, open and modern state.

A phrase like –teaching someone a lesson- is so worn-out and used by the people of the lowest level of education, therefore I don’t find it appropriate for the speech of one government’s president. Djukanovic could have simply said:”We will not be criticised” and it would be accepted. “The demands of majority” and “independist” ideas are the words that are heard every day in Montenegro while “independist” is a twisted foreign word for which we have our own in Serbian; but still our PM decides to speak foreign rather than Serbian language words. Word Europe is wrongly used since Montenegro IS geographically a part of the European continent, so when wanting to say EU, our PM says Europe! This way, we could interpret him, as saying that Montenegro is NOWHERE!
After the visit, Djukanovic made another Press Conference. There he resembled the examples of Orwell when he said: “Montenegro will not open the Pandora’s box, we will continue to “europeanize” and “democratize” “…whatever these word meant. Pandora’s box is a myth from Ancient Greece and suits more for the fairy tales, history lessons and novels rather than politician’s speech. Maybe it is a way of manipulating people who might don’t even know what the myth is about. Instead, wasn’t it easier to say “Montenegro will not endanger the State Union of Serbia and Montenegro, created by the European Union”? Words like “europeanize” and “democratize” are in daily use, but however we still don’t know what they mean. Anyway, they can neither be found in English nor Serbian dictionaries, but are part of our politicians' vocabulary.
I hope that you could realise from this analysis how even other languages are in decline due to transition, different political movements etc. Moreover, even we as students are used to implement the whole phrases, foreign words in our mother tongues. Our College as well is an example of endangering the beauty of our languages (twisting words like drop, skip, and block in our language). Therefore I agree completely with Orwell that not only politicians but also all of us are guilty for the decline of our languages!

Gintare's Post: worth reading!

Gintare said...

University Trick

Dear all,

Last year should have been my last year in high school. Hence, I had already started looking for a university. As I was browsing the web pages, particularly the about and why choose this school sections, of universities and colleges in the United States, I noticed two things:

~ Though each claimed to be exclusive, they were all the same.

~ It was impossible to grasp what the school was like because the concepts they used were very broad and had been used so much before that they did not mean anything now.

To illustrate these points I have chosen 10 colleges in the US: Amherst, Carleton, Beloit, Grinnell, Lafayette, Macalester, Marquette, St. Lawrence University, Wartburg and Williams.

Referring to my first argument, all the colleges mentioned above use the same vocabulary to describe themselves. For instance, Carleton College claims it is “independent and highly selective”, Wartburg College “is a nationally recognized, highly selective“, whereas Grinnell introduces itself as “a highly selective educational institution.”

As for students, they claim to have only “talented” and “diverse” students --

Amherst: “enrolling some 1,600 talented, energetic and diverse young men and women“
Carleton: “liberal arts college with a diverse and talented, exceptionally able student body“
Beloit: “educating particularly talented students”; “learning from their diverse peers”
Grinnell: “by promoting the diversity and talents of young men and women”
St. Lawrence University: “an open education to some of the most talented young people in the country”
Williams: “with a spectacularly talented and devoted faculty“

The problem is not being talented or diverse. It is, however, difficult to distinguish between talented and not talentless people. All of us are capable of doing something, thus we are all talented and there is no need to boast about it. Same for being diverse. It has been proven even biologically that one cannot find two absolutely identical human beings in the world, which makes all of us diverse. And, finally, if all colleges have exceptional students, it makes all of them homogeneous for a high-school senior who is trying to find a place to spend the upcoming four years at.

As for my second statement, in every description of these colleges I found at least one sentence which was verbose, sounded nice, and made the school look intellectual and enticing. Let us look at the two most interesting ones:

“Amherst is characterized by spirited interchange among students and acclaimed faculty skilled at asking challenging questions. “

The latter seems to be simply stuffed it with the typical vocabulary used by the academia to give the impression of sophistication. It is achieved by something that George Orwell calls pretentious diction: once one reads or hears the sentence, one does not emphasize the meaning, but is charmed by words such as spirited, interchanged, acclaimed, skilled and challenging. What the sentence is basically saying is that in Amherst students and recognized teachers have passionate discussions and ask each other questions.

“At Williams, with a spectacularly talented and devoted faculty and staff, great physical and financial wealth, and the absolute finest students in all of American higher education, we are obligated to realize a vision of educational excellence worthy of our extraordinary resources.“

I am absolutely fascinated by the adjectives used in the sentence above. If we cut out spectacularly, great, absolute and extraordinary, it would not change the meaning of the statement given that no explanation is provided about what talents the faculty and staff have how much money the college has and why their resources are extraordinary. For one thing, all these adjectives are relative, which, in a curious way, misleads the reader.

To conclude, these only very few tips I have brought upon in this field, and now I realise it would not be difficult to write an EE about this topic. The reason why the language of such statements is important is that university choice is one of the most important decisions in one‘s life, and many people cannot go and find out whether the school is really what it appears on paper. It should be made clear when things are being advertised and when objective information is provided.

----------------------------------

Sources:
http://www.carleton.edu/
http://www.amherst.edu/about_amh/profile.html
http://www.beloit.edu/about/
http://www.grinnell.edu/offices/president/missionstatement/
http://www.lafayette.edu/promos/glance/
http://www.macalester.edu/about.html
http://www.marquette.edu/about/
http://www.stlawu.edu/glance.html
http://www.wartburg.edu/about/
http://www.williams.edu/home/about_mission.php

Chomsky and language analysis

Dear All,

Just to give you some ideas on how to get down to your writing, I found a recent article written by Noam Chomsky on a magazine called www.zmag.org where he does pretty much the type of work we've been looking at.

He analyses the US Government's use of the terms deterrence and engagement, explaining what he thinks they really mean. Although he is clearly biased in his views against the Bush administration, we can still recognise the techniques he uses to criticise them. Orwell would have called these meaningless words, and focused more widely on their implication for the English language. Here, Chomsky is interested in the political analysis, and criticises language in view of making a political statement.

His focus on these two words allows him to pry into the administration's policies. If you are interested in this idea and would like to write something along these lines, I have a collection of his articles, called Rogue States, where he criticises the terms "democracy", "humanitarian intervention", and of course "rogue", as to how they are used in the media.

Have a look at this article and see if this would be of use to your analysis



David

	Nuclear Terror at Home The Nuclear Labs and the Fate of the Planet
.........	by Noam Chomsky	March 01, 2005
	If you can imagine some rational observers from Mars looking at this curious species down here, I don't think they'd put very high odds on survival--another generation or two. In fact, it's kind of miraculous that we've come along this far. The world has come extremely close to total destruction just in recent years from nuclear war. New Mexico plays an important role in this. There's case after case where a nuclear war was prevented almost by a miracle. And the threat is increasing as a consequence of policies that the administration is very consciously pursuing. U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld understands perfectly well that these policies are increasing the threat of destruction. As you know, it's not a high probability event, but if a low probability event keeps happening over and over, there's a high probability that sooner or later it will take place. If you want to rank issues in terms of significance, there are some issues that are literally issues of survival of the species, and they're imminent. Nuclear war is an issue of species survival, and the threats have been severe for a long time. It's come to the point where you can read in the most sober respectable journals warnings by the leading strategic analysts that the current American posture--transformation of the military--is raising the prospect of what they call "ultimate doom" and not very far away. That's because it leads to an action-reaction cycle in which others respond. That leads us to be closer and more reliant on hair-trigger mechanisms, which are massively destructive. Militarization of space could very well doom the species. It's being pushed very hard. That's one issue that really requires major work and that's a huge one in New Mexico. New Mexico is one of the centers where this potential destruction of the species is taking place. There's a document called The Essentials of Post Cold War Deterrence that was released during the Clinton years by the Strategic Command, which is in charge of nuclear weapons. It's one of the most horrifying documents I've ever read. People haven't paid attention to it. The Strategic Command report asks how we should reconstruct our nuclear and other forces for the post-Cold War period. And the conclusions are that we have to rely primarily on nuclear weapons because unlike other weapons of mass destruction, such as chemical and biological, the effects of nuclear weapons are immediate, devastating, overwhelming--not only destructive but terrifying. So they have to be the core of what's called deterrence. Everything means the opposite of what it says. Deterrence means our offensive stance should primarily be based on nuclear weapons because they're so destructive and terrifying. And furthermore just the possession of massive nuclear forces casts a shadow over any international conflict, like people are frightened of us because we have this overwhelming force. We have to have a national persona of irrationality with forces out of control, so we really terrify everybody, and then we can get what we want. And furthermore they're right to be terrified because we're going to have these nuclear weapons right in front of us, which will blow them all up--in fact, blow us all up if they get out of control. If you read the vision for 2020 published by the Space Administration, it talks about how the new frontier is space--and that we have to take control of space for military purposes and make sure that we have no competitors. That means the space-based instruments of sudden mass destruction. There was an outer space treaty in 1967, which doesn't have any teeth in it but it does call for preserving space for peaceful purposes. And there have been efforts at the U.N. General Assembly Disarmament Committee to strengthen it. But they've been blocked unilaterally by the United States. The United States alone refuses to vote for the General Assembly resolution, and it's been tied up since the year 2000. The Chinese are the ones who are pushing to expand it. That's not reported in the United States. In the year 2000 it was only reported in one newspaper, a small newspaper in Utah. The whole world is supposed to be covered with--probably is--with sophisticated surveillance devices and the whole range of complex, lethal, destructive weaponry designed to be able to attack anything from space. This means nuclear weapons in space--nuclear energy sources in space--which can get out of control and blow up and who knows what will happen. When the Bush administration took over they just made it more extreme. They moved from the Clinton doctrine of control of space to what they call ownership of space, meaning--their words--"instant engagement anywhere" or unannounced destruction of any place on earth. Noam Chomsky made these remarks on Jan. 25 at events in Santa Fe, NM, celebrating the 25th anniversary of the International Relations Center (IRC). Chomsky is a member of the IRC's board of directors

How do we speak?

I don't know if this post will serve the purposes of the blog but I feel this is something that we have to deal with in our life here at the College and it would be interesting to discuss among us.

From my stay here in Duino so far, I feel that dealing with languages is something that can become rather confusing. In my case, having to deal with four idioms, it gets to the point that I don't really evolve in any of them, I end up getting worse in my mother tongue and sometimes english itself.

With this I mean that here, where we are meant to understand each other as well as we can, we finish not being able to express ourselves completely clearly to someone because of the lack of vocabulary. The fact that here we have different levels of english, some of us are trying to improve our italian and we still have to remember our mother-tongue to make a literary analysis at the end of the year is tough and can lead to less profound conversations because we just don't know how to express ourselves correctly.

It is impossible to not have this issue at the College, for such thing to happen, only English Native Speakers and other students with a good level of English would be selected to come here. It ends up being hard to evolve with the ENS as well because their level of English in the dialogues with other students ends up decreasing and so we get little or no benefits of talking to them in a gramatical aspect.

This farely short reflection is just intended to see that language problems related to the english language don't just take place in Britain or the USA, also where we live.

Comments?

Jonatas

Getting started

Dear all,

Because it may be difficult to know how to get started with all this, I drafted an invitation letter destined to a few people I thought would be interested in joining in the blog. This should give some direction to our project, at least in a general sense. Please read this before you post, just so we're all on the same wavelength.

Happy posting!

---------------------


Hi there!

This is an invitation to the weblog of our A2 English class, called Doublespeak. I would like you to join our campaign for clearer and better language in non-fiction writing.

We are basing our work on the essay *Politics and the English Language* by George Orwell, following up on his idea that sloppy language leads to sloppy thinking and eventually to endoctrination. We are going to choose texts from a variety of sources to comment on and even respond to, demanding clearer and better language. More than a grammatical spring cleaning, this is about demanding clear expression from those who deliberately hide what they believe, often using complicated or pretentious expressions as camouflage.

Your input, even a single post, would be very much appreciated! The recipe is:

1. Find a text which shows symptoms of doublespeak. Political commentary is the most obvious, but often seemingly 'objective' texts can be more interesting to analyse

2. Post the link, or paste a short passage to show the rest of it

3. Write your analysis of the text, to share with the rest of us. It is worth mentioning whether the linguistic 'camouflage' is any of the items Orwell describes in his essay (e.g. useless latinate words), or if you have picked up on a newer version of this.

4. Perhaps a plea to the author, if s/he is still alive, under the form of a letter which we could sign up to.


Hope you can have some fun with this. We certainly will!

Yours pedantically,

David

Polluted Language for Polluted Journalism

Dear all,

Here is a copy of what I am planning to submit to The Times. I think it reflects a new phenomenon which Orwell didn't experience in the 1940s. By using first names rather than surnames for particular political figures, the Western media creates disrespect for those leaders it wants to turn the public against. Newspapers refer to Saddam Hussein as 'Saddam', while they would never do this with Western leaders.

Read on and tell me if I should change anything before sending it.

David

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Sunday, March 06, 2005

To:
The Editor
The Times Online
online.editor@timesonline.co.uk

From:
David Kelly
English Teacher
The United World College of the Adriatic
Criticalkelly@yahoo.co.uk


Subject: Editing discrete bias in reports



Dear Sir or Madam,

I am writing to you to voice my concerns regarding Catherine Philp’s article “Court clears way for trial of Saddam's henchmen” from March 1st 2005. A paper as influential as The Times should set higher standards for impartiality in the language used by its journalists.

I am aware that like other writers, journalists have opinions. Ms. Philp’s views on the events she has been reporting in Iraq are valid and interesting, as she is close to the events and surely involved. However, the way in which her opinions come across – couched in a tone of false impartiality – is unacceptable. Even the title of the article clearly shows her bias against the former Iraqi president, but presents itself as objective reporting.

The use of ‘Saddam’ to refer to a politician is dubious in itself. Why refer to Mr. Hussein by his first name only?

To give you a sense of the bias involved in this style of reporting, here is a passage from Roland Watson’s most recent article from your newspaper which I have translated into the same style used by Ms. Philp

The size of the deficit, and forecasts that show that even if it is trimmed over the next four years it will rocket again after that, have dimmed the appetite among some lawmakers for the further tax cuts George wants.

Cutting healthcare costs before the baby-boom generation starts retiring is another George priority that looks unlikely to win congressional approval.

George has won a minor victory over reining in sky-high damages awards by juries. But a larger battle looms over medical malpractice awards in particular.

US officials have been ordered to adopt a strict “no gloating” stance in public. But George aides believe that the stirrings of democracy in Lebanon and Egypt to be a direct result of the successful elections held by Palestinians and Iraqis, themselves born of American foreign policy.


Taken from “Bush faces domestic strife as reform plan runs into difficulty”, The Times Online, March 01 2005

(My italics)

It would surely be unacceptable to any editor if one of your writers submitted this. It would appear as though the journalist were referring to President Bush as though he were a familiar friend, or a character from a children’s story. At the very least, this would belittle the President’s status, trivialising his influence in the events reported. This is precisely what Philps has done in her article, clearly manipulating her readers into accepting a certain view of the former Iraqi President without stating it openly.

Furthermore, Philp clearly uses biased nouns as a discrete tool for conveying her dislike for former President Hussein. Imagine if an article were entitled “Court clears way for George’s henchmen”, referring Donald Rumsfeld’s legal dealings. The term ‘henchman’ clearly connotes criminal activity. This, along with other expressions such as “round up the suspects” belongs to the language of comic books or detective novels, but not objective reporting.

I am not suggesting that you curtail Ms. Philps’ freedom of expression in any way. Nor do I believe that the actions of a political figure known for murderous crimes should be in some way praised. I do, however, believe that a reporter – not an opinions columnist – owes it to her audience to maintain some impartiality with regard to the events reported. Without falling into a monotonous style, Ms. Philps could have easily chosen a less biased approach.

To conclude, this letter is a call for greater clarity in journalese, which must start with the most highly regarded newspapers. As Orwell mentioned in his 1946 essay Politics and the English Language

Political language -- and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists -- is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.


Although I do not suggest that Ms. Philps is trying to cover up evil intentions, I believe that the danger in today's journalism is greater than in Orwell's day. Newspapers have access to a much wider audience due to online journalism, and therefore have a great responsibility to report events without falling into covert political propaganda. Given that your newspaper is widely read for its impartiality and quality of writing, I strongly urge you to edit out such blatant instances of bias against political leaders, regardless of their actions or political credentials. Indeed, how can we expect political leaders to be more honest if the media is not?




Yours sincerely,



David Kelly
English teacher
The United World College of the Adriatic