ABSTRACT
At this point we can turn to an area where, on the part of the powerful, the wish to hide something is very forceful. This is the case where language control is employed in the service of the military powers and for war purposes. Orwell’s work for the BBC during the Second World War clearly sensitized him to this usage and informs his late fiction. Hodge and Fowler (1979: 22) see the work on the Newspeak dictionary as corresponding “to the use of war as an economic strategy. The ‘war’ guarantees full employment to the Proles, by generating endless useless tasks, such as the building of successive floating fortresses, each one scrapped as obsolete before it is used (ibid.: 155). Outer Party members are similarly engaged in totally futile enterprises. Winston’s own job is a case in point. He rewrites past copies of The Times.”
