ABSTRACT
One premise in Orwell’s conception of language, then, is just this: that language, the words we employ in speaking and writing and the way we put them together, reflect what is going on—and also, by implication, what is not going on—in the politics and culture of the society more generally. Again, many shifts in usage similar to this could be cited, and we take the fact that such changes are going on all the time pretty much for granted. A society that includes among its ideals decency and truth will reflect these in its forms of expression; and so, by the same token, totalitarian society will shape language to its own devices. Totalitarianism, in contrast, as it implies external control of both collective and individual memory, also moves to control the imagination. To be sure, the description of this imaginary but not only imaginary future still leaves the question of what can be done to avoid the death of language.
