I am not, indeed, sure whether it is not true to say that the Milton who once seemed not unlike a seventeenth-century Shelley had not become, out of an experience ever more bitter in each year, more alien (sic) to the founder of that Jesuit sect which nothing could induce him to tolerate.
— Professor Harold Laski (Essay in Freedom of Expression)
I think Orwell is going to go after the indirection here, but indirection is a normal way of hedging and being polite in many languages/cultures. Indeed, I would argue that while not to the extreme some cultures take it, around me in America indirection does indeed have an important place in establishing politeness: “Can you do X?” is more polite than “Please do X.”, because the second entails (even if true, it’s not polite to say it so directly) that the asker has the right to have the askee do X, whereas the first uses indirection to maintain a friendly atmosphere while still communicating what needs to be done
I admit that I had a bit of a hard time parsing this, but firstly it is out of context, in context the general flow of the text would suggest what sentiments to expect, and thus prime you to correctly interpret the double negations, and secondly, the author lived from 1893-1950, and in England, while I’ve lived from the late 1990s until now in America, which means that my struggle to understand more complex phrasing of his is not a knock on his phrasing, because surely some phrasings I understand without a second thought, would be equally hard for him to get
I assume it was Orwell who added the “(sic)”. If so, I don’t know why, “alien” seems to be being used in a perfectly normal way there: a way not unalien to modern English
Above all, we cannot play ducks and drakes with a native battery of idioms which prescribes egregious collocations of vocables as the Basic put up with for tolerate, or put at a loss for bewilder.
— Professor Lancelot Hogben (Interglossia)
I have enough respect for Orwell to believe he will acknowledge this, but even without the context, I can tell that this author is clearly satirizing what he is suggesting people not do. I don’t agree with his point (I’m sure if I had lived in Britain from 1895-1975, I would understand what the idiom “playing ducks and drakes” meant (as it is, I can still get the gist from context), but otherwise nothing in that paragraph is hard to understand for a skilled English speaker), but I quite like the satirical manner in which he made it
On the one side we have the free personality: by definition it is not neurotic, for it has neither conflict nor dream. Its desires, such as they are, are transparent, for they are just what institutional approval keeps in the forefront of consciousness; another institutional pattern would alter their number and intensity; there is little in them that is natural, irreducible, or culturally dangerous. But on the other side, the social bond itself is nothing but the mutual reflection of these self-secure integrities. Recall the definition of love. Is not this the very picture of a small academic? Where is there a place in this hall of mirrors for either personality or fraternity?
— Essay on psychology in Politics (New York)
Not being intimately familiar with a lot of psychological jargon, much less the specific way this author may be using the terms (which would require the context of the containing article to establish), this is halting (archaic sense) for me to read, but it’s not hard to get the gist if you slow down and make some reasonable assumptions (“neurotic” is probably similar to neuroticism in the Five Factor Model, “The Free Personality” is probably something which this article defined in more detail earlier, “integrities” is probably being used in the sense of “that which is integral to something”, “the definition of love” is probably a specific definition the article earlier gave)
I quite like the last two lines “Is not this the very picture of a small academic? Where is there a place in this hall of mirrors for either personality or fraternity?”: very poetic. Indeed, the whole paragraph seems very well written; the sort of thing which one, if they agreed with the essay, would find no shame in memorizing and reciting at relevant junctures of life, appreciated as it can be for its beauty alone
I think the takeaway here, surprise surprise, is that sometimes you need context to explicate something, which is not a bad thing whatsoever
All the ‘best people’ from the gentlemen’s clubs, and all the frantic Fascist captains, united in common hatred of Socialism and bestial horror at the rising tide of the mass revolutionary movement, have turned to acts of provocation, to foul incendiarism, to medieval legends of poisoned wells, to legalize their own destruction of proletarian organizations, and rouse the agitated petty-bourgeoise to chauvinistic fervor on behalf of the fight against the revolutionary way out of the crisis.
— Communist pamphlet
I very much disagree at just about every turn with what this quote says, but I see no great reason to dismiss it on account of some polemical phrasage. Much like the previous quote, it has a bit of a poetry to it
If a new spirit is to be infused into this old country, there is one thorny and contentious reform which must be tackled, and that is the humanization and galvanization of the B.B.C. Timidity here will bespeak canker and atrophy of the soul. The heart of Britain may be sound and of strong beat, for instance, but the British lion’s roar at present is like that of Bottom in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream – as gentle as any sucking dove. A virile new Britain cannot continue indefinitely to be traduced in the eyes or rather ears, of the world by the effete languors of Langham Place, brazenly masquerading as ‘standard English’. When the Voice of Britain is heard at nine o’clock, better far and infinitely less ludicrous to hear aitches honestly dropped than the present priggish, inflated, inhibited, school-ma’amish arch braying of blameless bashful mewing maidens!
— Letter in Tribune
I think without cultural context, I will not be able to understand precisely what this is saying, but the gist seems to be the author’s dislike of certain dialects of British English, particularly one associated with Langham Place, which is characterized as “effete” and having “languors” (I assume effete is like fête, and languors sounds like languish, so its not hard to understand that an insult is being made without needing to know the exact meanings)
So it used some thesaurousy words, is that such a bad thing? I might never have had occasion to learn what “to traduce” meant had I not read this, and now my vocabulary is one word the better for it
The “dying metaphors” paragraph seems to at the last bemoan language change, which is fine if you want to do that, I guess, but you may as soon bemoan the tide’s flow
The “operators, or verbal false limbs” paragraph seems to but espouse an opinion of style comparable in questionablness to decrying long words when 10¢ words will do (according to whom? Ernest Hemingway who wrote Old Man and the Sea, one of the most boring books in existence due in no small part to its refusal to use any words longer than 3 syllables at the most?). Would he rob us of beauty and precision in language at the altar of mechanical simplicity? Overall in this paragraph, it seems Orwell is studiously ignoring the perfectly valid reasons one might wish to make use of a slightly more circumlocutionary tenor (note the subtle distinction between “use” and “make use of”. No doubt Orwell would dismiss the latter out of hand without giving due consideration to the shades of flavor which suggest it to the mind)
The “pretentious diction” paragraph starts out with an arguably fair point about over-sensationalization, but then takes it way too far. He decries loanwords (indeed, calling them “foreign words” as if to distance them in the mind of the reader from Language), while special pleading for his favorites: “ie”, “eg”, and “&c.”, and failing utterly to allow that in all the examples which I recognize as still being in use today, they (surprising nobody except, apparently, Orwell) fill a semantic niche in English and thus we indeed do not lack the real need for them. He characterizes the treatment of Latinate or Hellenic words as more sophisticated than Germanic words as the work of bad writers, and in so doing traduces the writers and speakers of English for the past 1000 years history since the Norman invasion when Norman French became the prestige language and introduced so many of the register distinctions which make English so vibrant and textured today. Then he fits in a final (sasuga unsubstantiated) jab at productive affixes, of all things
(did you see I worked my new word “to traduce” in there?)
The “meaningless words” paragraph starts out with a rant which can only be described as failing utterly to grok the qualitative ephemera which we long to describe but cannot capture but the shadow of, seeing as we do now in part. He takes a short break to make a perfectly valid point that one can lie with language, but then proceeds to attack polysemy (what manner of English will be left after he is done?), but thankfully gets back to the perfectly true point (uncontroversial enough for the most smarmy politician) that one can use language to lie, dupe, and deceive
I am at this present juncture quite too bored to continue through this hit-piece on half of English style
