The Complete Novels Of George Orwell (186 page)

In addition, any word–this again applied in principle to every word in the language–could be negatived by adding the affix
un
-, or could be strengthened by the affix
plus
-, or, for still greater emphasis,
doubleplus
-. Thus, for example,
uncold
meant ‘warm’, while
pluscold
and
doublepluscold
meant, respectively ‘very cold’ and ‘superlatively cold’. It was also possible, as in present-day English, to modify the meaning of almost any word by prepositional affixes such as
ante-, post-, up-, down
-, etc. By such methods it was found possible to bring about an enormous diminution of vocabulary. Given, for instance, the word
good
, there was no need for such a word as
bad
, since the required meaning was equally well–indeed, better–expressed by
ungood
. All that was necessary, in any case where two words formed a natural pair of opposites, was to decide which of them to suppress.
Dark
, for example, could be replaced by
unlight
, or
light
by
undark
, according to preference.

The second distinguishing mark of Newspeak grammar was its regularity. Subject to a few exceptions which are mentioned below all inflexions followed the same rules. Thus, in all verbs the preterite and the past participle were the same and ended in -
ed
. The preterite of
steal
was
stealed
, the preterite of
think
was
thinked
, and so on throughout the language, all such forms as
swam, gave, brought, spoke, taken
, etc., being abolished. All plurals were made by adding -
s
or -
es
as the case might be. The plurals of
man, ox, life
, were
mans, oxes, lifes
. Comparison of adjectives was invariably made by adding -
er, -est (good, gooder, goodest)
, irregular forms and the
more, most
formation being suppressed.

The only classes of words that were still allowed to inflect irregularly were the pronouns, the relatives, the demonstrative adjectives, and the auxiliary verbs. All of these followed their ancient usage, except that
whom
had been scrapped as unnecessary, and the
shall, should
tenses had been dropped, all their uses being covered by
will
and
would
. There were also certain irregularities in word-formation arising out of the need for rapid and easy speech. A word which was difficult to utter, or was liable to be incorrectly heard, was held to be
ipso facto
a bad word: occasionally, therefore, for the sake of euphony, extra letters were inserted into a word or an archaic formation was retained. But this need made itself felt chiefly in connexion with the B vocabulary.
Why
so great an importance was attached to ease of pronunciation will be made clear later in this essay.

The B vocabulary
. The B vocabulary consisted of words which had been deliberately constructed for political purposes: words, that is to say, which not only had in every case a political implication, but were intended to impose a desirable mental attitude upon the person using them. Without a full understanding of the principles of Ingsoc it was difficult to use these words correctly. In some cases they could be translated into Oldspeak, or even into words taken from the A vocabulary, but this usually demanded a long paraphrase and always involved the loss of certain overtones. The B words were a sort of verbal shorthand, often packing whole ranges of ideas into a few
syllables, and at the same time more accurate and forcible than ordinary language.

The B words were in all cases compound words.
*
They consisted of two or more words, or portions of words, welded together in an easily pronounceable form. The resulting amalgam was always a noun-verb, and inflected according to the ordinary rules. To take a single example: the word
goodthink
, meaning; very roughly, ‘orthodoxy’, or, if one chose to regard it as a verb, ‘to think in an orthodox manner’. This inflected as follows: noun-verb,
goodthink
; past tense and past participle,
goodthinked
; present participle,
goodthinking
; adjective,
goodthinkful;
adverb,
goodthinkwise;
verbal noun,
goodthinker
.

The B words were not constructed on any etymological plan. The words of which they were made up could be any parts of speech, and could be placed in any order and mutilated in any way which made them easy to pronounce while indicating their derivation. In the word
crimethink
(thoughtcrime), for instance, the
think
came second, whereas in
thinkpol
(Thought Police) it came first, and in the latter word
police
had lost its second syllable. Because of the greater difficulty in securing euphony, irregular formations were commoner in the B vocabulary than in the A vocabulary. For example, the adjective forms of
Minitrue, Minipax
, and
Miniluv
were, respectively,
Minitruthful, Minipeaceful
and
Minilovely
, simply because -
trueful, paxful
, and -
loveful
. were slightly awkward to pronounce. In principle, however, all B words could inflect, and all inflected in exactly the same way.

Some of the B words had highly subtilized meanings, barely intelligible to anyone who had not mastered the language as a whole. Consider, for example, such a typical sentence from a
Times
leading article as
Oldthinkers unbellyfeel Ingsoc
. The shortest rendering that one could make of this in Oldspeak would be: ‘Those whose ideas were formed before the Revolution cannot have a full emotional understanding of the principles of English Socialism.’ But this is not adequate translation. To begin with, in order to grasp the full meaning of the Newspeak sentence quoted above, one would have to have a clear idea of what is meant by
Ingsoc
. And in addition, only a person thoroughly grounded in Ingsoc could appreciate the full force of the word
bellyfeel
, which implied a blind, enthusiastic acceptance difficult to imagine today; or of the word
oldthink
, which was inextricably mixed up with the idea of wickedness and decadence. But the special function of certain Newspeak words, of which
oldthink
. was one, was not so much to express meanings as to destroy them. These words, necessarily few in number, had had their meanings extended until they contained within themselves whole batteries of words which, as they were sufficiently covered by a single comprehensive term, could now be scrapped and forgotten. The greatest difficulty facing the compilers of the Newspeak Dictionary was not to invent new words, but, having invented them, to make sure what they meant: to make sure, that is to say, what ranges of words they cancelled by their existence.

As we have already seen in the case of the word
free
, words which had once borne a heretical meaning were sometimes retained for the sake of convenience, but only with the undesirable meanings purged out of them. Countless other words such as
honour, justice, morality, internationalism, democracy, science
, and
religion
had simply ceased to exist. A few blanket words covered them, and, in covering them, abolished them. All words grouping themselves round the concepts of liberty and equality, for instance, were contained in the single word
crimethink
, while all words grouping themselves round the concepts of objectivity and rationalism were contained in the single word
oldthink
. Greater precision would have been dangerous. What was required in a Party member was an outlook similar to that of the ancient Hebrew who knew, without knowing much else, that all nations other than his own worshipped ‘false gods’. He did not need to know that these gods were called Baal, Osiris, Moloch, Ashtaroth, and the like: probably the less he knew about them the better for his orthodoxy. He knew Jehovah and the commandments of Jehovah: he knew, therefore, that all gods with other names or other attributes were false gods. In somewhat the same way, the Party member knew what constituted right conduct, and in exceedingly vague, generalized terms he knew what kinds of departure from it were possible. His sexual life, for example, was entirely regulated by the two Newspeak words
sexcrime
(sexual immorality) and
goodsex
(chastity).
Sexcrime
. covered all sexual misdeeds whatever. It covered fornication, adultery, homosexuality, and other perversions, and, in addition, normal intercourse practised for its own sake. There was no need to enumerate them separately, since they were all equally culpable, and, in principle, all punishable by death. In the C vocabulary, which consisted of scientific and technical words, it might be necessary to give specialized names to certain sexual aberrations, but the ordinary citizen had no need of them. He knew what was meant by
goodsex–that
is to say, normal intercourse between man and wife, for the sole purpose of begetting children, and without physical pleasure on the part of the woman: all else was
sexcrime
. In Newspeak it was seldom possible to follow a heretical thought further than the perception that it
was
heretical: beyond that point the necessary words were non-existent.

No word in the B vocabulary was ideologically neutral. A great many were euphemisms. Such words, for instance, as
joycamp
(forced-labour camp) or
minipax
(Ministry of Peace, i.e. Ministry of War) meant almost the exact opposite of what they appeared to mean. Some words, on the other hand, displayed a frank and contemptuous understanding of the real nature of Oceanic society. An example was
prolefeed
, meaning the rubbishy entertainment and spurious news which the Party handed out to the masses. Other words, again, were ambivalent, having the connotation ‘good’ when applied to the Party and ‘bad’ when applied to its enemies. But in addition there were great numbers of words which at first sight appeared to be mere abbreviations and which derived their ideological colour not from their meaning, but from their structure.

So far as it could be contrived, everything that had or might have political
significance of any kind was fitted into the B vocabulary. The name of every organization, or body of people, or doctrine, or country, or institution, or public building, was invariably cut down into the familiar shape; that is, a single easily pronounced word with the smallest number of syllables that would preserve the original derivation. In the Ministry of Truth, for example, the Records Department, in which Winston Smith worked, was called
Recdep
, the Fiction Department was called
Ficdep
, the Tele-programmes Department was called
Teledep
, and so on. This was not done solely with the object of saving time. Even in the early decades of the twentieth century, telescoped words and phrases had been one of the characteristic features of political language; and it had been noticed that the tendency to use abbreviations of this kind was most marked in totalitarian countries and totalitarian organizations. Examples were such words as
Nazi
,
Gestapo, Comintern, Inprecorr, Agitprop
. In the beginning the practice had been adopted as it were instinctively, but in Newspeak it was used with a conscious purpose. It was perceived that in thus abbreviating a name one narrowed and subtly altered its meaning, by cutting out most of the associations that would otherwise cling to it. The words
Communist International
, for instance, call up a composite picture of universal human brotherhood, red flags, barricades, Karl Marx, and the Paris Commune. The word
Comintern
, on the other hand, suggests merely a tightly knit organization and a well-defined body of doctrine. It refers to something almost as easily recognized, and as limited in purpose, as a chair or a table.
Comintern
is a word that can be uttered almost without taking thought, whereas
Communist International
is a phrase over which one is obliged to linger at least momentarily. In the same way, the associations called up by a word like
Minitrue
are fewer and more controllable than those called up by
Ministry of Truth
. This accounted not only for the habit of abbreviating whenever possible, but also for the almost exaggerated care that was taken to make every word easily pronounceable.

In Newspeak, euphony outweighed every consideration other than exactitude of meaning. Regularity of grammar was always sacrificed to it when it seemed necessary. And rightly so, since what was required, above all for political purposes, was short clipped words of unmistakable meaning which could be uttered rapidly and which roused the minimum of echoes in the speaker’s mind. The words of the B vocabulary even gained in force from the fact that nearly all of them were very much alike. Almost invariably these words–
goodthink, Minipax, prolefeed, sexcrime, joycamp, Ingsoc, bellyfeel, thinkpol
, and countless others– were words of two or three syllables, with the stress distributed equally between the first syllable and the last. The use of them encouraged a gabbling style of speech, at once staccato and monotonous. And this was exactly what was aimed at. The intention was to make speech, and especially speech on any subject not ideologically neutral, as nearly as possible independent of consciousness. For the purposes of everyday life it was no doubt necessary, or sometimes necessary, to reflect before speaking, but a Party member called upon to make a political or ethical judgment should be able to spray forth the correct opinions as automatically as a machine-gun
spraying forth bullets. His training fitted him to do this, the language gave him an almost foolproof instrument, and the texture of the words, with their harsh sound and a certain wilful ugliness which was in accord with the spirit of Ingsoc, assisted the process still further.