9/29

Political and Persuasive Speech:

First and foremost, I was struck by how critical Orwell was in his article. He reproaches writers, especially political writers, for their unnecessarily verbose, embellished, and complicated style of writing. Essentially, political writing is BAD writing. Personally, I never thought such writing was a bad thing. Sure, such writing may be at first difficult to understand, but I usually associate it as a mark of intelligence and sophistication--scholarly writing. According to Orwell, however, such writing is ridden with inflated speech and complex euphemisms; it's resplendent with mixed images, pre-fabricated phrases, needless repetition, and vagueness.  It is convoluted, complicated and obscures a writer's meaning. After all, it's imagery and meaning that a good writer should always pay heed to. 

It really made me re-examine the way I write as well. Orwell stresses simplicity--and I never tend to write simply!

Orwell identifies several faults found in political and persuasive speech: dying metaphors, operators or verbal false limbs, pretentious diction, and meaningless words.

Here is an excerpt of political discourse, and it is scrutinized using Orwell's faults:

We are not deceived by their pretenses to piety. We have seen their kind before. They are the heirs of all the murderous ideologies of the 20th century. By sacrificing human life to serve their radical visions -- by abandoning every value except the will to power -- they follow in the path of fascism, Nazism, and totalitarianism. And they will follow that path all the way, to where it ends: in history's unmarked grave of discarded lies. Americans are asking: How will we fight and win this war? We will direct every resource at our command -- every means of diplomacy, every tool of intelligence, every instrument of law enforcement, every financial influence, and every necessary weapon of war -- to the disruption and to the defeat of the global terror network.

The Rhetoric of 9/11: President George W. Bush

Address To a Joint Session of Congress Following 9/11 Attacks

Faults (to name a few):

Orwell might find fault for the use of fascism, Nazism, and totalitarianism--

"Follow in the path...to where it ends"--might be considered pretentious and very vague

 ..."of fascism, Nazism, and totalitarianism"--Orwell finds fault in the use of these words; he indicates that such words signify what is undesirable and may also have varying, unspecific meanings.  

"..in history's unmarked grave of discarded lies"--sounds poetic, but in the case of political discourse, it's completely pretentious and lacks meaning; what exactly is being referred to, what and where is "history's unmarked grave of discarded lies?" 

"...every means of diplomacy, every tool of intelligence, every instrument of law enforcement, every financial influence, every necessary weapon of war"--has repetition and parallelism, but again, according to Orwell, this is "bad writing." This part is vague, pretentious, and misleading--How much is "every"? What kind of "diplomacy", "tool of intelligence", "instrument of law enforcement"?