George Orwell Summary for assignment PDF

Title George Orwell Summary for assignment
Course English
Institution Kwantlen Polytechnic University
Pages 1
File Size 33.5 KB
File Type PDF
Total Downloads 101
Total Views 147

Summary

i think itll help you have a clear idea on one of george orwell,s work apart from 1984. best of luck for this sem....


Description

George Orwell, a prominent writer of 20th century, wrote his essay “Politics and the English language” to criticise modern political writing, differentiate between good and bad writing and make his audience (general public) able to identify and comprehend good writing. His main idea behind writing this essay is to explain how political leaders’ thoughts, especially of greed have debased the language and vice versa. The author, near the beginning of his essay, elaborates the flaws due to which he considered the five quoted passages as examples of bad writing and explains how reciprocation of same flaws have deteriorated both the English language and political writing. The major flaw in modern political writing identified by the author is “it’s staleness of imagery and lack of precision” (297) as it not only disconnects the reader from author’s real meaning but also makes them unable to visualize it. Further, Orwell starts elucidating other specific flaws of modern political writing when he states, “incompatible metaphors […represents that] the author is not interested in what he is saying” (298) as according to him, metaphors work as a device to let the audience picturize text’s meaning and if the writer fails to provide appropriate metaphor, whole picturization becomes vague. Another flaw that Orwell mentions is the use of “words like democracy [which have] no agreed definition” (300) as politicians may use them deceptively, thus, deteriorating political writing. Near the middle, Orwell in order to differentiate between good and bad writers, states that a good writer always asks critical and analytical questions before writing which is something that bad writer lack in. After stating this, the author then describes how wicked thoughts of politicians are the cause of debasing English language. He supports this argument when he mentions “political [… writing as] defence of indefensible” (302), thus, if the corrupted defences are stated directly, audience will be enraged. To mitigate this, politicians use euphemism which increases vagueness of the writing, consequently, misleading the audience that further corrupts the English language itself. Near the end, Orwell lists guidelines using which the English language can be restored....


Similar Free PDFs