Let me start off by saying this was a really good read. George Orwell shows how the government try and control the nation simply though manipulative language. He says how the government believed that if they removed a word from our vocabulary that it would remove the action its self. For example, if you remove the violence, there will never be any more violence.
The book 1984 focuses on the character of George smith who works for the government, censoring newspapers to erase what had happened in the past. Hence the phrase “he who controls the present, controls the past , he who controls the past controls the future. “ In the book they produce a new (tiny) dictionary known as newspeak. Word meanings had been changed such as ‘love is hate and peace is war.
Now to me, this is all a load of rubbish. How could this ever possibly work? It is clear that it does not work. It has been tried before and has failed. I mean just look at the UK. We try to remove racist words from vocab. Sure we can do that but does it solve the problem of racism? Of course it doesn’t. Unfortunately racism still exists. As for word change, well you’ve the ministry of defence for that one! Used to be called Ministry of war, and now defence. What exactly are we defending? Was the word war too violent?
I don’t think I’ll ever get my head round what the purpose of doing such things, its all a bit crazy for me!
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Very good if not esepecially detailed or systematic bloggin' - excellent work on WINOL this term - but must make sure everything is true - review of student output was good but too messy to edit - an excellent start though.
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