These
five passages have not been picked out because they are especially bad--I
could have quoted far worse if I had chosen--but because they illustrate
various of the mental vices from which we now suffer. They are a little
below the average, but are fairly representative samples. I number them
so that I can refer back to them when necessary:
Dying Metaphors
A newly invented metaphor
assists thought by evoking a visual image, while on the other hand a metaphor
which is technically "dead" (e.g., iron resolution) has in effect reverted
to being an ordinary word and can generally be used without loss of vividness.
But in between these two classes there is a huge dump of worn-out metaphors
which have lost all evocative power and are merely used because they save
people the trouble of inventing phrases for themselves. Examples are: ring
the changes on, take up the cudgels for, toe the line, ride roughshod over,
stand shoulder to shoulder with, play into the hands of, no axe to grind,
grist to the mill, fishing in troubled waters, on the order of the day,
Achilles' heel, swan song, hotbed. Many of these are used without knowledge
of their meaning (what is a "rift," for instance?), and incompatible metaphors
are frequently mixed, a sure sign that the writer is not interested in
what he is saying. Some metaphors now current have been twisted out of
their original meaning without those who use them even being aware of the
fact. For example, toe the line is sometimes written tow the line. Another
example is the hammer and the anvil, now always used with the implication
that the anvil gets the worst of it. In real life it is always the anvil
that breaks the hammer, never the other way about: a writer who stopped
to think what he was saying would be aware of this, and would avoid perverting
the original phrase.
Operators, or Verbal
False Limbs
These save the trouble
of picking out appropriate verbs and nouns, and at the same time pad each
sentence with extra syllables which give it an appearance of symmetry.
Characteristic phrases are: render inoperative, militate against, make
contact with, be subjected to, give rise to, give grounds for, have the
effect of, play a leading part (role) in, make itself felt, take effect,
exhibit a tendency to, serve the purpose of, etc., etc. The keynote is
the elimination of simple verbs. Instead of being a single word, such as
break, stop, spoil, mend, kill, a verb becomes a phrase, made up of a noun
or adjective tacked on to some general-purpose verb such as prove, serve,
form, play, render. In addition, the passive voice is wherever possible
used in preference to the active, and noun constructions are used instead
of gerunds (by examination of instead of by examining). The range of verbs
is further cut down by means of the -ize and de- formation, and the banal
statements are given an appearance of profundity by means of the not un-
formation. Simple conjunctions and prepositions are replaced by such phrases
as with respect to, having regard to, the fact that, by dint of, in view
of, in the interests of, on the hypothesis that; and the ends of sentences
are saved from anticlimax by such resounding commonplaces as greatly to
be desired, cannot be left out of account, a development to be expected
in the near future, deserving of serious consideration, brought to a satisfactory
conclusion, and so on and so forth.
Pretentious Diction
Words like phenomenon,
element, individual (as noun), objective, categorical, effective, virtual,
basic, primary, promote, constitute, exhibit, exploit, utilize, eliminate,
liquidate, are used to dress up simple statements and give an air of scientific
impartiality to biased judgments. Adjectives like epoch-making, epic, historic,
unforgettable, triumphant, age-old, inevitable, inexorable, veritable,
are used to dignify the sordid processes of international politics, while
writing that aims at glorifying war usually takes on an archaic color,
its characteristic words being: realm, throne, chariot, mailed fist, trident,
sword, shield, buckler, banner, jackboot, clarion. Foreign words and expressions
such as cul de sac, ancien regime, deus ex machina, mutatis mutandis, status
quo, gleichschaltung, weltanschauung, are used to give an air of culture
and elegance. Except for the useful abbreviations i.e., e.g., and etc.,
there is no real need for any of the hundreds of foreign phrases now current
in English Bad writers, and especially scientific, political and sociological
writers, are nearly always haunted by the notion that Latin or Greek words
are grander than Saxon ones, and unnecessary words like expedite, ameliorate,
predict, extraneous, deracinated, clandestine, subaqueous and hundreds
of others constantly gain ground from their Anglo-Saxon opposite numbers.
The jargon peculiar to Marxist writing (hyena, hangman, cannibal, petty
bourgeois, these gentry, lackey, flunkey, mad dog, White Guard, etc.) consists
largely of words and phrases translated from Russian, German or French;
but the normal way of coining a new word is to use a Latin or Greek root
with the appropriate affix and, where necessary, the -ize formation. It
is often easier to make up words of this kind (deregionalize, impermissible,
extramarital, non-fragmentatory and so forth) than to think up the English
words that will cover one's meaning. The result, in general, is an increase
in slovenliness and vagueness.
Meaningless Words
In certain kinds of
writing, particularly in art criticism and literary criticism, it is normal
to come across long passages which are almost completely lacking in meaning.
Words like romantic, plastic, values, human, dead, sentimental, natural,
vitality, as used in art criticism, are strictly meaningless in the sense
that they not only do not point to any discoverable object, but are hardly
ever expected to do so by the reader. When one critic writes, "The outstanding
feature of Mr. Xs work is its living quality," while another writes, "The
immediately striking thing about Mr. X's work is its peculiar deadness,"
the reader accepts this as a simple difference of opinion. If words like
black and white were involved, instead of the jargon words dead and living,
he would see at once that language was being used in an improper way. Many
political words are similarly abused. The word Fascism has now no meaning
except insofar as it signifies "something not desirable." The words democracy,
socialism, freedom, patriotic, realistic, justice, have each of them several
different meanings which cannot be reconciled with one another. In the
case of a word like democracy, not only is there no agreed definition,
but the attempt to make one is resisted from all sides. It is almost universally
felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it: consequently
the defenders of every kind of regime claim that it is a democracy, and
fear that they might have to stop using the word if it were tied down to
any one meaning. Words of this kind are often used in a consciously dishonest
way. That is, the person who uses them has his own private definition,
but allows his hearer to think he means something quite different. Statements
like Marshal Petain was a true patriot, The Soviet Press is the freest
in the world, The Catholic Church is opposed to persecution, are almost
always made with intent to deceive. Other words used in variable meanings,
in most cases more or less dishonestly, are: class, totalitarian, science,
progressive, reactionary, bourgeois, equality.
Now
that I have made this catalogue of swindles and perversions, let me give
another example of the kind of writing that they lead to. This time it
must of its nature be an imaginary one. I am going to translate a passage
of
good English into modern English of the worst sort. Here is a well-known
verse from Ecclesiastes:
"I
returned and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor
the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches
to men of understanding, nor yet favor to men of skill; but time and chance
happeneth to them all."
Here
it is in modern English:
"Objective
consideration of contemporary phenomena compels the conclusion that success
or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate
with innate capacity, but that a considerable element of the unpredictable
must invariably be taken into account."
This
is a parody, but not a very gross one. Exhibit (3), above, for instance,
contains several patches of the same kind of English. It will be seen that
I have not made a full translation. The beginning and ending of the sentence
follow the original meaning fairly closely, but in the middle the concrete
illustrations--race, battle, bread--dissolve into the vague phrase "success
or failure in competitive activities." This had to be so, because no modern
writer of the kind I am discussing--no one capable of using phrases like
"objective consideration of contemporary phenomena"--would ever tabulate
his thoughts in that precise and detailed way. The whole tendency of modern
prose is away from concreteness. Now analyze these two sentences a little
more closely. The first contains forty-nine words but only sixty syllables,
and all its words are those of everyday life. The second contains thirty-eight
words of ninety syllables: eighteen of its words are from Latin roots,
and one from Greek. The first sentence contains six vivid images, and only
one phrase ("time and chance") that could be called vague. The second contains
not a single fresh, arresting phrase, and in spite of its ninety syllables
it gives only a shortened version of the meaning contained in the first.
Yet without a doubt it is the second kind of sentence that is gaining ground
in modern English. I do not want to exaggerate. This kind of writing is
not yet universal, and outcrops of simplicity will occur here and there
in the worst-written page. Still, if you or I were told to write a few
lines on the uncertainty of human fortunes, we should probably come much
nearer to my imaginary sentence than to the one from Ecclesiastes.
As
I have tried to show, modern writing at its worst does not consist in picking
out words for the sake of their meaning and inventing images in order to
make the meaning clearer. It consists in gumming together long strips of
words which have already been set in order by someone else, and making
the results presentable by sheer humbug. The attraction of this way of
writing is that it is easy. It is easier--even quicker, once you have the
habit--to say In my opinion it is a not unjustifiable assumption that than
to say I think. If you use ready-made phrases, you not only don't have
to hunt about for words; you also don't have to bother with the rhythms
of your sentences, since these phrases are generally so arranged as to
be more or less euphonious. When you are composing in a hurry--when you
are dictating to a stenographer, for instance, or making a public speech--it
is natural to fall into a pretentious, Latinized style. Tags like a consideration
which we should do well to bear in mind or a conclusion to which all of
us would readily assent will save many a sentence from coming down with
a bump. By using stale metaphors, similes and idioms, you save much mental
effort, at the cost of leaving your meaning vague, not only for your reader
but for yourself. This is the significance of mixed metaphors. The sole
aim of a metaphor is to call up a visual image. When these images clash--as
in The Fascist octopus has sung its swan song, the jackboot is thrown into
the melting pot--it can be taken as certain that the writer is not seeing
a mental image of the objects he is naming; in other words he is not really
thinking. Look again at the examples I gave at the beginning of this essay.
Professor Laski (1) uses five negatives in fifty-three words. One of these
is superfluous, making nonsense of the whole passage, and in addition there
is the slip alien for akin, making further nonsense, and several avoidable
pieces of clumsiness which increase the general vagueness. Professor Hogben
(2) plays ducks and drakes with a battery which is able to write prescriptions,
and, while disapproving of the everyday phrase put up with, is unwilling
to look egregious up in the dictionary and see what it means. (3), if one
takes an uncharitable attitude towards it, is simply meaningless: probably
one could work out its intended meaning by reading the whole of the article
in which it occurs. In (4), the writer knows more or less what he wants
to say, but an accumulation of stale phrases chokes him like tea leaves
blocking a sink. In (5), words and meaning have almost parted company.
People who write in this manner usually have a general emotional meaning--they
dislike one thing and want to express solidarity with another--but they
are not interested in the detail of what they are saying. A scrupulous
writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four
questions, thus: What am I trying to say? What words will express it? What
image or idiom will make it clearer? Is this image fresh enough to have
an effect? And he will probably ask himself two more: Could I put it more
shortly? Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly? But you are not obliged
to go to all this trouble. You can shirk it by simply throwing your mind
open and letting the ready-made phrases come crowding in. They will construct
your sentences for you--even think your thoughts for you, to a certain
extent--and at need they will perform the important service of partially
concealing your meaning even from yourself. It is at this point that the
special connection between politics and the debasement of language becomes
clear.
In our time it is
broadly true that political writing is bad writing.
Where it is not true,
it will generally be found that the writer is some kind of rebel, expressing
his private opinions and not a "party line." Orthodoxy, of whatever color,
seems to demand a lifeless, imitative style. The political dialects to
be found in pamphlets, leading articles, manifestoes, White Papers and
the speeches of under-secretaries do, of course, vary from party to party,
but they are all alike in that one almost never finds in them a fresh,
vivid, home-made turn of speech. When one watches some tired hack on the
platform mechanically repeating the familiar phrases--bestial atrocities,
iron heel, bloodstained tyranny, free peoples of the world, stand shoulder
to shoulder--one often has a curious feeling that one is not watching a
live human being but some kind of dummy: a feeling which suddenly becomes
stronger at moments when the light catches the speaker's spectacles and
turns them into blank discs which seem to have no eyes behind them. And
this is not altogether fanciful. A speaker who uses that kind of phraseology
has gone some distance towards turning himself into a machine. The appropriate
noises are coming out of his larynx, but his brain is not involved as it
would be if he were choosing his words for himself. If the speech he is
making is one that he is accustomed to make over and over again, he may
be almost unconscious of what he is saying, as one is when one utters the
responses in church. And this reduced state of consciousness, if not indispensable,
is at any rate favorable to political conformity.
In
our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible.
Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges
and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be
defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to
face, and which do not square with the professed aims of political parties.
Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging
and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenseless villages are bombarded from the
air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned,
the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification.
Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along
the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of
population or rectification of frontiers. People are imprisoned for years
without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy
in Arctic lumber camps: this is called elimination of unreliable elements.
Such phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling
up mental pictures of them. Consider for instance some comfortable English
professor defending Russian totalitarianism. He cannot say outright, "I
believe in killing off your opponents when you can get good results by
doing so." Probably, therefore, he will say something like this:
"While
freely conceding that the Soviet regime exhibits certain features which
the humanitarian may be inclined to deplore, we must, I think, agree that
a certain curtailment of the right to political opposition is an unavoidable
concomitant of transitional periods, and that the rigors which the Russian
people have been called upon to undergo have been amply justified in the
sphere of concrete achievement."
The
inflated style is itself a kind of euphemism. A mass of Latin words falls
upon the facts like soft snow, blurring the outlines and covering up all
the details. The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there
is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as it were
instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting
out ink. In our age there is no such thing as "keeping out of politics."
All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies,
evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia. When the general atmosphere
is bad, language must suffer. I should expect to find--this is a guess
which I have not sufficient knowledge to verify--that the German, Russian
and Italian languages have all deteriorated in the last ten or fifteen
years, as a result of dictatorship.
But
if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought. A bad
usage can spread by tradition and imitation, even among people who should
and do know better. The debased language that I have been discussing is
in some ways very convenient. Phrases like a not unjustifiable assumption,
leaves much to be desired, would serve no good purpose, a consideration
which we should do well to bear in mind, are a continuous temptation, a
packet of aspirins always at one's elbow. Look back through this essay,
and for certain you will find that I have again and again committed the
very faults I am protesting against. By this morning's post I have received
a pamphlet dealing with conditions in Germany. The author tells me that
he "felt impelled" to write it. I open it at random, and here is almost
the first sentence that I see: "The Allies have an opportunity not only
of achieving a radical transformation of Germany's social and political
structure in such a way as to avoid a nationalistic reaction in Germany
itself, but at the same time of laying the foundations of a cooperative
and unified Europe." You see, he "feels impelled" to write--feels, presumably,
that he has something new to say--and yet his words, like cavalry horses
answering the bugle, group themselves automatically into the familiar dreary
pattern. This invasion of one's mind by ready-made phrases (lay the foundations,
achieve a radical transformation) can only be prevented if one is constantly
on guard against them, and every such phrase anaesthetizes a portion of
one's brain.
I
said earlier that the decadence of our language is probably curable. Those
who deny this would argue, if they produced an argument at all, that language
merely reflects existing social conditions, and that we cannot influence
its development by any direct tinkering with words and constructions. So
far as the general tone or spirit of a language goes, this may be true,
but it is not true in detail. Silly words and expressions have often disappeared,
not through any evolutionary process but owing to the conscious action
of a minority. Two recent examples were explore every avenue and leave
no stone unturned, which were killed by the jeers of a few journalists.
There is a long list of flyblown metaphors which could similarly be got
rid of if enough people would interest themselves in the job; and it should
also be possible to laugh the not un- formation out of existence, to reduce
the amount of Latin and Greek in the average sentence, to drive out foreign
phrases and strayed scientific words, and, in general, to make pretentiousness
unfashionable. But all these are minor points. The defense of the English
language implies more than this, and perhaps it is best to start by saying
what it does not imply.
To
begin with it has nothing to do with archaism, with the salvaging of obsolete
words and turns of speech, or with the setting up of a "standard English"
which must never be departed from. On the contrary, it is especially concerned
with the scrapping of every word or idiom which has outgrown its usefulness.
It has nothing to do with correct grammar and syntax, which are of no importance
so long as one makes one's meaning clear, or with the avoidance of Americanisms,
or with having what is called a "good prose style." On the other hand it
is not concerned with fake simplicity and the attempt to make written English
colloquial. Nor does it even imply in every case preferring the Saxon word
to the Latin one, though it does imply using the fewest and shortest words
that will cover one's meaning. What is above all needed is to let the meaning
choose the word, and not the other way about. In prose, the worst thing
one can do with words is to surrender to them. When you think of a concrete
object, you think wordlessly, and then, if you want to describe the thing
you have been visualizing you probably hunt about till you find the exact
words that seem to fit. When you think of something abstract you are more
inclined to use words from the start, and unless you make a conscious effort
to prevent it, the existing dialect will come rushing in and do the job
for you, at the expense of blurring or even changing your meaning. Probably
it is better to put off using words as long as possible and get one's meaning
as clear as one can through pictures or sensations. Afterwards one can
choose--not simply accept-- the phrases that will best cover the meaning,
and then switch around and decide what impression one's words are likely
to make on another person. This last effort of the mind cuts out all stale
or mixed images, all prefabricated phrases, needless repetitions, and humbug
and vagueness generally. But one can often be in doubt about the effect
of a word or a phrase, and one needs rules that one can rely on when instinct
fails. I think the following rules will cover most cases:
Political
language--and with variations this is true of all political parties, from
Conservatives to Anarchists--is designed to make lies sound truthful and
murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.
One cannot change this all in a moment, but one can at least change one's
own habits, and from time to time one can even, if one jeers loudly enough,
send some worn-out and useless phrase--some jackboot, Achilles' heel, hotbed,
melting pot, acid test, veritable inferno or other lump of verbal refuse--into
the dustbin where it belongs.
1946 .