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by Joel Aufrecht
04:54 PM, 21 Jul 2004
Orwell's Newspeak destroyed language as a means of independent thought by eliminating many words from the vocabulary and strictly limiting the meanings of other words:
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. ...In contrast, motivational speakers and others of their ilk destroy language by less elegant means, including simply bludgeoning words into submission: The challenge was how to capture this body of knowledge in a unified and dynamic way. So I invited a cross section of people on a retreat where together, we explored the relationship between paradigms, change and leadership.On balance, I think I prefer Newspeak, because it wastes less of one's time to determine that it's nonsense.
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