While Orwell’s list of linguistic ‘swindles and perversions’ – including ‘dying metaphors,’ ‘meaningless words’ and ‘pretentious diction’ – continues to characterise much of contemporary political discourse, it should be questioned by a subtle alteration in the analysis of language used within the public and political spheres.Ĭontemplating the death of the metaphor requires the acknowledgement of language and semantic fields as markers of complex value systems.
Preoccupied with the ‘decay’ of his mother tongue and the political implications inherent to such a decline, Orwell defines the source of such linguistic decadence as a ‘reduced state of consciousness’ in which the metaphor is dead, and pretentiousness prevails.
First published in 1946, George Orwell’s commentary on political language remains culturally salient.
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