Politics and the
English Language Response
The article
Politics and the English Language by George Orwell gave me an insight to the English
language that I had never noticed before.
When I thought that people were using big words, and “professional” ways
of stating things, in actuality they were just being lazy. It never occurred to me that by using words
in a way that knowledgeable writers do is in a way just trying to sound
dignified rather than stating things the way that they would in a normal
conversation. The article has made me
rethink the ways to say things, because I would rather sound like me and use my
brain rather than be lazy and try to use words that I think sound better just
because others have written like it. I think that reading this article brings
to light the idea of originality and creativity in a persons writing and
thought process in a way that hasn’t been said before.
In the
first few pages of the article, Orwell gives a few samples of writing from
different papers, books, essays, even a communist pamphlet. Which I can say without a doubt, confused the
hell out of me. I read the samples a few
times over and each time they seemed to make less and less sense. I have always looked at that literature in a
way of being over my head which would be why it made no sense but instead I
look at it more along the lines of, the author suffering from lack of
creativity.
If this is
the way that language will continue wouldn’t it become like a snowball and continue
to be just as lazy? Why wouldn’t more teachers show this article to prove to
their students that they should write as themselves and not in a manner that
sounds smarter but in a way that shows creativity and knowledge of the
subject? I think about this in terms of
the essays or opeds for this class. A lot of times you see students try to “bulk
up” their essays by stating things that have little to no reference to a topic
or if it does include the topic the way the words are put together make no
sense. I know for a fact that I have
done this multiple times because I thought it would get me the better grade,
which I am still not entirely sure isn’t the case. I feel like a lot of teachers and professors
in universities these days not only want you to sound like someone with a
masters but they are more concerned with the vocabulary, structure, and grammar
of a paper rather than the content.
Specifically
looking at my first op ed that I had written for 214, there were dozens of
times I said a word because I thought it sounded better than saying what I
actually meant. Which did not help my
grade at all on that paper and instead completely misconstrued my ideas and
kind of made me sound like a moron. Now of course the lack of knowledge about a
topic and in this case especially my topic, can add to a unimaginative and lazy
vocabulary, but mainly it was because I thought it would get me a better grade. That did not happen.
Before
reading this article I had the notion that lazy writing meant lack of facts, or
bad grammar, or even too many facts and statements versus original
writing. But I think now that it is more
so the lack of imagination and voice in a paper. It makes me want to go back and look at all
of the other papers I have written for classes and highlight the words that
Orwell uses as samples. I am sure I
would find more than a few in each paper.
This makes me sad because I have always been someone who thrives on
imagination and creativity and learning how to entangle both of those concepts
in my writing. I feel like going to
college stole a part of my creativity that I once loved. Having someone constantly tell you how to
write, how to think, and how grasp ideas takes away any sense of creativity
that someone might have. I think the
idea that Orwell is really trying to get across is to be yourself, that’s where
the real writing comes in.
Comments
Post a Comment