As said in my previous entry, in his essay ‘Politics and the English Language’, George Orwell discusses the decadency of both our civilization and our language. For our activity in class, we mainly focused on the decadency of the written english language. As Orwell suggests we should aim for a simple language, and try to eliminate those bad habits we have become accostumed to such as pretentious vocabulary, metaphors, jargon, foreign words, and even long sentences.
The activity carried out in class was to modify four speeches given by some important politicians, such as John F. Kennedy, George W.Bush and Martin Luther King. We had to rewrite the speeches in a very simple way, which is what Orwell suggests, or in the opposite way, full of pretentious vocabulary, metaphors, etc. I focused on rewriting those speeches that were intended to be changed into Orwell’s “ideal language”, thus had to cut out sentences, remove any type of metaphors, etc.
At first I thought that what Orwell suggested was ridiculous, and that the way in which we expressed ourselves was fine, believing that by writing in that manner we described things more accurately. However, I have come to the realization that maybe it isn’t that way, maybe we can be even more accurate by finding precise words and writing in shorter sentences. We have been tought our entire life to describe things in that manner, ‘the more, the better; and the more complicated to understand, even better!’. This is the way I have written during my school years; essays, speeches, etc; writing a lot to explain one thing. Maybe it is time to start changing this; try to explain things so that people reading it can understand it easily.
However, if we are supposed to write only the essential, won’t writing (and reading) become a little too boring. We will only read the core, never the extra, the details, how people, authors, feel about that certain matter they are describing. The key to a good language in my opinion, is when there is a balance between the two, not too much but never too little.
Hi Javiera! I think it is excellent how you have provided readers a clear background of the packet and of the speeches in your first two paragraphs. They are direct and easy to understand.
ReplyDeleteI love how you have included your opinion in your third paragraph. Readers like myself will be able to relate better to you with this and react to it. I personally have not been taught by the saying: ‘the more, the better; and the more complicated to understand, even better!’I have been taught by the saying 'quality over quantity'
Some areas of this piece of writing has spelling mistakes, punctuation errors and awkward sentence construction. I think you meant "taught" instead of "tought" and the first sentence of your last paragraph "However, if we are supposed to write only the essential, won’t writing (and reading) become a little too boring." should be ending with a question mark instead of a full stop. Be careful of these!
Overall, I enjoyed reading this Javiera! Good Job!