Talk:List of Newspeak words

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Contents

[edit] Thoughtcrime

"Thoughtcrime" should be removed from this page, since it's an English word in 1984, not a Newspeak word. The Newspeak equivalent is "crimethink". (In Newspeak, "think" serves as both noun and verb, so the word "thought" is unneeded and is abolished.) I'm also fairly sure that "vaporize" is a standard English word in 1984, not Newspeak, though I'll double-check that in the book tonight.

One thing to keep in mind--just because an odd expression is used in 1984, does not mean that the expression is necessarily Newspeak. Newspeak is the official language of the Party, but it is not, at the time of the book, the dominant language; its official adoption date is set for some seventy years later. As is noted in the book, many of the party's slogans would not actually be renderable in Newspeak; one could not translate "Freedom is Slavery" into Newspeak, since there is no Newspeak word meaning "freedom". — Narsil 23:46, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Section on 'the problematic Doubleplus'

I'm not sure that the section on 'the problematic doubleplus' is appropriate for this article. Firstly, while the article itself is a discussion of reasonably important Newspeak words, this section is a discussion of how effective a particular word (or prefix) happens to be; and more generally, the section is not so much a description of Newspeak as a critique of whether the language actually functions in the way Orwell/Ingsoc intended it to.

As it happens, I think the critique is itself mistaken. The purpose of Newspeak, as stated in the book, is not "to make it impossible to think unorthodox thoughts", but, rather, to make it impossible to express unorthodox thoughts in any coherent way (or to think them coherently, insofar as thought depends on language). It would always be possible to phrase crimethinkful opinions--if it's grammatically possible to say "Goldstein is ungood", it's possible to say "Ingsoc is ungood". But what is impossible, in Newspeak, is to explain why Ingsoc is ungood; the language simply does not have the ability to articulate arguments against totalitarianism.

But that's beside the point. It might be that this discussion (whether Newspeak actually succeeds in making it impossible to articulate ungoodthinkful ideas) is appropriate to the article on Newspeak as a whole; but I don't think it makes sense in this article, intended just to be a list of the more important Newspeak words. Narsil 23:35, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

I think Newspeak is intended to do both. Certainly, it is intended to prevent people from having a vocabulary in which to express rebellious thoughts, but also to prevent the rebellious thoughts themselves as much as possible. Orwell himself writes it elsewhere in the appendix: "There were also certain irregularities in word-formation arising out of the need forrapid and easy speech. Aword which was difficult to utter, or was liable to be incorrectly heard [my emphasis], was held to to be ipso facto a bad word. Occasionally, therefore, for the sake of euphony, extra letters were inserted into a word or an archaic formation was retained". It just did not occur to Orwell that this applied very much to the difference between "Doubleplusgood" and "Doubleplusungood". But I think that to to the Party it would have occured long before the completion of worl on Newspeak in 2050, and that they might well have decided that this justified the retention of an archaic word like "evil" or the like. Adam keller 06:07, 13 October 2006 (UTC)
I've been bold and removed the section. It was not well-written, and the speculation about "un" (not doubleplus) being problematic was entirely unsourced (WP:NOR again). Robin Johnson (talk) 10:40, 13 October 2006 (UTC)
I somehow got from somehwere the impression that the purpose of having a discussion in Wikipedia is to reach a consensus before taking that kind of action, but it seems I was wrong. Adam keller 04:24, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Scratch Goodsex?

Should goodsex be on the list of other Newspeak words? It has a paragraph with sexcrime earlier on the page. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 207.69.137.6 (talk) 02:49, 9 December 2006 (UTC).

[edit] Duckspeak

I’ve added a quotation from Orwell’s appendix, “The principles of Newspeak”. To avoid redundancy I wonder if it wouldn’t be pertinent to remove this ―:

Syme, who works on the Newspeak Dictionary, tells Winston:
“ There is a word in Newspeak, I don't know whether you know it: duckspeak, to quack like a duck. It is one of those interesting words that have two contradictory meanings. Applied to an opponent, it is abuse; applied to someone you agree with, it is praise. ”

―and instead fill the gap in the brackets of the appendix quotation (in bold type below)?

“ Ultimately it was hoped to make articulate speech issue from the larynx without involving the higher brain centers at all. This aim was frankly admitted in the Newspeak word duckspeak meaning to quack like a duck. Like various words in the B vocabulary, duckspeak was ambivalent in meaning. Provided that the opinions which were quacked out were orthodox ones, it implied nothing but praise, and when the Times referred to one of the orators of the Party as a doubleplusgood duckspeaker it was paying a warm and valued compliment. ”

―Cesar Tort 19:59, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "Other Newspeak words"

A lot of the items in this section are part of the internal ministry jargon, which Orwell describes as being influenced by Newspeak, but not fully Newspeak. AnonMoos 15:10, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Words w/ their own article

Words that have their own article should just redirect to the corresponding article. For example, "Minipax" should just redirect to "Ministry of Peace" right away. Anyone for making this change? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 152.228.245.174 (talk) 03:18, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] sex crime

"all other forms of sex" links to "extra marital sex" but that's hardly accurate, since "all other forms of sex" could include the following non-extra-marital acts: -masturbation -female orgasm -oral sex -anal sex -sex with a contraceptive —Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.170.84.2 (talk) 00:51, 13 April 2008 (UTC)