George Orwell - 1984

"He who controls the present, controls the past. He who controls the past, controls the future."

In 1984 it is said that control of language by an authoritarian regime can control behaviour and even thought itself. This a very strong idea that i feel is too present in today's society. The theory behind controlling language is that if you can remove a word then you can remove that thing and if you can change a word then you can change the way people think. People won't be able to think something if there is no word for it. An example in 1984 is sex being renamed 'sex crime', labeling sex as a crime so that no one will do it.

The new dictionary in 1984 is called 'newspeak' and in changing the language it also planned to eradicate certain words from the english language. The concept's in this book are so advanced for Orwell's era and even ours. He could even be described as literacy's Einstein. The bureaucracy controls the facts and therefore whatever they say people will believe, for example, peace is war and love is hate. There is also the example in the book of when O'Brien (main antagonist) holds up four fingers and Winston (main protagonist) says he can see four then O'Brien says: "And if the party says that it is not four but five - then how many?", Winston says he can still only see four and is tortured until he truly believes that O'Brien is holding up five fingers.

If anyone opposes the bureaucracy and commits a crime or even a 'thought crime', just thinking about something that is not allowed, the they can be killed and all evidence that they ever existed will be destroyed. This again goes back to the bureaucracy controlling all facts because they can wipe away any evidence of anyone's existence.

Language is a very powerful weapon and it is shown how powerful it can be in 1984. The similarities between today's society and the society presented in 1984 are somewhat uncanny and may have even been caused by the book. For instance, would we even have the phrase 'big brother' if it wasn't first coined in the book? We do now live in a very 'big brother' culture, statistics shows that the average person is caught on CCTV 300 times a day. Not just that, but various world leaders often use language to present ideas in ways that make it seem ok where it might be the complete opposite. A direct example would be that 'The Ministry of Defence', until about the 1920's was called 'The Ministry of War', because that's what it is, but it was renamed to make it seem that it wasn't advocating war. I'm sure that there are endless examples of 1984's influence in today's society and 1984 may well be the single most influential book of all time.