chemistry

Newspeak

Newspeak is a chemistry topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Newspeak rather than just read about it. In short: In the 1949 dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (also published as 1984), by George Orwell, Newspeak is the fictional language of Oceania, a totalitarian superstate. To meet the ideological requirements of Ingsoc (English Socialism) in Oceania, the Party created Newspeak, a controlled language of simplified grammar and restricted vocabulary designed to prevent people from being able to think critically.

Key takeaways

Newspeak belongs to chemistry; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Newspeak to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Newspeak from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

In the 1949 dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (also published as 1984), by George Orwell, Newspeak is the fictional language of Oceania, a totalitarian superstate. To meet the ideological requirements of Ingsoc (English Socialism) in Oceania, the Party created Newspeak, a controlled language of simplified grammar and restricted vocabulary designed to prevent people from being able to think critically. The Newspeak language thus limits the person's ability to articulate and communicate abstract concepts, such as personal identity, self-expression, and free will, which are thoughtcrimes, acts of personal independence that contradict the ideological orthodoxy of Ingsoc collectivism. In the appendix to the novel, "The Principles of Newspeak", Orwell explains that Newspeak follows most rules of English grammar, yet is a language characterised by a continually diminishing vocabulary; complete thoughts are reduced to simple terms of simplistic meaning. The political contractions of Newspeak – Ingsoc (English Socialism), Minitrue (Ministry of Truth), Miniplenty (Ministry of Plenty) – are similar to Nazi and Soviet contractions in the 20th century, such as Gestapo (Geheime Staatspolizei), politburo (Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union), Comintern (Communist International), kolkhoz (collective farm), and Komsomol (communist youth union). Newspeak contractions usually are syllabic abbreviations meant to conceal the speaker's ideology from the speaker and the listener.

Development of Newspeak As a constructed language, Newspeak is a language of planned phonology, limited grammar, and finite vocabulary, much like the phonology, grammar, and vocabulary of Basic English (British American Scientific International Commercial English), which was proposed by the British linguist Charles Kay Ogden in 1930. As a controlled language without complex constructions or ambiguous usages, Basic English was designed to be easy to learn, to sound, and to speak, with a vocabulary of 850 words composed specifically to facilitate the communication of facts, not the communication of abstract thought. While employed as a propagandist by BBC during the Second World War (1939–1945), Orwell grew to believe that the constructions of Basic English, as a controlled language, imposed functional limitations upon the speech, the writing, and the thinking of the users. When Orwell visited his aunt Ellen Kate Limouzin and her husband Eugène Lanti in Paris, the couple conversed in the constructed international auxiliary language of Esperanto at home as Lanti refused to speak French. Orwell suffered as a non-speaker of Esperanto and developed a strong dislike for the language, which some scholars have suggested as influential in the development of Newspeak. In the essay "Politics and the English Language" (1946) and in "The Principles of Newspeak" appendix to Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), Orwell discusses the communication function of English and contemporary ideological changes in usage during the 1940s. In the novel, the linguistic decadence of English is the central theme about language-as-communication.In the essay, Standard English was characterised by dying metaphors, pretentious diction, and high-flown rhetoric. Orwell concludes: "I said earlier that the decadence of our language is probably curable. Those who deny this [decadence] may argue that language merely reflects existing social conditions, and that we cannot influence its development, by any direct tinkering with words or constructions." Orwell argued that the decline of English went hand-in-hand with the decline of intellectualism among society, and thus facilitated the manipulation of listeners and speakers and writers into consequent political chaos. The story of Nineteen Eighty-Four portrays the connection between authoritarian regimes and doublespeak language, earlier discussed in "Politics and the English Language":

When the general atmosphere is bad, language must suffer. I should expect to find – this is a guess, which I have not sufficient knowledge to verify – that the German, Russian and Italian languages have all deteriorated in the last ten or fifteen years, as a result of dictatorship. But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought. In contemporary political usage, the term Newspeak is used to impugn an opponent who introduces new definitions of words to push a political agenda.

Principles To eliminate the expression of ambiguity and nuance from Oldspeak (Standard English) in order to reduce the English language's communication functions, Newspeak uses simplistic constructions of language, such as the dichotomies of pleasure vs. pain and happiness vs. sadness. Such dichotomies produced the linguistic and political concepts of goodthink and crimethink that reinforce the totalitarianism of The Party over the people of Oceania. The long-term goal of The Party is that, by 2050, Newspeak would be the universal language of every member of The Party and of Oceanian society, except for the Proles, the working class of Oceania. In Newspeak, English root-words function both as nouns and as verbs, which reduces the vocabulary available for the speaker to communicate meaning; e.g. as a noun and as a verb, the word think eliminates the word thought to functionally communicate thoughts, which are the products of intellectualism. As a form of personal communication, Newspeak is spoken in staccato rhythm, using short words that are easy to pronounce, so that speech is physically automatic and intellectually unconscious, by which mental habits the user of Newspeak avoids critical thinking. English words of comparative and superlative meanings and irregular spellings were simplified; thus, better becomes gooder and best becomes goodest. The Newspeak prefixes plus- and doubleplus- are used for emphasis, e.g. pluscold means "very cold" and doublepluscold means "extremely cold". Newspeak forms adjectives by appending the suffix -ful to a root-word, e.g. goodthinkful means "orthodox in thought"; whilst adverbs are formed by adding the suffix -wise, e.g. goodthinkwise means "in an orthodox manner".

… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Newspeak

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Newspeak claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In chemistry, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Newspeak before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Newspeak ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Newspeak

In research: Newspeak appears in chemistry research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Newspeak in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Newspeak is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Censorship, Constructed languages introduced in the 1940s, Controlled English, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Newspeak outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

Affiliate

Preply — study more efficiently by working with a personal tutor. 50% off.

How to study Newspeak in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Newspeak means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Newspeak out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Newspeak in simple terms?

Why does Newspeak matter?

Because it connects several chemistry ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Newspeak?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Newspeak.