"If thought corrupt language, language can corrupt thought" Discuss
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Introduction
"If thought corrupt language, language can corrupt thought" Discuss By Jimmy Jackson This is a statement from the "Politics and the English language" written by George Orwell. He says, " A bad usage can spread by tradition and imitation". The whole essay is mocking other writers on their language usage. He claims that the language is not used to its full extent. People use words the size of continents and in the end those big words say the same thing as a three-letter word. Those people also end up confusing them selves in the end. I do believe that language is changed by thought. After all it is the mind that is the one that thinks of the sentences and it's thought that may corrupt the language. After all language does not write it self on a paper. The mind can basically create any thing with language. This is why every thing works in theory. But practically it doesn't. I do believe that man creates language to express our selves. ...read more.
Middle
So at the moment humans are the only ones that have a language. It might be that other animals have languages as well. But the humans have yet to discover this. It has been discovered that animals do have some sort of communication but we cant yet speak dog or cat. Language can corrupt thought as well. A great example is the novel nineteen eighty-four. As part of a great totalitarian state the government creates one language, newspeak, where no emotion words are in the dictionary. With newspeak there is no way of expressing the true emotions, like hate towards Big Brother or love towards one and other. It is possible to disagree with the party by using double negation, or making up words. But the characters in the novel are to scared to do so, because if they do they are committing the act of thought crime, and for that they could be vaporized or worse. Communists set up the whole idea of Big Brother. So as mentioned before this might have to do with the fact that those people want to restrict the growth of the left hemisphere of the brain, as this is the part that lets us speak and write language. ...read more.
Conclusion
I would be the one who spoilt the language, because what word could you use to replace believe? Synonyms of believe are: (according to oxfords Thesaurus.) accept, be certain of, be convinced of, count on, assume, conjecture, consider, gather, and guess. All of these words might be the same, but they cant really replace believe, because as all words, believe has a unique meaning that cant exactly be replaced. In conclusion to ascertain as to if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought, I totally agree. But I don't take the statement as serious as George Orwell does. He gives many examples of bad writing in the essay Politics and the English language, but I think I speak for everyone that one of those examples we use in our language every day. Does this make us bad writers? According to Orwell we are. I know it's just his opinion but he defiantly takes extremes and basically says that all essays, novels, political speeches that don't look like his own style of writing, are bad language. Word Count: 1120. ...read more.
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