Language and Power
نویسنده
چکیده
Under the immediate appearance of a simple prose, Orwell’s masterpiece Nineteen Eighty–Four is a philosophical understanding of dictatorship, which is still relevant nowadays as a source of reflections about power. Indeed, the book was regarded by the dissident intellectuals of the East as a “realistic and detailed analysis of the mechanisms of power”1, rather than as just a novel. The device that makes totalitarian domination possible is clearly shown in the novel as a scheme that operates in order not only to manipulate, but mainly to define the domain of truth: the Newspeak. It is in relation to it that the language fully acquires its importance in the novel. Undeniably, by controlling language and information through a complex coercive apparatus, the Party realizes a mind control of its subjects that is “total” in both extension and intensity. In extension, because the totality of the subjects is dominated; in intensity, because any individual thought is totally dominated. To understand how Orwell can conceive of such a tragic result in relation to the language, the ontological foundation of this linguistic device has to be investigated. This is well shown in the novel, particularly by some O’Brien’s statements:
منابع مشابه
Power Relations among Different Test Parties from the Perspective of Critical Language Assessment
Critical Language Assessment (CLA) argues that language testing is a form of social practice and an agent of cultural, social, educational as well as ideological agendas. As such this article scrutinized the power that different groups of people including, teachers, students and their parents own at the levels of developing, administrating and interpreting Iranian University Entrance Examinatio...
متن کاملPredictive Power of Involvement Load Hypothesis and Technique Feature Analysis across L2 Vocabulary Learning Tasks
Involvement Load Hypothesis (ILH) and Technique Feature Analysis (TFA) are two frameworks which operationalize depth of processing of a vocabulary learning task. However, there is dearth of research comparing the predictive power of the ILH and the TFA across second language (L2) vocabulary learning tasks. The present study, therefore, aimed to examine this issue across four vocabulary learning...
متن کاملPredictive Power of Involvement Load Hypothesis and Technique Feature Analysis across L2 Vocabulary Learning Tasks
Involvement Load Hypothesis (ILH) and Technique Feature Analysis (TFA) are two frameworks which operationalize depth of processing of a vocabulary learning task. However, there is dearth of research comparing the predictive power of the ILH and the TFA across second language (L2) vocabulary learning tasks. The present study, therefore, aimed to examine this issue across four vocabulary learning...
متن کاملPower and Politics of Language Use: A Survey of Hedging Devices in Political Interviews
One tactful strategy in political rhetoric is hedging which is associated with vagueness and innuendos. Despite the studies that address hedging in academic discourse and conversation analysis, studies that investigate hedges in relation to political power, face, and politeness are tremendously few. To this aim, four political interviews were selected from CNN and BBC websites on the basis of t...
متن کاملTranslation of Power and Solidarity Pronouns in Qur’anic Rhetoric
Translation of the Holy Quran can be difficult for translators in terms of accuracy and translatability. Sometimes translators fail to render the Quranic thoughts because of the lack of language features in target languages. This results in an unfavorable interpretation. One of the challenging aspects of translating Quran is reference switching as rhetorical devices, which are widespread i...
متن کاملApplying Mitigation Devices in Request Speech Act: Do Gender and Language Proficiency Have any Effect?
This study aims to examine how Iranian EFL learners perceive and apply mitigation devices in request speech act in 4 asymmetrical situations. Role-play interactions and questionnaires were used to elicit the required data from Iranian informants (male vs. female). The results obtained from the analysis of data revealed that in identical situations, male requestors were comparably more certain t...
متن کامل