Talk:Newspeak

ratwiki Newspeak doubleplusungood, malreports minitru Party education, rectify, upsub, report previous author miniluv. --B.B.

Fox News

I rather think that the paragraph containing the Fox News bit fits quite well with the article. Pinto's5150 ^Talk 20:39, 13 January 2008 (EST)

Rewriting And finally...

Crimestop is subknown newspeakwise, but doubleplusconnectful (and laughful) when talking different rockthinkingswise. It is a learnthink, a learned undofulness to doublethink.

"Crimestop means the faculty of stopping short, as though by instinct, at the threshold of any dangerous thought. It includes the power of not grasping analogies, of failing to perceive logical errors, of misunderstanding the simplest arguments if they are inimical to Ingsoc, and of being bored or repelled by any train of thought which is capable of leading in a heretical direction. Crimestop, in short, means protective stupidity." < ref > p. 220-1 - 1984 < / ref >

Conservapedia has uncluewise never downspeaked this learnthink (unlike Ingsocish Newspeak ^{[citation needed]}), maybe because they unbellyfeel how crimestop backlashes their thinktalkings.

Any thoughts? EVDebs (talk) 19:43, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

Death of Irony?

It is also a common tactic used by creationists, fundy loons, and Kool-Aid drinkers. For example, the substitutions of "creationist" with "cdesign proponentsists" and then "intelligent design proponent" and adding "science" to form "creation science" similarly abuses words and meaning to attempt to gain a political edge.

Was this intentional irony or what? "Fundamentalist" is a perfectly descriptive term - no reason to replace it with fundy loon. Likewise, why equate a reference to mass-suicide/LSD-spiking with a person of any belief that isn't doing said activity?

Either this is proof that irony is dead or this is far too deadpan a joke? (I'd like to hear some thoughts before unceremoniously changing it) 129.161.33.121 (talk) 14:36, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

"fundy loons" seems just fine to me; and apparently you are unaware of the modern phrase "Kool-Aid drinker", used to refer to anyone who has swallowed some whacked out propaganda, as Jim Jones' supporters had (before the mass suicide). I don't see what you think is ironic about this. ħuman 18:47, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

(By the way, the IP address is me. Posted that before I signed up) The reason I see it as wrong is because it's crass demonization. It equates a mistaken belief (Christian Fundamentalism) with mental illness. Deviant, even harmful, behavior is not necessarily a mental illness. Conflating mental illness with fundamentalism dilutes the meaning of both terms. As for the term "Kool-Aid drinker", I'm well aware of it's meaning in common parlance. I'm also aware of it's usage, namely as a thought-terminating cliche i.e. "Pay no attention to him. He's a full-on Kool-Aid drinker". And that's what I find ironic: the usage of thought-terminating cliches and demonizing terms to describe people who use Newspeak-esque terminology. Perceptron (talk) 06:24, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

You might need to rephrase that for clarity. And welcome! ħuman 07:43, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the welcome! We already met before :some sort of emoticon:. I'll try to rephrase what I said: Thought-terminating cliches are used to stop all inquiry into the validity of a person's beliefs. A person's beliefs are valid (or not) because of the beliefs themselves, not because you are told that they are a "fundie loon", a "Kool-Aid drinker", or a "Satanic atheist". Newspeak is a conlang whose intention was to make every word a thought-terminating cliche. (Does that do a better job of getting my beef across? If not, I apologize in advance as I don't have much experience with wiki-authoring. I'm trying to get across the idea that we can't fall prey to using the same tactics as the enemy.) Perceptron 13:06, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

I think the idea is to be in-line with our SPOV. While demonizing is not so much our thing, mockery is what we do. While it may be somewhat ironic in this particular article, the fact that most of our pages include sections like this somewhat softens it (in fact, those that do not, need more goat; we expect a certain degree of sarcastic mockery). Besides which, "Fundie loon" is not an attempt to reshape the meaning of words so much as a transparent insult that's part of our general tone here. And it can hardly be a "thought-terminating cliche" if it's followed by examples giving more specific criticism.

I'm also a little confused by your definition of demonization, which seems way, waaaaaay overly broad. In my experience, "demonization" refers to either a fairly literal accusation ("X is a demon or possessed by demons.") or an attempt to dehumanize someone through a declaration of moral turpitude (such as blood libel). Even if you would refer to more mild moral panic in this way (as seems common now), it's not the same as declaring someone to have a mental illness (which is not a moral condition). Nor is calling someone a "loon" a real accusation of mental illness anymore. Colloquially it's generally applied to any person who thinks silly or foolish things, or has "crazy" beliefs (whether or not they are actually mentally ill). That's not Newspeak. It's undirected semantic change that weakened the meaning of a word through overuse of hyperbole (by people like us).

Such language may be dismissive or contemptuous (in my opinion, good humor inevitably invokes contempt), but it doesn't sink to the depths you accuse it of plumbing.

That said, some jokes are funnier than others, and some just obfuscate. Wiki articles are always being improved; if you think you can do better, try it. --Quantheory (talk) 13:06, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

I disagree with almost everything you just said. But, you told me what I needed to know, so no use arguing about it (except to be pedantic). Thank you. Perceptron (talk) 13:23, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

 *raises eyebrow* I prefer to be corrected. Saying "I disagree" and then not telling me why puts me in quite the uncomfortable position. Not that I want to force you to argue with me; I just hope that if you don't, it's because you don't want to, rather than out of the misguided idea that I'd rather not be contradicted. --Quantheory (talk) 13:39, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

Well, that and "I disagree with you but you told me what I need to know." sounds like "You let me know how ridiculous you all are, which is what I needed to know." I can't assume that's what you meant, but I can't tell what you meant. --Quantheory (talk) 13:43, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

Ugh, no tone of voice is a real impairment to communication. I've been trying to type up what I'm going to say without it being possible to read it in a dickish way, so I'll just be as straight forward as possible: I don't have much experience on wikis so I didn't want to make an assumption about intention and edit something wrongly. All I needed to know was whether it was intended to be ironic or not. Everything else in this conservation is probably just a result of my predisposition to get off-track. It's one of my main failings. So, for that I apologize (Note: When I say "I apologize" or "Thank you", unless it's followed up by [/sarcasm], I'm being sincere - I think it's a dick move to be sarcastic when the written word doesn't convey tone of voice). Perceptron (talk) 14:45, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

Dammit, I really can't leave well enough alone. One of the major beliefs that George Orwell had was that language was becoming sloppy and that this mirrored a general sloppiness and fuzziness of thinking. Even if "fundie loon" is becoming divorced from any meaning through repeated use, that doesn't mean that it's good to encourage that. It's the very thing argued against in "Politics and the English Language" - socialism, fascism, democracy, liberty, etc are allow losing their original meaning and slowing being replaced with simplistic "something good"/"something bad". For <foo deity>'s sake, the article says that adding the term "homophobia" is not Orwellian, because Newspeak is all about removing words to prevent them from being expressed, and then in the very next paragraph it states that removing "nigger" and "cunt" is good because it helps stop the expression racism and sexism. If this is supposed to be ironic, the humor is dryer than the Sahara.

And yes, I know that I can just change the article, but I want to get a feel for what people believe. I haven't been here long enough to make a legitimate claim to common ownership. Maybe everyone's fine with it and my pet peeve for imprecise language is acting up (well, it definitely is acting up. I just want to know if it's the only reason). Perceptron (talk) 15:19, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

"so I'll just be as straight forward as possible" Thank you.

I mostly concur with what you've just said, adding that I think that the type of linguistic decay Orwell points out is inevitable. We can complain about meaningless (or deceptive) phrases, and it may be quite rewarding to do so, but some new ones will always spring up to replace them; it's rather like trying to rid a forest of aspen trees, by hand. Additionally, some phrases will eventually change so much that they become set in a totally new meaning. Eventually one has to admit that the original usage is "dead", and it's counterproductive to insist on an old definition for a term that is now only used to mean something totally different.

"then in the very next paragraph it states that removing "nigger" and "cunt" is good" I don't feel that this paragraph endorses political correctness at all (rather, it blandly states what political correctness is intended to do). In fact, "dirty demeaning" seemed like a slight against it; the implication is that "cunt" was really banned because someone was a prude rather than because the word was particularly demeaning to women. So I think that that contradiction you were pointing out is not really there. Perhaps that would be more clear if the word "slightly" was removed from that paragraph.

The whole situation is somewhat complicated by the fact that we (us at RW) don't seem to have a shared POV on political correctness anyway. I'd hazard a guess that we aren't the most PC group out there, but most of us seem to be bothered more by "political correctness" as a right-wing bogeyman than by actual political correctness itself. Because of this, most of our material on PC is either neutral or has a POV based on whatever pet peeve an editor happened to hold at the time they were writing. Which is how most of RW works, honestly. --Quantheory (talk) 03:44, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

Actually, SPOV or not, that paragraph has nothing to do with Newspeak at all and doesn't even offer any new information to redeem its inclusion in the article. ^gnostic 15:27, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

The bit about C >> cDp >> ID does in a way - it's an attempt to manipulate the language used to gain advantage by limiting thought in the unfamiliar. But the opening sentence doesn't help much. ħuman 19:43, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

But I don't think a blatant rebranding equates to Newspeak. There's a difference between an attempt to manipulate thought through limiting language (which is what Newspeak is) and just trying to bolster an image by changing a word that doesn't have baggage attached to it, which isn't the same as Newspeak at all. ^gnostic

Good point, we shouldn't be allowed to broaden the term to cover such things, just to smear them as "Orwellian", when simply describing them is enough. Are there any good real world examples of NS? Soviet history purges? Dumbing down of US politics to sound bites and three word slogans? ħuman 20:45, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

I think that "intelligent design" and "creation science" are less Newspeak than examples of deceptive framing. By the way, our article on framing is horrible. From a cognitive science perspective, you can only speak in terms of various frames, so all discussion involves framing. The proper thing to complain about is when someone presents information using a frame that doesn't apply, thus encouraging people to lock themselves into a peculiar perspective about something. Bad framing is hard to argue against, because one is not arguing about facts so much as about which concepts are useful for describing those facts. --Quantheory (talk) 03:44, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

undone edit for discussion

The following was a complete rewrite of this section. I undid it and cut to here for discussion, since in places I found it too unclear to copyedit. Also a lot of it just seems irrelevant. ħuman 20:03, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

Yeah... I have to agree. It's fine to try to be silly and snarky, but this reads like an L. Ron Hubbard book. Perceptron, tighten it up a little and make it ramble less, then post it back here so we can talk about it. (I actually don't think it directly relates to Newspeak as Orwell understood it, so we might have to find a different article for it.) EVDebs (talk) 20:08, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

It seems more appropriate to an Essay namespace article than here. The idea behind Newspeak is not synonymous with "Everything Orwell thought about changes to language." and the relevance of the idea to our encyclopedia is mostly explaining the basics, and giving social/historical impact of the idea. As far as I know, Newspeak itself was a thought experiment of Orwell's, never a general-purpose model for talking about changing language. So most of this isn't really directly relevant to the article.

Also, I'm not fond of the topic that's apparently at the center of this essay. "Is the changing of language inherently wrong?" seems like a pretty silly question to me. I can't comprehend how you could even have a human language that doesn't change, nor do I know of anyone who would defend the idea, in general, that new terms should never be coined, or that old terms should never be redefined or abandoned. At the very least that part to be re-phrased. --Quantheory (talk) 01:37, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

I just want to point out to QT that RW is not any kind of encyclopedia. ħuman 02:29, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

Wait, do you mean "RW is not just any kind of encyclopedia" or "RW is not an encyclopedia (of any kind whatsoever)"? Either way my response is: I know we have the "collective essay" model for articles, but I was trying to convey that main namespace content should mostly be relevant to the article's subject, or rather to the intersection of the subject with the RW mission. If it's cleaned up a bit, I think this edit would fit much better in loaded language than here (or again, as part of a personal essay). --Quantheory (talk) 03:18, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

You typed "our encyclopedia". RW is not an encyclopedia. ħuman 03:35, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

Okay, first, since this seems a bit contentious, why not make it so that Newspeak is an article solely about Orwell's conlang? We add in See Alsos for political correctness, loaded language, etc. About the only thing outside of the discussion of the fictional language would probably be when someone is accused of Newspeak - though we should make sure that it is source'd, rather than just "Well, some people have called political correctness Newspeak, but they're wrong".

Second, should I always just post changes to an article on the talk page? Is that the way it's done on RW? Or is just for this article? Or is it just for me? I'm JAQing off here a little bit, but I do legitimately want to know what the etiquette in this situation is. Perceptron (talk) 04:08, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

P.S. Maybe include some of the more relevant vocabulary from Newspeak? I mean, we already have Crimestop in this article, and Doublethink is currently it's own article. Add in some other useful terms, maybe provide some examples? That would let us be academic and snarky at the same time. Perceptron (talk) 04:11, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

Well, thanks for stopping by, but that didn't shed any light on all the verbiage below. ħuman 04:20, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

Why spend time explaining it? It's obvious by the response it got that the style I initially wrote it in isn't appropriate for this wiki. That's fine. (For the record, the style is a pale imitation of Rotten.com's Library) Why should I bang my head into a wall trying to get everybody else to accept my style, when it's far easier to just modify my style to conform with the standard already set? My current problem is just trying to figure out what the standard is. I want to contribute (and when I say contribute, I don't mean "every article should exactly reflect my own beliefs", I mean "adding something of value to what already exists"). I've read the Community Standards RW:Newcomers, but there seems to be a lot of unwritten rules that I'm just not getting.

It basically comes down to this, I can either spend my time defending my edits, or I can learn what sort of tone/style is acceptable on this wiki. I'd much rather do the latter. Human, you're pretty active and seem pretty knowledgeable: is there any page that really gets into what is and isn't acceptable? I'd rather not have to ask you a parade of questions of the form "Well, is this acceptable?". Perceptron (talk) 06:15, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

Whoawhoahwhoawhoa slow down there. Like I said, it's actually useable for something, it just doesn't seem to belong in this article. If anything, it might be an auxiliary page to Code word or Loaded language. EVDebs (talk) 06:22, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

Well, see, that's part of the reason why I suggested that Newspeak should only talk about the language itself and completely remove the "Use and Abuse of the Term" section. About the only thing that could go there would be references to things like "Joe Politician accused his opponents of using Newspeak". Perceptron (talk) 06:33, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

To reply to one comment before, Perceptron, there is the "style guide" thing (damn where is it? Ah, here) which might help. Also, I know it is stifling, but making many smaller edits all over the place might be a good way to "learn the tone here" rather than trying to add/change whole sections. ħuman 06:36, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

Also, to second the Debster, there's a lot of usable material in what you wrote - trouble is, most of it is already elsewhere on the wiki, and little really had to do with Newspeak. ħuman 06:40, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

I can echo that there is some content there that's useful, but not in Newspeak. The "Homicide Bombing" example stands out to me, not sure what it would fall under, though. There's certainly something afoot in rebranding it like that. ^gnostic 12:56, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

Use and abuse of the term

Newspeak has since become a term that refers to any change in the acceptable vocabulary, usually in the name of political power. This can take many forms, but is mostly seen through the use of loaded language. Ironically, the term Newspeak has since become an example of such loaded language - any change of a language is bound to be called Newspeak and Orwellian by someone.

Is the changing of language inherently wrong? On the one hand, good intentions are not an excuse to act like an Orwellian dictator (see Terror, War on) while on the other hand sometimes terms become forever tainted because it's common usage does not match up with it's literal usage. For example, the term nigger was originally derived from the Spanish/Portugese term "negro" and was a neutral term referring to any person of African descent. Any witless person trying to reclaim the term for it's original meaning today, however, is going to find themselves quickly labeled a racist and/or Nazi. Clearly, sometimes language needs to change.

What is the correct way to go about changing language so that it is effective, neutral, and doesn't push a point of view? Well, if history is any judge, the correct method is just saying "fuck it". For example:

• What do you call a place where you keep all your political and ideological opponents? Concentration camp, relocation camp, internment camp, and various other terms have all been used. The fact that each term has become forever tainted just because all of these places eventually became death camps shouldn't discourage you from finding a new term.
• When Kraft created processed cheese, it's competitors wanted it to be called "embalmed cheese". Which just goes to show that politics aren't the only reason to control language.
• In a move described by most historians as "fucking stupid" ^{[citation NOT needed]}, the Bush administration coined the term homicide bombing to refer to suicide bombing. White House press spokesman Ari Fleischer's defense of the term: "These are not suicide bombings. These are not people who just kill themselves. These are people who deliberately go to murder others, with no regard to the values of their own life. These are murderers. The President has said that in the Rose Garden. And I think that is just a more accurate description of what these people are doing. It's not suicide, it's murder." < ref > http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2002/04/20020412-1.html < / ref >.
• Sea kittens.
• What do you call a non-state entity who murders the families of it's ideological opponents? If you don't like them, then they're terrorists, but if they're fighting for your ideology, then they're freedom fighters.
• You've just gotten fired from your job. Well, not fired. Instead, you've been "laid off", "delayered", "redeployed", "workforce optimized", "simplified", "force shaped", "placed into early retirement", "downsized", "rightsized", "smartsized", and "every-which-but-loose-sized".
• Political correctness is an interesting example. While undoubtedly an attempt to control language, most of the time it's a move towards more neutral terms. Unfortunately, for every "African American" (instead of "Nigger") or "firefighter" (instead of "fireman"), you get ridiculous logic-challenged terms like "womyn" or "personhole" < ref > http://www.futilitycloset.com/2010/07/22/do-gooders/ < / ref >
• Creation scientist, intelligent design, and other similar terms are ways for fundamentalists to lend legitimacy to their beliefs without actually having to do anything.

In short, control of language is not inherently harmful or evil. In fact, whenever someone you agrees with does it, it's merely "restructuring language to better reflect a neutral, factually accurate truth". However, whenever someone you disagree with it does it, it's a "blatant attack on freedom of speech by pushing an extreme point of view through Orwellian Newspeak". Got the difference?

end of cut and paste

Newspeak problems

Unwhite is not necessarily black.

People are likely to remember 'decommissioned words.'

The fact that heterophobia and homophobia are term relatively recently developed proves that Newspeak-as-present-a-language does not extend to all areas. 82.44.143.26 (talk) 17:14, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

WTF? Jack Hughes (talk) 17:26, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

Unwhite can be any colour that is not white (likewise other words). 82.44.143.26 (talk) 17:44, 21 March 2011 (UTC)