Aleksandar B. Nedeljković
6.2. Orwell, 1984 In the famous (and, academically very highly respected) novel 1984 (1949) by George Orwell, the political dictatorship is removing undesirable words from the English language, so that the dictionaries become thinner, with the passage of years; words which are not wanted by the government, simply vanish. And many things get new names. This is called Newspeak (“new speak”). At the end of the novel, a whole explanatory Appendix, of about a dozen pages, is devoted to it. This new kind of English, Newspeak, is constructed because the Party so dictates. Some words, which the regime dislikes, disappear from the new editions of the English dictionary. But sometimes a new word is introduced; for instance, any thought not allowed by the Party is “crime-think” or thought-crime. And of course crime-think is punished. Gradually it becomes impossible to think about opposition, free elections, and such things, because the words necessary for such thoughts do not exist any more. And if anyone should try to use the remaining words to criticize the government, even in his mind, that would be, we know what: crime-think. So, the linguistic political arsenal of the opposition is either destroyed, or criminalized. – But the regime does not seem to do this with the purpose of destroying or enslaving any particular ethnic group. Looking seventeen years back in time from Orwell to Huxley’s Brave New World (1932), we find there, too, some “Orwellian” elements of meddling with language; Huxley’s perfectly content clones live in linguistic peace. To quote from Ivana Bančević, “The walls of their prisons are invisible, and they will never even think to get out of these” (Bančević 2009: 51) If the novel 1984 is “engaged prose”, meaning, the prose of political engagement (Đorić-Francuski 2005: 42) (in Serbian: ангажована проза), then surely we see in 1984 the engaged linguistics, too (Serbian: ангажована лингвистика). However, it is a slippery path, linguists getting involved in politics; in the Balkans, at least, linguistics was often a weapon in terrible ethnic and religious conflicts, leading to civil wars, rather than to Orwellian purely political and ideological tyranny. So, the Balkanese, ex-Yugoslav linguist, telling the local politicians what to do, can quickly find himself in a maelstrom of fierce hatreds and tenacious controversies, with each “side” fighting bitterly for some national interest, real or not, and the linguistic truth getting trampled underfoot. (Because, if this is my language, it is also my country, not yours, and I am the boss.) Linguistic tyrannies in the Balkans are ethnic and religious, primarily, and only under the communists was the linguistic tyranny primarily political. The country in Orwell’s 1984, Oceania, seems, at least, ethnically firmly united. 6.3 A Clockwork Orange One such novel, academically praised and studied (including one recent work by Ms Mirna Radin-Sabadoš), is A Clockwork Orange by Anthony 94
Липар / Часопис за књижевност, језик, уметност и културу