Not many authors find their names being used as adjectives, but when they do it recalls an entire literary style and context. Dickensian, whisks the imagination back in time to Victorian Engalnd and the colourful characters who populated it, the social contrasts of rich and poor, the costs and benefits of industrialised prosperity, and the far fetched and commonplace happenings that made up the story. Shakespearean, evokes a sense of language used powerfully, persuasively, indeed language taken to such a level that it has become a benchmark for English writing that has dramatic consequernce, descriptive power, psychological precision and narrative drive.
Orwellian, is an altogether darker adjective. The word describes not so much an overall style or narrative world, as a highgly developed skill in the use of language to mislead, obfuscate, and to undermine the rules of discourse so far as they are related to truth and trust, verity and fact. Thompson argues throughout his book, Enough Said, that the gradual but now dangerous decay of public language in the past 30 years has proved Orwell remarkably, and frighteningly prescient.
Orwell's fear that public discourse "would become so debased that it could not support political debate" is being realised in the digitalised, sound bite, fast flow, contested universe of a worldwide webb, 24/7 news in sound and image, and in how that is mirrored in public debate. Polarised opinion, misleading spin, outright lie and denial, the culture of blame, ridicule and claimed certainty, all make difficult, if not impossible, discussion, debate, agreed criteria for constructive argument, and the essential compromises of shared wisdom on which political and public discourse rely.
Orwell's point was that such degradation of language to serve the interests of power, to mislead and control the people, is made possible by a massive conspiracy, a web of linguistic deceit, an increasingly docile population no longer able to be critical of the status quo because the language and access to the truth are being hijacked. When powerful forces corner the market on the media, control the content and perspective of the reality communicated, the public discourse is reduced from dialogue to monologue, from diversity to conformity, from truth as contested and shared to truth that is manufactured in the service of the imposed reality.
Take the word "safe". The Trump campaign and the Trump administration use this word prevasively to project fear, to persuade of the reality of a threat that is personal and national. This in turn creates an ethos of menace and insecurity, such that any means is justified to repel the danger and exclude the dangerous people., the "BAD" people. The word "safe" is a positive word. So when a government insists its first duty is to keep the people "safe", it encourages the people who are told they are unsafe, to trust their government to use whatever powers are needed to protect them. The current legal dispute between the President and the US judges is about a measure claimed to be essential for the safety of American citizens. To the point where the tweeting President says,
"Just cannot believe a judge would put our country in such peril. If something happens blame him and court system. People pouring in. Bad!"
"People pouring in". Perhaps, but the 7 countries identified have no record of exporting terror to the United States. "Our country in such peril." But what has happened to justify this 90 day suspension, including initial revoking of all visas and dual citizenships? "Blame him and the court system". Even the courts can't be trusted, only the Tweeter. And the media are the enemy and lying manufacturers of fake news. And the Intelligence agencies are likewise previously degraded. And the last word in the tweet, "Bad". The word "safe" is not used; in its place is a fusillade of fearmongering.
That paragraph is intentionally deconstructionist. Once the word "safe" is used, and "safety" is given absolute priority, it then becomes a matter of establishing credible threat, enabling sufficient defence, and conferring freedom to act within the constitutional provisions for such a threat. Of course there is the matter of evidence that makes this "peril" credible. There is the matter of the Constitution which confers Presidential power, and if it is breached then so is the legitimacy of the action. The courts decide when such a breach has taken place, that too is in the Constitution. For the President to undermine the independence of the judiciary as the upholder of the Constitution sets a new precedent in Presidential pride, and ignorance.
The word "safe", used in a context where previous rhetoric has painted the world in dark colours, and with a proposed ban on Muslim people, becomes a potent trip-switch for fear, and as such opens the door to the strong protector to "do what it takes". Trump's tweet bristles with Orwellian ambiguities and alleged certainty. One of the more interesting historic consequences of the current dispute between the President and the Courts is its demonstration of precisley the breakdown in public language in which every disagreement becomes a 100% game. One is right, the other wrong. Certainty inflicts deafness to the other point of view. The habit of seeing the world as an arena, and every argument a fight to the death of the other person's viewpoint, is precisley the anatomy of conflict. Thompson's comment is cautionary:
But a rhetorical asymmetry has opened up; it is becoming harder to argue in favour of compromise than against it. In my time as a journalist and editor, I've seen the noun and verb compromise become a pejorative and the adjective uncompromising a compliment. To change one's mind is to execute a u-turn or, in the United States, a flip flop. (130)
What Thompson is arguing for, but lamenting its disappearance, is the capacity of grown up people to behave with maturity, wisdom, respect, and even, God help us, humility:
What has been lost here is the possibility of uncertainty, of listening to others, of consdiering the evidence and the political realities and adjusting one's position accordingly...to a significant extent radicalisation has taken place in the field of rhetoric. (133)
In other words we are showing symptoms of linguistic extremism, of developing and sustaining ideologies which rubbish all alternatives, are suspicious of those who don't share our worldview. We have smothered the instinct for truth as something other than what I would prefer it to be, and in short, become cyncical manipulators of language for the limited ends of my own agenda.
As a Christian, I am compelled to read that last paragraph and reflect deeply on what it means to be told glibly that I live in a post-truth, alternative fact universe, and I'd better get over it. Perhaps, I'd better resist it, call it our for what it is, go on beliecving "you shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free."
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