Winston’s co-worker Syme is compiling a Newspeak dictionary. Orwell uses him as a voice to explain the Party’s thinking. Syme tells Winston his job involves ‘destroying words – scores of them, hundreds of them every day.’ The aim is to have a completely new language by 2050. Syme says proudly that ‘Newspeak is the only language in the world whose vocabulary gets smaller every year’. Rather than have synonyms – words with similar meanings – there will be one word only. Syme uses the word ‘good’ as an example. He claims there is no point in having ‘vague useless words’ like ‘excellent’ or ‘splendid’ when such ideas could be expressed by saying ‘Plusgood’ or ‘doubleplusgood’. Neither will there be words with opposite meanings. Instead of ‘bad’, there will be the word ‘ungood’. The purpose of this, according to Syme, is to ‘narrow the range of thought’. There will be no degrees of meaning in the new language. Names will also be shortened and words run together to make the language even simpler. For example, the Ministry of Love becomes ‘Miniluv’ and the Ministry of Truth becomes ‘Minitrue’. If there are limited words, then there will be limited ideas and thoughtcrime will be impossible because there will be no way for people to express any rebellious impulses they may have.
The Party is not content with destroying the English language; they also intend to destroy English literature. Plays, poems and stories by famous authors will be rewritten in Newspeak and their original meanings lost or contradicted. Therefore, the people will not be infl uenced by the writers’ ideas and will only have the Party’s interpretation of these great works.
Syme says the ultimate result of this new language will be the abolition of thought. The people will be in a state resembling unconsciousness because they will not need to think for themselves at all.
As well as Newspeak, the Party uses contradictory phrases to bend the people to its will. The Party’s slogans – ‘War is Peace’, ‘Freedom is Slavery’ and ‘Ignorance is Strength’ – appear to be completely illogical but by forcing the people to accept them, the Party again exerts
