Politics

Laura Catter
Christy Vance
English 102 -009
Response to "Politics and the English Language"

At first I wasn't very excited about this reading. As I read the introduction, I felt like it was the beginning of the same argument that I have seen several times already in my Anthropology class; that the English language is being lost and that there needs to be a return to “standard” English and pious observation of grammatical laws. It is an argument that I fundamentally disagree with, but that's another topic.

As I continued to read Politics and Orwell slowly came to his point, I found myself warming up to his topic. I even found myself laughing at his sarcasm a couple of times. He makes a rather moving point, so much that I am finding it difficult to write this as I look over my words and notice how predictable they are. The trite, warn out phrases that Orwell denounces in Politics are something that I have noticed and hated about my own writing. These phrases do seem to come naturally. On one hand, I would like to avoid them and be more creative – or precise as Orwell would have it. On the other, I feel like these phrases, this language he writes about, is almost obligatory. It seems like it is becoming necessary to be understood and/or to be taken seriously to inflate your writing with this pretentiousness.

This could be due to the prolonged use of “fluff,” as it is apparent that no movement was begun as Orwell plead to eradicate this type of writing by the fact that Politics was written some sixty three years ago and is still all too true. It is dated in some places, and some of the particulars mentioned are no longer prevalent, and it is also clear at times that his audience is not American students (“avoiding Americanisms”) but overall is still applicable to “modern” writing. If anything, it may be even more common today, bordering on mandatory.

As far as being a persuasive piece of writing goes, Politics is successful. I began reading it with doubt, but ended up understanding Orwell's point, and even agreeing with it to an extent. The actualy "politics" bit of it does come in a bit late. In fact, Orwell takes some time to develop the point that writing is devolving in the first place, and only toward the end gets around to mentioning the involvment of politics in this. But I feel like it was still an effective strategy and I think Politics serves both as an example of an argument essay, and a good piece of advice for writing in general.