{"id":19083,"date":"2013-02-19T10:25:32","date_gmt":"2013-02-19T15:25:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=19083"},"modified":"2013-02-19T10:25:32","modified_gmt":"2013-02-19T15:25:32","slug":"orwell-updated-how-politicians-lie-in-plain-speech","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2013\/02\/19\/orwell-updated-how-politicians-lie-in-plain-speech\/","title":{"rendered":"Orwell updated: how politicians lie in “plain speech”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ed Smith<\/a> shows how Orwell’s warning about politicians lying is now out of date because they’ve mastered the art of using “plain language” in aid of untruth:<\/p>\n

Orwell season has led me back to his famous essay \u201cPolitics and the English Language\u201d, first published in 1946. It is written with enviable clarity. But is it true? Orwell argues that \u201cthe great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one\u2019s real and one\u2019s declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words.\u201d<\/p>\n

I suspect the opposite is now true. When politicians or corporate front men have to bridge a gap between what they are saying and what they know to be true, their preferred technique is to convey authenticity by speaking with misleading simplicity. The ubiquitous injunction \u201cLet\u2019s be clear\u201d, followed by a list of five bogus bullet-points, is a much more common refuge than the Latinate diction and Byzantine sentence structure that Orwell deplored.<\/p>\n

We live in a self-consciously plain-spoken political era. But Orwell\u2019s advice, ironically, has not elevated the substance of debate; it has merely helped the political class to avoid the subject more skilfully. The art of spin is not (quite) supplanting truth with lies. It aspires to replace awkward complexities with catchy simplicity. Successful spin does not leave the effect of skilful persuasiveness; it creates the impression of unavoidable common sense. Hence the artifice becomes invisible — just as a truly charming person is considered nice rather than \u201ccharming\u201d.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ed Smith shows how Orwell’s warning about politicians lying is now out of date because they’ve mastered the art of using “plain language” in aid of untruth: Orwell season has led me back to his famous essay \u201cPolitics and the English Language\u201d, first published in 1946. It is written with enviable clarity. But is it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[84,28,53],"tags":[354,400,51,101],"class_list":["post-19083","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-government","category-media","category-politics","tag-georgeorwell","tag-language","tag-pr","tag-tv"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-4XN","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19083","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19083"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19083\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19084,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19083\/revisions\/19084"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19083"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19083"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19083"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}