Reader Radio Jura Timpone Newspeak

TWITTER IS ORWELLIAN NEWSPEAK

You could compare Newspeak to Twitter.
It's the destruction of the language to make it very simple.
When you simplify the language
you simplify the thoughts that language can convey and express.
When you eliminate language you eliminate the thought process.
And the powers-that-be have figured that out.
140 characters is all you can do.
It's a very important component of 1984 -- Newspeak.
It's destroying words,
it's destroying language,
it's destroying the ability of people to communicate thoughts.
Because thought is crime -- thoughtcrime.
It's a crime to think.

I wonder if you've seen this You Tube of your radio interview with Patrick Timpone where you explain "Newspeak"?

WHAT IS TWITTER?, video by Under The Radar Media (note: the original video posted on Aug 31, 2011 was up-dated with different images on Sep 15, 2011)

Thanks "doubleplusmuch" for bringing that video to my attention because actually I hadn't seen it yet.

Transcribed above is my explanation of NEW-SPEAK from the interview, and below is Orwell's explanation of NEWSPEAK from "1984". Mine's a "twitter" version, compared to his:

...It was intended that when Newspeak had been adopted once and for all and the Oldspeak forgotten, a heretical thought - that is, a thought diverging from the principles of Ingsoc - should be literally unthinkable, at least so far as thought is dependent on words...

We're destroying words - scores of them, hundreds of them, every day. We're cutting the language down to the bone. In the final version of Newspeak there'll be nothing else. It's a beautiful thing, the destruction of words. The great wastage is in the verbs and adjectives, but there are hundreds of nouns that can be got rid of as well. It isn't only the synonyms; there are also the antonyms. After all what justification is there for a word which is simply the opposite of some other word? A word contains its opposite in itself. Take 'good', for instance. If you have a word like 'good', what need is there for a word like 'bad'? 'Ungood' will do just as well - better, because it's an exact opposite, which the other is not. Or again, if you want a stronger version of 'good', what sense is there in having a whole string of vague useless words like 'excellent' and 'splendid' and all the rest of them? 'Plusgood' covers the meaning; or 'doubleplusgood' if you want something stronger still. In the final version of Newspeak there'll be nothing else. The whole notion of goodness and badness will be covered by only six words - in reality, only one word....

"Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it. Every concept that can ever be needed, will be expressed by exactly one word, with its meaning rigidly defined and all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten. Every year fewer and fewer words, and the range of consciousness always a little smaller. There's no reason or excuse for committing thoughtcrime...

By the year 2050 - earlier probably - all real knowledge of Oldspeak will have disappeared. The whole literature of the past will have been destroyed. Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Byron - they'll exist only in Newspeak versions, not merely changed into something different, but actually changed into something contradictory of what they used to be. Even the literature of The Party will change. Even the slogans will change. How could you have a slogan like "freedom is slavery" when the concept of freedom has been abolished? The whole climate of thought will be different. In fact there will be no thought, as we understand it now. Orthodoxy means not thinking - not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness....

READER VIDEO ORWELL TODAY INTERVIEW (Maz explains that he put together images from Orwell Today articles over the soundtrack of Jackie Jura speaking about what's going on in Libya)

Jackie Jura
~ an independent researcher monitoring local, national and international events ~