I thoroughly enjoyed the mock election that we have been working on in class. We tried to be a “Orsinian Fascist” party, after realizing the implications of labelling ourselves as neo-fascists (haha). We called ourselves the “Orsinia Forward” party to symbolize our progressive platform. I got the idea for this from French president Macron’s self-founded party “La Republique en Marche” (The Republic Onward or On the Move) which evoked a strong sense of pride in the country and inclusiveness. I found creating the platform and writing the speech to be pretty interesting, especially in analyzing just how convincing you can make ideas sound that aren’t necessarily logical.
This got me thinking of Orwell and his Politics of the English Language, and wondering if there were actually languages out there that were less fluffy by nature, and did not have the ability to be so deceiving. Furthermore, I don’t really understand what point Orwell is trying to make with his argument. I understand that he shares the opinion that the English language is in decline, but changing it would mean to make a conscious decision for the greater good of something as abstract as a language. Didn’t he understand that people who were being deceitful or insincere were doing it for gain? I don’t understand why someone who would profit from deceitful language would make an effort to make it more transparent. I think it is up to populations to simply be able to analyze language more carefully, or even less realistically, have a very straight forward thinking society that doesn’t tolerate fluffy language. Regardless, while Orwell’s points are interesting, and I can see why these he would ideally want to implement these rules, the situation is simply that – ideal. It is unrealistic to think that this would happen form the person doing the action, rather than solving the problem by making the deceit evoked in the speech ineffective against the target population. As mentioned earlier, this could be done from better education, strong er ability to detect bias etc., which are ironically similar points that people make about today’s media and not believing everything you hear in the news.
Coming back to our speech, it was clear that we were definitely using appeal to emotion and other forms of rhetoric in order to convince the audience (mostly just Daniel) of the legitimacy of our goals and how realistic they were. (Daniel if you are reading this, we are still clearly the superior party and put forth much more realistic ideas, compared to the lofty idealized ambitions of the opposite, sub-par party). We tried to create a bond with the Orsinians, based on our past history and love for our female founder, yet also incorporate views that are more present. This was done to maximize popularity and is reflected in many political parties today.
Piers, thank you for your post. I found it interesting during the election how the two parties reached a similar platform despite radically different ideals. Speaking to the language of the mock-election, it failed to capture that difference well, such that an outside observer would have easily been confused over whether our parties had any serious differences. But I’m not sure that these are reasons to totally eschew the English language. After all, language itself is just a tool, and a society that rejects “fluffy language” could just as easily develop methods of deceit. However, I certainly agree that better education about bias is very important.