Totalitarian Language: Orwell's Newspeak and Its Nazi and Communist Antecedents [Hardcover]

John Wesley Young (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Univ of Virginia Pr (January 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0813913241
• ISBN-13: 978-0813913247
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.5 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,458,288 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Could Newspeak work?, August 31, 2002

By 

Michael Valdivielso (Alexandria, VA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Totalitarian Language: Orwell's Newspeak and Its Nazi and Communist Antecedents (Hardcover)

This book is a three parter. In the first part John W. Young explains to us how language in Orwell's "1984" was used for thought control. In part Two and Three, he compares the fiction to the reality of language and terminology used in Nazi Germany and Communist Russia. Not only does he show us the flaws in totalitarion languages, he even shows us the counter-languages that develop to help people under the dictatorial rule keep things 'real'.
One point he makes is that while governments have a hard time changing the meaning of words or banning them completely, they can make words worthless by using them so much that the words lose all meaning. Kind of like how we use 'democratic' today.