"Newspeak" is an Orwellian term which is a away of influencing the thoughts and reactions of others through language. If you look back at my previous blog on euphemisms then the way this works will become quite clear. It is wrong to say that "Newspeak" is just euphemisms because it isn't. One word derived from "Newspeak" that i have chosen is a word called "Duckspeak". Some of you may of heard of this and others may well have an idea of what it could mean.
In brief, "Duckspeak" means to actually quack like a duck or to speak without any recognistion of thought. Speaking without thinking basically. "Duckspeak" can either be good to use or "ungood". Now, to speak lies and talk about random bollocks is obviously not going to be a very good thing to do. However, doing it for the greater good, i.e politicians will use "Duckspeak".....alot, is a positive thing.
In orwells 1984, there is an explicit example of this at the begining of chapter 9. An Inner PArty speaker is describing the crimes of Eurasia until a peice of paper is handed to him. He then condemns the crimes of eastasia. The speaker has not thought about what he was saying at all, but for the good of the party he has had to read of paper, without stopping his previous speaking, without thinking.
One of the main humerous ideas of what i call "Duckspeak gone wrong" is definately with George Bush.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8EvNJWM_NDg
It is an example of "Duckspeak" because he is clearly not thinking about what he is saying as he is reading it off the back of some paper. Not only that the speaches were probably made for him anyway. However, it is not noticed because he is or was the president so whatever he would say would be good in the mind of people anyway.
An example of "duckspeak" as in random stuff coming out of someones mouth is this.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQIek1XIKaA
This guy obviously has no idea what he is talking about and the fact that he doesnt makes public viewers worried about the fact that he has not done his job properly or attempted to do it at all by the soiund of it.
"Duckspeak" can be seen as a humerous subject however the realities are very true. Sometimes, without us knowing, people can fool our minds into thinking something different to what is being said. Again, the example from 1984 can show the importance of this.
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Yeah - George Bush weas inarticulate, but that is not the same thing is it or deliberately speaking imopressive sounding nonsense. The last thing you could do with Big Brother is laugh at him. So this is not it exactly. See Luke Garrett's entry... his is a good one.
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