THE ABUSE AND MISUSE OF THE ENGLISH WORD IN G. ORWELL’S DYSTOPIAN NOVEL NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR

Abstract

George Orwell’s novel “Nineteen Eighty-Four” (first published in 1949) is a totalitarian dystopia in which the focus is on language as a political medium to conceal the truth from the public, to manipulate and brainwash people, to make them accept all propaganda as unmistakable. Orwell succeeds in demonstrating clearly that the modern use of English, more precisely the abuse and misuse of the English word, is a powerful mind-control tool able to destruct human will and spirit, destroy real beauty and happiness in the society. This is exactly done by the new words of the Newspeak language (created by Orwell) which is the object of a discourse stylistics case study in the present paper based on the qualitative stylistic method of analysis to highlight the linguistic features of Orwell’s new words that evoke literary (and emotional) experiences for the readers, to reveal the stylistic peculiarities of Orwell’s word of fiction, as well as the linguistic and extra-linguistic aspects conditioning the creation and functioning of the mentioned linguistic units.