The subject of Orwell's dislike of the passive voice has been covered at Language Log extensively, so I won't cover the topic at length. Orwell himself uses the passive voice quite a bit in his own essay. He cheerfully admits that he breaks his own rules, but does not draw the logical conclusion from this.
The passive voice is one of the main shibboleths of a certain kind of composition teacher, one who has seen too many badly written papers that tend, also, to use the passive voice. I never use the passive when the active is better; nevertheless, I also try to never use the active voice when the passive might be preferable. Does the passive obscure agency? Sometimes. Sometimes it doesn't. Most people who hate the passive for that reason give examples like "It hasn't happened yet." The only problem is that this sentence happens to be in the active voice. Not all sentences that obscure agency are in the passive, and not all uses of the passive voice obscure agency, since you can add the phrase "by the agent" at the end of the sentence.
What the passive allows is for a shift in information structure. Sometimes, you don't need to put the agent first, as subject of the sentence. "This bridge was put up in 1938." Who put it up? We don't care; the point is the bridge and when it was built, not the names of the bridge-builders.
Showing posts with label Orwellian English. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Orwellian English. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
Orwell's Third Rule
If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
Orwell could have just said "Avoid wordiness" or "Be pithy." Instead, he opted for a longer version, a periphrasis. 16 syllables instead of my three or five. The shorter versions would be "possible," but maybe not desirable. I am a concise writer, but not every idea should be expressed in the most compressed, aphoristic mode. After all, with a maxim or proverb we often have to gloss or explain further.
For my taste, Orwell's essay is itself written in a verbose style. I'm not trying to play "gotcha' or "tu quoque" here, but simply to point out that pithiness is a relative judgment.
Orwell could have just said "Avoid wordiness" or "Be pithy." Instead, he opted for a longer version, a periphrasis. 16 syllables instead of my three or five. The shorter versions would be "possible," but maybe not desirable. I am a concise writer, but not every idea should be expressed in the most compressed, aphoristic mode. After all, with a maxim or proverb we often have to gloss or explain further.
For my taste, Orwell's essay is itself written in a verbose style. I'm not trying to play "gotcha' or "tu quoque" here, but simply to point out that pithiness is a relative judgment.
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
Orwell's Second Rule
"Never use a long word where a short one will do."
The length of words has nothing to do with anything. I would say: "always use the right word whatever its length." Use the precise word you need to use. Sometimes empty will do and sometimes you need vacuous. Sometimes puerile and sometimes childish. Well, those are pretty much the same length, but you see what I'm saying. I've always felt that the prejudice against Latinate vocabulary stinks.
Pullum says it well: "If longer words generally have slightly different meanings to shorter ones, then surely the right injunction is to use a word which means what you want to say, regardless of length." Pullum points out that Orwell uses "scrupulous" rather than "careful," because scrupulous was the word he needed. It brings extra resonance, extra connotations, that the shorter word doesn't.
Search for "Orwell" on Language Log and you'll find similar critiques of Orwell.
***
Orwell begins his famous (and vastly overrated) essay "Politics and The English Language" by noting the decline of the English language. It should be obvious that the English language had declined in 1946.
The problem I see here is that this is not at all obvious what it would mean to say that the English language was in a sorry state. To what is Orwell comparing it? Victorian English? English in 1800, in 1700? Without a meaningful point of comparison the statement is vacuous.
Virginia Woolf had died in 1941; I suppose her death dealt the English language a serious blow, especially since James Joyce died the same year, but Hemingway and Faulkner and Auden and William Carlos Williams were still alive. And Orwell himself. (He himself excludes literary language at the end of his essay, but by doing so I think he makes a grave mistake. After all, if writers of fiction and poetry, and literary essays [like those of Woolf], can write English then the language itself cannot be decadent, only certain genres of non-fiction writing.) He can't mean that there was nobody around who was handy with a prepositional phrase. What he seems to mean is that he can pick up the newspaper or a book and easily find bad writing. Once again, without a point of comparison (newspapers of 10 years before?) he really hasn't a leg to stand on.
That a Communist pamphlet is poorly written tells us nothing about the "state of English" at a particular time. It might tell you something about Communism, or the writer of the tract. Bad writing is always possible, in any period of time.
His own invented examples are particularly puerile. You can't attack something by substituting your own parody of it for the real thing, as he does with his mock translation of Ecclesiastes. HIs suggestion of "unblack" as an example of litotes is particularly thick-headed, showing his utter lack of understanding of how the trope works rhetorically.
In future posts I will be examining more of Orwell's weak thinking about language. What bothers me most is how much people admire this fallacious and poorly executed essay. After all, if it weren't admired, I would have not reason to complain.
Don't bother to tell me what Orwell really meant. If a manifesto on behalf of clarity is so hard to understand then Orwell has failed twice over.
The length of words has nothing to do with anything. I would say: "always use the right word whatever its length." Use the precise word you need to use. Sometimes empty will do and sometimes you need vacuous. Sometimes puerile and sometimes childish. Well, those are pretty much the same length, but you see what I'm saying. I've always felt that the prejudice against Latinate vocabulary stinks.
Pullum says it well: "If longer words generally have slightly different meanings to shorter ones, then surely the right injunction is to use a word which means what you want to say, regardless of length." Pullum points out that Orwell uses "scrupulous" rather than "careful," because scrupulous was the word he needed. It brings extra resonance, extra connotations, that the shorter word doesn't.
Search for "Orwell" on Language Log and you'll find similar critiques of Orwell.
***
Orwell begins his famous (and vastly overrated) essay "Politics and The English Language" by noting the decline of the English language. It should be obvious that the English language had declined in 1946.
The problem I see here is that this is not at all obvious what it would mean to say that the English language was in a sorry state. To what is Orwell comparing it? Victorian English? English in 1800, in 1700? Without a meaningful point of comparison the statement is vacuous.
Virginia Woolf had died in 1941; I suppose her death dealt the English language a serious blow, especially since James Joyce died the same year, but Hemingway and Faulkner and Auden and William Carlos Williams were still alive. And Orwell himself. (He himself excludes literary language at the end of his essay, but by doing so I think he makes a grave mistake. After all, if writers of fiction and poetry, and literary essays [like those of Woolf], can write English then the language itself cannot be decadent, only certain genres of non-fiction writing.) He can't mean that there was nobody around who was handy with a prepositional phrase. What he seems to mean is that he can pick up the newspaper or a book and easily find bad writing. Once again, without a point of comparison (newspapers of 10 years before?) he really hasn't a leg to stand on.
That a Communist pamphlet is poorly written tells us nothing about the "state of English" at a particular time. It might tell you something about Communism, or the writer of the tract. Bad writing is always possible, in any period of time.
His own invented examples are particularly puerile. You can't attack something by substituting your own parody of it for the real thing, as he does with his mock translation of Ecclesiastes. HIs suggestion of "unblack" as an example of litotes is particularly thick-headed, showing his utter lack of understanding of how the trope works rhetorically.
In future posts I will be examining more of Orwell's weak thinking about language. What bothers me most is how much people admire this fallacious and poorly executed essay. After all, if it weren't admired, I would have not reason to complain.
Don't bother to tell me what Orwell really meant. If a manifesto on behalf of clarity is so hard to understand then Orwell has failed twice over.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)