Humpty Dumpty through the Looking Glass

A somewhat celebrated character in Lewis Carroll’s much celebrated “Through the Looking Glass” pondered the existence of a hypothetical linguistic society where a word, when used, “means whatever [one] chooses to mean—neither more nor less”; in this hypothetical society, people would master language and manipulate it in whatever necessary or possible to utilize its purpose of (pragmatic) existence in being a tool used for communication. If this idea can be seen as a legitimate theory or idea on how language ought to be used, Orwell’s observations on how politics, and the historical events which led to politicking, is affecting the way the 20th/21st century English-speakers commandeer their proficiency in English would be an accurate antithesis of such an idea.

Orwell contends that the decline of the English language is similar to that of a drunk who is caught in a downward looping spiral in the sense that “a man drinks because he feels himself to be a failure and then fail all the more completely because he drinks,” where the toxin of the English language’s choice is politics instead of alcohol, and English is on the decline because of political insertion into the language itself, while further “failing” because it is inclusively exercising politics within its daily use.

Political speech, according to Orwell, is language “designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable,” or a case of “defending the indefensible.” He claims that the landmark political events of the 20th century— the British occupation of India, the Soviet Republic, and bombs being dropped on Japan to name a few—have provided for a need to be generally concealing and ambiguous in political speech to justify the arguments “which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of political parties.”

Thus the English language, in order to adopt ambiguity and provide a general air of concealing nature, has taken into its wings the usage of “euphemisms, question-begging, and sheer cloudy vagueness” as tools for keeping the people conforming to the influence of the reigning political parties. This linguistic practice in politics—given that language often mirrors the status quo of society—has assimilated into everyday life, resulting in the grocery list of grievances that Orwell brings forth against the post-modern English language: extensive usage of value loaded words and phrases, prevalence of the passive voice, and general hellenification or latinization of diction where simple purely “English” words would suffice in a process he calls “dress[ing] up simple statement[s] and giv[ing] them an air of scientific impartiality” have all been identified as crimes politics have been found guilty of in its role as the corruptor.

Although Orwell specifically does not explicit this idea, it seems that what he is describing is the basis of PC speech, or politically correct speech. Deborah Cameron, in her essay ‘Civility and its Discontents,’ implies that due to such happenings in modern political history people are increasingly becoming aware of the existence of a “Verbal Hygiene,” or simply put, a need to conform to established political norms when speaking in public. Much like personal hygiene when it comes to general cleanliness and agreeableness, it is possible to be completely oblivious of verbal hygiene and at times to forget its existence and implications or just refrain from exercising it altogether. One example provided by Cameron is the ridiculous Fresno Bee article where the publication was criticized for mistakenly avoiding the use of the “politically correct” term “African-American” and instead using the more overtly descriptive term “black”.

Setting the social implications and the history bound to the word “black [man]” aside, this is a prime example of what Orwell pointed out as being one of the corrupting effects of politics in English. When one refers to a person as “African-American” as opposed to “black”, one is politically motivated not to conjure up the images of the less than memorable political stance that the United States had once taken towards people of color; it is in effect, euphemizing their existence or “blurring the[ir] outlines, and covering up all the details” in the hopes that the targeted listener would acknowledge that the speaker is practice of the establish political idea that :”American embraces all people of color” and thereby in practice of good verbal hygiene.

The second subject matter that Cameron professes much of politically-correct speech to center around is the case of gender equality in what used to be a dominantly male society. This has led to the introduction of gender-neutral terms for everyday occupations such as “chairperson” as opposed to “chairman”; “police officer” as opposed to “policeman”; “firefighters” as opposed to “fireman” and etc.; and gender neutralization of traditionally single-sex occupations and titles such as “nurse”, “author”, or “chancellor”.

Cameron notes that both the African-American and the gender equality issue, rather than being “political correct” are merely “accurate” depictions of what society has become and therefore should not play a restricting or euphemizing role that PC speech implies: A man of African-American descent should simply be called so to distinguish him from other types of African descent; a police officer should be referred to as such to acknowledge the recent growth of female officers in the contingency, and not to show underlying apologetic sentiment about the gender discrimination that had taken place for the past nineteen centuries or so. 

Therefore, both Orwell and Cameron argue that although it is indeed courteous and now a socially-agreeable trend to paint murky images through euphemism in speech, but doing so sacrifices our ability to communicate clearly and effectively and is in a way taking away our right to render unto words the ability for them to become “whatever [we] want them to be, neither more or less.” A parallel can be drawn from this to the idea of giving up civil liberties, a political theme that has been circulating far and wide for the latter half of the past decade: in the same way it is believed by some that increased national security comes at the cost of sacrificing certain civil liberties, it is also believed by some that the wages of political correctness—if political correctness can be defined as conforming to what contemporary society views to be non-threatening and generally acceptable—is the sacrifice of free speech, or freely-flowing speech to be accurate.

It is important to note, however, that just as how the idea of “civil liberties” and “national security” is abstract and vague, the idea of “political correctness” is also somewhat ambiguous: although Orwell did not address this problem since the term “political correctness” was probably not as fashionable as it is now when he wrote his essay, Cameron points out that there is no solid definition as to what political correctness is and what its underlying agenda actually is, and it is at best reified from its abstract form to be “vague” and “insincere”.

Amidst all ambiguity and vagueness, however, one thing is for certain: If Humpty Dumpty were alive (and somehow magically crossed over from the realm of fiction into reality) to witness the debacles of the English language where words no longer curtail meanings but meanings curtail words, he would surely have another great fall but with not even the King’s horses and the King’s men to hear him fall this time.