Rainbow

Oldthink

In George Orwell's dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (published in 1949), Newspeak is the fictional language of Oceania, a totalitarian superstate. To meet the ideological requirements of Ingsoc (English Socialism) in Oceania, the Party created Newspeak, which is a controlled language of simplified grammar and restricted vocabulary designed to limit the individual person's ability to think critically or to articulate subversive concepts, such as personal identity, self-expression, and free will. In Oceania, such thoughts are thoughtcrimes that contradict Ingsoc orthodoxy.In the appendix to the novel, "The Principles of Newspeak", Orwell explains that Newspeak follows most rules of English grammar, yet is a language characterised by a continually diminishin… more »