Letters to the Editor
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Old news
We misunderstood George Orwell
When he used the word "Newspeak" in his novel 1984, people thought it meant "a new way of speaking". Perhaps it was just a contraction of "news speak".
Ingenious derivation, since Orwell did work for the propaganda service of the BBC in World War II, but in the appendix to Nineteen Eighty-Four entitled The Principles of Newspeak, Newspeak is contrasted with Oldspeak.
Orwell says:
The word free still existed in Newspeak, but it could only be used in statements such as: This dog is free of fleas... It could not be used in its old sense of 'politically free' or 'intellectually free', since political and intellectual freedom no longer existed even as concepts, and therefore were of necessity nameless.
Of course it is true that nearly all propaganda and advertising is Newspeak, and a great deal of the news you read and hear,as well as what is taught in schools, comes under the heading of progaganda. 'Pro-life' and 'Pro-choice' are obvious examples of Newspeak from both sides of an argument.