Thursday, May 10, 2007

It is this sort of writing

that visits me in my nightmares:

Recruitment and selection

Members of the Human Resources Department work to source, identify, and attract top creative and business talent to [company name redacted]. Our mission is twofold: to partner with business units to achieve the goals and objectives of the Company and, through this process, to sustain the Company’s premier status within the fashion industry. Our Company aims to provide every employee with a comfortable and professional experience with [company name redacted], from the first point of contact and beyond. [Company name redacted] believes that it takes people with different backgrounds and views to strengthen a well-rounded company. It takes diversity of culture, style, education, experience, and geography to add value to the Company. This ultimately results in a positive impact on the Company’s global business.

It is anti-writing; it is virulent and damaging. It drains words of their primary use—as carriers of meaning. Orwell was right:

"The whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought...We're destroying words - scores of them, hundreds of them, every day. We're cutting the language down to the bone. In the final version of Newspeak there'll be nothing else...A word contains its opposite in itself. Take 'good', for instance. If you have a word like 'good', what need is there for a word like 'bad'? 'Ungood' will do just as well...Or, if you want a stronger version of 'good', what sense is there in having a whole string of vague useless words like 'excellent' and 'splendid' and all the rest of them? 'Plusgood' covers the meaning; or 'doubleplusgood' if you want something stronger still. In the final version of Newspeak there'll be nothing else...

In the end thoughtcrime will be literally impossible because there will be no words in which to express it. Every concept that can ever be needed will be expressed by exactly one word...Every year there will be fewer and fewer words and the range of consciousness will become a little smaller...By the year 2050 - earlier probably - all real knowledge of Oldspeak will have disappeared. The whole literature of the past will have been destroyed. Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Byron - they'll exist only in Newspeak versions, not merely changed into something different, but actually changed into something contradictory of what they used to be. Even the literature of Big Brother will change. Even the slogans will change. How could you have a slogan like "freedom is slavery" when the concept of freedom has been abolished? The whole climate of thought will be different. In fact there will be no thought, as we understand it now...There'll be no reason or excuse for committing thoughtcrime ...The Revolution will be complete when the language is perfect."

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