Guest Blogger: Morgan McBride

In the past few days, we have been studying about Orwell and his essay about the English language. He offers some very interesting insights into what and what not to do when using English whether it is in a paper or used orally. As a quick overview, Orwell sums up his thoughts nicely into a list of rules which include: don’t use symbolic language, don’t use long words when you can use short ones, cut unnecessary words out, don’t use passive, but rather active, don’t use jargon words if you know an English equivalent, and break these rules before saying something outrageous. A couple thoughts came to my mind when I was reading this text. The first being that the author himself breaks these rules constantly throughout his essay, he even admits to breaking the rules on page 537. My question when I read this was why the author would break the rules at all. Was he following his last rule so he would not sound barbarous? The only answer I could really come up with was that it would probably be pretty hard to explain himself if he didn’t use metaphors/similes or if he did not use some extensive and complex sentences. His audience is also one of higher English knowledge so using colorful language and strong diction was probably to sound credible to his fellow English users. The Constitution, on the other hand, is a document meant for the common people to understand. There is to be no question as to what the Constitution is trying to state. In order to do this, the writers had to choose simple words (as directed by Orwell), but be very specific in order to leave no wiggle room for misinterpretations. I think the Constitution is a great example of the rules Orwell describes in his essay. The Constitution is meant to be clear. In order to be clear figurative language, excessive words, and useless jargon must be left out. To conclude, Orwell’s rules obviously have a great purpose and are maybe good to use for specific situations when one needs to be clearly understood.