‘My Name is George Orwell and I Approve ​This​ Message’

“1984”, written by George Orwell in 1948, is about a dystopian future where the government
controls everything and everyone. In the land where the book takes place, Oceania, the people look up to
‘Big Brother,’ which is the face of the government. Within the book Winston, the main character,
explains that the government limits the way citizens can act and the things they can do, including limiting
the amount of words they can use. If the citizens were to do something against the rules they would be
thrown in bootcamp or even be evaporated, which is a way to say killed and be erased from history, as the
people in Oceania can actually change the facts from the past to match what is happening in the present.
“It’s a good thing, the destruction of words. … in the final version of Newspeak there’ll be nothing else”
(Orwell 51). Winston, as a way to rebel, writes in a journal using words that would get him evaporated,
but only because he believes Newspeak, the language of Oceania, is limiting the words that allow people
to express themselves. Although that would make Winston seem like he would be against politically
correct language, he is on the side of using politically correct language to better society, just as the author
of 1984 would be.
Politically correct language is when the laws are rewritten in order to make sure they don’t
exclude people from it. An example would be a law changing the words father and mother and replacing
them with gender-neutral parent. This allows men, women, and people who identify differently to be
included rather than the law just including men and women while making others feel excluded and/or
offended. Although, Vree, the author of an essay read for an in-class paideia, believes that by using
politically correct language that people are being limited in ways to express themselves by using their
words. “What we are witnessing in Washington and across the nation and world, as in Oceania, is the
manipulation of language in the service of a broader socio-political agenda that is dependent on
socio-psychological engineering” (Vree 2013). This means that we are living under a Big Brother-type of
government where we are no longer able to say certain words, taking away our right to freedom of
speech. But that is one way to look at it.
Other people, like Orwell, would most likely agree that by using politically correct language that
we are expanding our vocabulary and our ways to express ourselves. As stated in New Statesman, a
left-biased website, “​You don’t have to be a gender theorist to understand that if we have only two ways
of referring to human beings - “he” or “she” - we will grow up thinking of people as divisible into those
two categories and nothing more.​” What Laurie Penny, the author of the post, is saying is that if we only
have words such as “he” or “she” to describe people then they will believe that they have to identify as
only a he or she, which is a logical fallacy. False dichotomy, giving two choices in an argument when
there are actually multiple to choose from. In this case, it would be giving the options of “he” or “she”
when you could actually be a he, she, they, ze, and e, but there are probably a ton more to choose from.
The justification of saying that by using gender neutral terms society is limiting the ways humans
can express themselves is invalid because it actually allows more people to identify themselves as they
choose and it should not affect the way those who aren’t being oppressed live, which is why George
Orwell agrees that politically correct language is the way society will better itself. In “1984,” the people
of Oceania are being limited to what words they can use only because the government wants people to be
less educated and more dull. By using politically correct language, humans are expanding their
knowledge on how to refer to other people and how to include them in any way possible to make them
feel equal, just as they should. By using politically correct language people are actually being more
educated and equal to one another with freedom, unlike in Oceania where words are limited to make
society a strict place where the citizens feel incarcerated.