Comment by RodericDay | Hacker News Reader

Comment by RodericDay | Hacker News Reader

I used to like this essay, but the folks over at [UPenn's Language Log](http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=992) do a great takedown of it, and I am inclined to agree with them. Orwell is extremely hypocritical (which many people try to claim is a "deliberate stroke of genius", with very little evidence to support it).

It's particularly a hit amongst center-left liberals who are emboldened into feeling like they are very righteous by not doing anything at all. The more accurate observation comes from commenter Mark F:

> The reason Orwell's essay makes some people angry is that it depicts violations of stylistic rules as moral violations. Use the passive, it says, and you are playing into the hands of the totalitarians. I think that's also why some people like it; people can feel like they're defending the cause of freedom by writing concisely.

> I tend to side with the former camp. I think people pick up on cant pretty well without his help, except when it's telling them something they already want to believe. And in the latter case his help is no use.

It's also worth reading Asimov review of Orwell's 1984 (http://www.newworker.org/ncptrory/1984.htm).

There's a kind of person out there who really likes George Orwell, Steven Pinker, David Foster Wallace, Christopher Hitchens, etc. which all pander to a political sensibility that is very self-congratulatory about inaction, and consistently says "things are fine, don't rock the boat, you'll make things worse".

It's ironic that on HN, critics of Orwell's work are said to be "your typical critics", but really, it's Orwell and Pinker and co. that consistently push/pushed out tracts that are critical takedowns of third parties. So their readers are now smugly self-satisfied twice over: once when agreeing with the authors, once while dismissing their critics.

You have a point. There is always that possibility that a particular employment of language politics is just, so to reject all political neologisms risks rejecting the just ones too.

I struggle with the language of women's rights, for instance. I think about Orwell when I hear 'mansplaining' for example. Yet, at the same time I often see challenges that are unique to women.

I saw: "and further milquetoast simulacra" in paragraph three, and quit reading. Am I too severe?

OK read it. Not impressed. Orwell is a liar because: "Let's move to his first rule 'Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print'? Yet we only need to read as far as the second sentence of his essay to see him talk of the 'collapse' of civilization. That would be a literal collapse would it?"

This is pedantry. All language is metaphorical at some level. 'Vagina' literally means 'sheath'. Should we avoid that one? How about describing an argument as 'crystalline'? I would argue that 'collapse' in that sense is no more metaphorical than crystalline.

The main writer is snarky and not that great, but

a) the comment section goes more in depth

b) it's not the only LanguageLog post/author taking down Orwell, it's just the first that comes up on google

c) as pedantic as the criticisms are, it just so happens that so are Orwell's, so it's about as good as you need to be to criticize this essay.

This is disappointing! If you find it snarky and not that great, why submit a link? c) is not logically consistent is it?

> 'Vagina' literally means 'sheath'.

Not in English it doesn't.

There is a continuum: someone, somewhere called it a sheath, and the metaphor was so apt that it was repeated until it eclipsed whatever word was current usage before. Neither you nor anyone else is qualified to judge which words are metaphorical and which aren't.

> Neither you nor anyone else is qualified to judge which words are metaphorical

This statement refutes your attempt to claim particular words are metaphorical.

Well, you're right in that vagina literally means vagina in English. And yes, there are occasions where language is unambiguously metaphorical. I do not, however, appreciate how either of these undermine my larger claim. Not sure if you disagree with me on a more fundamental level or not.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com