Newspeak and the B Vocabulary
24th February 2025
This post was inspired by Brian Watt’s post, A Helpful Guide to Cancelling “Mother”. Reading of Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers’ proposal to replace “mother” with “inseminated person” made me wonder if there shouldn’t be some award akin to the popular Darwin Awards to be presented for torturing language for political ends. Something, say, called “Orwell Awards” — in honor of George Orwell’s NewSpeak Dictionary from his dystopian novel, 1984. But, it turns out that there is in fact an existing Orwell Award that, sadly, stands for exactly the opposite:
It is awarded annually to “writers who have made outstanding contributions to the critical analysis of public discourse.
The closest thing that comes to my conception is a Doublespeak Award presented by the same organization as the Orwell Award:
An ironic tribute to public speakers who have perpetuated language that is grossly deceptive, evasive, euphemistic, confusing, or self-centered.
But this doesn’t get quite to my meaning. The award I have in mind would be presented to persons who really embrace the spirit that George Orwell described.s