![]() ![]() ![]() And yet I find that almost everyone with whom I have read this essay-whether they are twelve or twenty-immediately understands what it refers to. Students write in this way because it is the style of so much of what is presented to them to read. Orwell’s target throughout the work is a kind of academese to which students so often fall victim. ![]() He both quotes and mocks up examples of incomprehensible overwriting, telling us with characteristic wit how to write and, more pressingly, how not to. In the essay, Orwell provides a catalogue of linguistic “swindles and perversions” that include “pretentious diction”, “meaningless words”, “operators” and “dying metaphors”. I teach George Orwell’s 1946 essay ‘Politics and the English Language’ to all students, whether they are at the beginning of secondary school or heading off to university. ![]()
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