Politics and the English Language 政治与英语（英文版）

谁曾想在一本批判词汇滥用的书里学了最多的词汇。看来“文学是一种巧言令色”在各个国家都适用，当真实情感被掩藏在高大上的词汇里，其实就丢掉了被理解、被共鸣的可能性。所以表达的准确性很重要，真实有温度的表达才能获得同样真挚的反馈。

觉得这本书值得一读的。 在现在的社会，我们网上看到很多东西。 思维方式收到很大变化。 这里说到：被动语态 不只是语法选择，它会影响人思考问题的方式。 • 如果习惯用 “X was done” 而不是 “A did X”，人就容易在思想上模糊 责任、行动者、因果关系。 • 长期下来，人的思维可能就会变得“被动”，觉得很多事是“自然发生的”，而不是“某个人/某个机构选择并造成的” 。 每天可以写日记，用主动语法写自己做的事情，明确自己的责任以及自己可以承担的后果。 这样有利于复盘。

乔治奥威尔写的关于政治和英语表达（主要是写作）的一本小书，列举了当时英语表达常见的问题，语言辛辣，前段时间看的《The Elements of Style》和《On Writing Well》也对他的洞见形成了呼应，语言是表达思想的工具，通过简洁形象的语言清晰地表达出我们的想法才是我们进行语言表达的首要目的。

A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts.

Language is a political issue.

Orwell老师的作品集陪伴了我高二高三😭老熟人了，当时觉得无聊现在回来看还挺有意思，想了解英语的可以看看这篇（？）内容很贴近现实 This was one of my year 12 prescribed texts, back then it felt dry and preachy. But coming back to it now, I actually get what Orwell was on about, and I think he was way ahead of his time. At the surface level, it seems like he's just complaining about bad writing, with the long sentences, vague words, overused metaphors, and unnecessary jargon. But what he's really arguing is that the way we write affects how we think. If our language gets lazy, so does our thinking. And if we start accepting vague, abstract, or manipulative language (especially in politics), we make it easier for lies and bad ideas to slip through unnoticed. So yeah, high school me wasn't wrong for thinking it was dry, but now I see why this essay still gets quoted decades later. This whole essay is about how to spot bullshit in a world full of political spin and corporate jargon, hence Orwell's message feels more relevant than ever.

非常好且非常精简的一本书！开篇作者举了五个“烂英语”例子，一步步论证烂英语的特征及其产生原因并提供了可以规避使用的词，可以说是“英式英语之鉴”但短小又精悍的一篇议论文。语言是思想的边界，在我们传递思想时，如何让语言有效有质量的传递信息，作者给了许多的启发。 1. Modern English, especially written English, is full of bad habits which spread by imitation and which can be avoided if one is willing to take the necessary trouble. 2. Underneath this lies the half-conscious belief that language is a natural growth and not an instrument which we shape for our own purposes. 3. ome metaphors now current have been twisted out of their original meaning without those who use them even being aware of the fact. 4. there is no real need for any of the hundreds of foreign phrases now current in English. 5.it is normal to come across long passages which are almost completely lacking in meaning. 6. In the case of a word like democracy, not only is there no agreed definition, but the attempt to make one is resisted from all sides. 7. The whole tendency of modern prose is away from concreteness. 8.modern writing at its worst does not consist in picking out words for the sake of their meaning and inventing images in order to make the meaning clearer. It consists in gumming together long strips of words which have already been set in order by someone else, and making the results presentable by sheer humbug. 9. The political dialects to be found in pamphlets, leading articles, manifestoes, White Papers and the speeches of under-secretaries do, of course, vary from party to party, but they are all alike in that one almost never finds in them a fresh, vivid,home-made turn of speech. 10. In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible. 11. The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. 12. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns, as it were instinctively, to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink. 13. When the general atmosphere is bad,language must suffer. 14. But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought. 15. Probably it is better to put off using words as long as possible and get one's meaning as clear as one can through pictures or sensations. 16. Never use a long word where a short one will do. 17. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out. 18. Never use the passive where you can use the active. 19. and when you make a stupid remark its stupidity will be obvious, even to yourself. 20. Political language-and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists—is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable. and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. 21. but one ought to recognize that the present political chaos is connected with the decay of language, and that one can probably bring about some improvement by starting at the verbal end.

我赞成他的说法，但这是批判而非建设性的意见。法学论文写作也充满大词，大词有时是必要的——去掩藏一些分歧或者不体面的事实，这或许是一种自我保护，但也有可能和作者说的一样，是为了掩盖恶行。 我的感悟是，不要因为喜欢逻辑和抽象的美感而忘记琐碎的现实。

这或许也是电子版的好处，可以出这么短的书，如果是纸质版，考虑到成本收益就很难。

我愿称之为“中式英语之鉴”的浓缩版hhhh