Reading the appendix of 1984, Orwell’s in-universe essay on the history of Newspeak is interesting and illuminating. In particular, it reveals the misunderstandings inherent in reactionary objections to “academic” language as Newspeak.
What I mean is that we often find reactionaries objecting to unfamiliar language (say, pronouns, or “something-something-Americans”, or nuanced definitions of the word ‘racism’) and saying that it’s “Orwellian Newspeak.”
But that misunderstands quite a bit: both the purpose of specialist/academic language, the way meaning is added to language when words develop new uses, and what the nature of Newspeak was in 1984.
“[Limiting dissent by limiting the language to express it] was done partly by the invention of new words, but chiefly by eliminating undesirable words and by stripping such words as remained… of all secondary meanings whatever.” — Principles of Newspeak https://orwell.ru/library/novels/1984/english/en_app
Newspeak didn’t force people to accept approved ideas; it ensured they lacked the language to describe unapproved ones.
The strain is obvious in today’s reactionary screeds: ‘cis’ is objectionable not because the word is a slur but because it names what should be presumed.
There’s always room to discuss whether new/specialist vocabulary is *effective; that’s just the nature of language. But working with language to clarify important nuance, to name the previously unnamed, is not “Newspeak” — it’s what Newspeak was, in 1984, created to stop.
Some of this is tied up with the Sapir-Wharf hypothesis, which boils down to: “The capabilities of a language to express certain ideas shapes the speakers’ ability to think about those ideas.”
The “strong” version of that is pretty much rejected in modern linguistics, if I understand correctly — not having a word for turtles doesn’t mean you can’t think about or talk about turtles, for example.
But the WEAK version of the hypothesis — that lacking language for something makes it hard to conceptualize or communicate about it — is generally accepted. Newspeak couldn’t wipe away the desire for freedom, but it could make naming it, discussing it, profoundly difficult.
Which brings us back to the present day, and the boiling cauldron of anger some folks unleash when they encounter “pronouns in bios” or “politically correct words.” It’s Newspeak, they say! But in most cases, the language calls for more nuance rather than less.
Sometimes those requests or demands are strident, and sometimes they’re handled poorly, sure. But they are not a demand to erase or disguise meaning; rather, to distinguish between many meanings, ones previously collapsed under comfortable assumptions and broad umbrellas.
So, the next time someone complains about “Language Police” or “Invented Words” and “Fake Pronouns,” it’s probably worth considering whether their objection is to the words… or to the ideas they’re being used to tease out. To the naming of something they wish were not there.