On Ambiguity（Politics and the English Language）书评

Upon reviewing this essay a certain paragraph struck me.

…Many political words are similarly abused. The wordFascismhas now no meaning except in so far as it signifies ‘something not desirable’. The wordsdemocracy, socialism, freedom, patriotic, realistic, justicehave each of them several different meanings which cannot be reconciled with one another. In the case of a word likedemocracy, not only is there no agreed definition, but the attempt to make one is resisted from all sides. It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it: consequently the defenders of every kind of regime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using that word if it were tied down to any one meaning. Words of this kind are often used in a consciously dishonest way. That is, the person who uses them has his own private definition, but allows his hearer to think he means something quite different. Statements likeMarshal Petain was a true patriot, The Soviet press is the freest in the world, The Catholic Church is opposed to persecution,are almost always made with intent to deceive. Other words used in variable meanings, in most cases more or less dishonestly, are:class, totalitarian, science, progressive, reactionary, bourgeois, equality.

There is something here more urgent than double words at work.

The meaning of words such as fascism and democracy becomes ambiguous in a democratized process of interpretation, as well as in the natural progression of history – we witness the hybrids of previously clear-cut (more or less) ideologies (China would be a salient example), and perhaps we are at a loss for words, which then contributes to the ambiguity of political jargons. In fact, there could be merit of such ambiguity that I would discuss later.

I'll clear the path first. Orwell criticizes those who object that the change of the meaning of words reflect the time in which they are used. Ambiguity, hence, seems inevitable if a word is going through a certain transition of meaning. Orwell trashes this line of thinking. But in this essay he didn't offer a satisfying reply to his opponents, other than arguing a minority of people would always attempt at throwing out silly words, and that these people are the guardians of the English language. However, the issue here is where we draw the boundary of interpretation in order to keep words exact. In Orwell's defence, he seems to target less the words themselves than the demagogues who wield these words only to deceive. But those are cases in which we have less trouble debunking the lies. The real trouble is in daily discourses, in those "less important" moments, in which when I utter the word "democracy" it might not evoke the same meaning and imagery for you.

If we are to be mean with Orwell we might as well extend his argument to its logical conclusion – that "ambiguous" words should only have certain "orthodox" meanings, and they cannot be used unwarrantedly. I do not wish to trace the etymological history of words at this point, but it is sensible that words do change from time to time, and room for ambiguity arises when two people simply do not have the same experience with one word, particularly when an orthodox interpretation of a word, at times, must give in to necessary fluidity of interpretation (freedom – particularly political freedom – for an Iranian would mean a wildly different idea compared to a French, and here, censoring freedom as a word "used in variable meanings" doesn't seem a rational move).

Of course, if we are to be nice, we can take his argument targeting the intentional ambiguity qua political tool rather than ambiguity itself. I merely wish to say that Orwell isn't scrupulous here with this argument and he commits himself to lazy thinking – indeed befuddling. In fact, he's made at least one more unqualified statement in this essay, though I do not wish to discuss all of them.

A side note – Orwell is intensely political a writer, and he's writing from certain premises. It should be clear what his premises are, and I do believe that such premises at times turn into biases that cloud his judgment.