[lbo-talk] Orwell's Obscurity

[Jerry Monaco]

On 12/8/06, Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu> wrote:
>
>
>
> Jerry Monaco wrote:
> >
> >
> > I am not sure the particular examples Carrol is referring to here.  If
> he can remember them I hope he can please list them or explain specifically.
>
>
> As a start:
>
> Most people who bother with the matter at all would admit that the
> English language is in a bad way, but it is generally assumed that we
> cannot by conscious action do anything about it. Our civilization is
> decadent and our language -- so the argument runs -- must inevitably
> share in the general collapse. It follows that any struggle against the
> abuse of language is a sentimental archaism, like preferring candles to
> electric light or hansom cabs to aeroplanes. Underneath this lies the
> half-conscious belief that language is a natural growth and not an
> instrument which we shape for our own purposes.

I think the above statement is stupid, but certainly it is not obscure?

Carrol if this is your example I think you are wrong in your original
statement that the statement is obscure; though I generally agree with what
you write about the above quote.  I think that you are confusing obscurity
with rhetorical emptiness.  Now what is "obscure" in a writer may turn out
to be "empty" upon analysis, but surely there is a difference between
emptiness and obscurity; as there is a difference between deliberate or
accidental ambiguity and obscurity.

I disagree completely and easily with this silly statement, by Orwell, but
the reason I can disagree with it so easily is that it is clearly written.
This is not obscure at all and is not an example of obscurantism.

For one thing I do believe that language is a "natural growth" and many
parts of language that are not a natural growth are may simply be viewed as
historical shift and drift.

Of course he is using the word "language" in an everyday sense, and
therefore what he means is something along the lines of "writers who use
their words to cover up instead of reveal are responsible for the words they
use."  And in the above sentences if he had substituted the rather obscure,
but perfectly intelligible word, "rhetoric" for the word "language", I might
think that he had a plausible argument. At least it would be an argument
that I would be willing to hear out.  In much of what I am writing in these
threads I am argueing for an "ethics of rhetoric" and I believe that there
can be such a thing as a "democratic ethics of rhetoric."  That is about as
far as I am willing to go with Orwell anyway.  Writers are responsible for
what they write and how they write and they should try hard to live up to
their aims; assuming that their aims are good.

Jerry
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