<div>On 12/8/06, Carrol Cox <<a href="mailto:cbcox@ilstu.edu">cbcox@ilstu.edu</a>> wrote:<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"> It has occurred to me as I was rereading these recent threads that Orwell's "Politics and the English Language" is a powerful example of the obscurity of plain prose. There is nothing in the essay, its syntax or vocabulary, to warn one that there can be radically different interpretations of what Orwell is saying. And yet the history of the essay, of response to it, show that it can be used, by intelligent and well-meaning men and women -- to mean quite opposite things. I'm not sure whether this is a stylistic defect, a deliberate but unacknowledge intention, a symptom of basic confusion in Orwell's thought, or just an instance of the impossibility of absolute clarity as soon as one gets beyond Dick and Jane, but there is no doubt that there are fundamental problems of interpretation raised by the essay, problems which will never be satisfactorily resolved. Carrol</blockquote><div> 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. I have not used Orwell's essay as an example in this thread mostly because I know it has been twisted on occasion. But I don't think this has anything to do with obscurity and certainly not obscurantism.  I suspect that the examples Carrol has in mind have more to do with hypocrisy than with obscurity.  At an entry level to a conversation about the relation of hypocrisy to obscurity, I would say that any essay, any writing, any statement can be used hypocritically, no matter what the style of writing.  It may also be said that some statements are made on such a high level of generality or abstraction that they leave themselves open to be used hypocritically.  Other statements are written in such a way as to cover up what is actually happening.  There are occasions I think this is true of Orwell.   Clarity is no surety against lying, hypocrisy or self-deception.  But surely, to use an example of Orwell's, those who call burning an Asian village to a ground "pacification" are engaging in rhetorical cover up.  What they have really down is destroyed a village and killed people they haven't pacified it.  Taken seriously, as if the people at the commanding heights believed that burning a village down is appropriately called "pacification", then we have a form of hypocrisy not only in service of deception but also self-deception.  This is not what we have been calling an example of obscure prose, but it is certainly an example of mystification.  Orwell certainly contributed a fair amount to our own ability to deceive ourselves about our society by pointing to the double-think so obvious in Stalinist thought, without emphasizing our own double-think to a greater extent.  It is always easier to see the sins of others, than to recognize those very same sins in ourselves.  But to a certain extent we are all open to similar criticism and one working definition of ideology is the process that turns our hypocrisy into mass self-deception and turns our hypocritical self-deception into aggressive self-righteousness. One can only say that lying, hypocrisy and self-deception is easier to catch if you actually have a pretty good idea what the person is saying in the first place. If you are able to an,alyze an idea, project, philosophy, etc, break it down, and show how it doesn't match your own view of reality you have a better possibility of catching it out, and correcting it, than if you have to argue over whether what the person is saying means, if it seems to mean anything at all.  Jerry </div> <blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">__</blockquote></div> -