Talk:1994/Newparol

• Airstrip One - Formally called England. This term demonstrates Orwell's distain for American influence Europe. It seems that Oceania (America, England, South America, Australia) looks upon Britain as little more than an ‘airstrip’ ... a launching ground into the European theater of war. It appears that Orwell was predicting the minor role that England would play in the global politics of the future.
• artsem - Artificial Insemination - The government is pushing this method of childbirth as the ONLY method, to aid in the destruction of the family unit.
• Atomic Wars - The Atomic Wars took place during the 1950's. Colchester, England is the only city that was specifically mentioned as being nuked, but the book does say that many cities were destroyed in North America, Europe, and Russia. It was out of the chaos of these wars that Party emerged and seized control.
• Big Brother - Also refered to as simply "B.B.". Similar to America's "Uncle Sam", except this individual is the leader of the nation. In Oceania, Big Brother is worshiped almost as if he were a god. And just like the gods of most religions, Big Brother is most likely fictional. Orwell never refers to Big Brother by his 'real' name, and it would appear that nobody in Oceania possesses this information either. Winston's memory is a little foggy, but he does share some of the history of BB's rise to power with us: "The story really began in the middle sixties, the period of the great purges in which the original leaders of the Revolution were wiped out once and for all. By 1970 none of them was left, except Big Brother himself. All the rest had by that time been exposed as traitors and counter- revolutionaries." But this really doesn't answer the question of whether Big Brother is a 'real' individual or not. But elsewhere in the book there are hints that Big Brother is a fictional leader:"Nobody has ever seen Big Brother. He is a face on the hoardings, a voice on the telescreen. We may be reasonably sure that he will never die, and there is already considerable uncertainty as to when he was born. Big Brother is the guise in which the Party chooses to exhibit itself to the world. His function is to act as a focusing point for love, fear, and reverence, emotions which are more easily felt towards an individual than towards an organization." It also fits the ideology of Ingsoc to have a fictional leader. It would go a long way to help the stability of the nation, since it would be difficult for any power-hungry inner party members to stage a coup d'etat against an imaginary phantom.
• bellyfeel - Full emotional understanding. Blind, enthusiastic acceptance of a concept.
• blackwhite- The ability to accept whatever "truth" the party puts out, no matter how absurd it may be. Orwell described it as "...loyal willingness to say black is white when party discipline demands this. It also means the ability to believe that black is white, and more, to know black is white, and forget that one has ever believed the contrary."
• crimestop - Orwell's definition: "The faculty of stopping short, as though by instinct, at the threshold of any dangerous thought. It includes the power of not grasping analogies, of failing to perceive logical errors, of misunderstanding the simplest arguments if they are inimical to Ingsoc, and of being bored or repelled by any train of thought which is capable of leading in a heretical direction. In short....protective stupidity."
• chocorat - Chocolate ration. The chocolate ration in 1983 was 30 grams per week. (For comparison, a standard Hershey's Chocolate Bar is 43 grams) In the year 1984, the chocolate ration went up to 25 grams per week. Winston himself is charged with the task of re-writing history to make this little feat possible. NOTE: The book differs slightly from the movie on this. In the book, the the ration was changed to 25 grams as well, but instead or changing history to say that it went up to 25, Winston simply altered the original 'no-reduction' pledge to state that the ration would have to come down in April.
• crimethink - To even consider any thought not in line with the principles of Ingsoc. Doubting any of the principles of Ingsoc. All crimes begin with a thought. So, if you control thought, you can control crime. "Thoughtcrime is death. Thoughtcrime does not entail death, Thoughtcrime is death.... The essential crime that contains all others in itself."
• crimethinker - One who engages in crimethink.
• dayorder - Order of the day. The "Order of the Day" was a real-life propaganda technique used by America during WWII.
• Disputed Territories - These are areas of the world NOT permanently included in any of the Superstates : The quadrilateral between Tangier, Brazzaville, Darwin, and Hong Kong; Equatorial Africa; Middle East; Southern India; and the Indonesian Archipelago. These area are always occupied by one of the three superstates, but are constantly changing hands. The borders of Eurasia flow back and forth between the basin of the Congo and the northern shore of the Mediterranean; The islands of the Indian Ocean and the Pacific are constantly being captured and recaptured by Oceania or by Eastasia; in Mongolia the dividing line between Eurasia and Eastasia is never stable; round the pole all three powers lay claim to enormous territories.
• doubleplus- - A Prefix used to create the superlative form of an adjective or adverb. (i.e. - pluscold and doublepluscold meant, respectively, 'very cold' and 'superlatively cold'. "If you want a stronger version of "good", what sense is there in having a whole string of vague useless words like "excellent" and "splendid" and all the rest of them? "Plusgood" covers the meaning, or "doubleplusgood" if you want something stronger still. "
• doublespeak - It is important to note that this term does not appear anywhere within Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four. I mention it here only due to its similarity to other Newspeak terms such as doublethink, duckspeak, Newspeak, and Oldspeak. And even though it appears that the term was not actually created by Orwell himself, it does carry a very Orwellian meaning of "Deliberately ambiguous or evasive language; any language that pretends to communicate but actually does not."
• doublethink - Reality Control. The power to hold two completely contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accept both of them. An excellent example of doublethink in modern society is the war on drugs. If you ask people their opinion on alcohol prohibition in the 1920s, most people would agree that it was a complete failure. People agree that it only caused more crime, it made gangsters rich, it corrupted politicians, and most importantly ... it didn't keep people from drinking. Yet, we have almost the exact same situation today with war on drugs, yet most people think that our modern prohibition is a good idea ... and more than that, they believe that anybody that thinks that the war on drugs isn't a good idea must be completely out of their minds. In order for a person to be effective at doublethink, they must master the art of crimestop. "To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again: and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself. That was the ultimate subtlety: consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the word 'doublethink' involved the use of doublethink.'
• duckspeak - (To quack like a duck). To speak without thinking. Can be either good or bad, depending on who is speaking, and whether or not they are on your side.
• Eastasia - Smallest of the 3 Superstates.(Political System: Death Worship/Obliteration of Self) Comprised of China and the countries to the south of it, Japan, and a large (but fluctuating) portion of Manchuria, Mongolia, and Tibet. Eastasia was Oceania's ally at the start of the book, and by the end Eastasia had always been Oceania's enemy.
• Eurasia - One of the 3 Superstates. (Political System: Neo-Bolshevism) Comprised of the whole northern part of the European and Asiatic land-mass, from Portugal to the Bering Strait. Eurasia was Oceania's enemy at the start of the book, and by the end Eurasia had always been Oceania's ally.
• facecrime - Orwell's definition : "It was terribly dangerous to let your thoughts wander when you were in any public place or within range of a telescreen. The smallest thing could give you away. A nervous tic, an unconscious look of anxiety, a habit of muttering to yourself -- anything that carried with it the suggestion of abnormality, of having something to hide. In any case, to wear an improper expression on your face (to look incredulous when a victory was announced, for example) was itself a punishable offence. There was even a word for it in Newspeak: facecrime, it was called."
• FFCC - Organization which supplied cigarettes and other comforts to sailors on the "Floating Fortresses." This organization was suddenly dissolved in March of 1984 without explanation.
• FicDep - Fiction Department of the Ministry of Truth
• Floating Fortress - Huge sea bases. Gigantic battleships. This term has its roots in the real-life term for bombers during WWII, flying fortress.
• free - Only exist in the sense of "The dog is free of lice". The concept of political freedom has been replaced by the word crimethink. To hear Winston Smith's definition of freedom, click here
• fullwise - (adverb) Fully. One of the rules of newspeak is that any word can be turned into an adverb by adding the suffix "-wise". This allowed the removal of repetitive words such as completely and totally from the language.
• The Golden Country- A beautiful landscape that Winston sees in his dreams. It is a symbol of purity... A land untouched by humans (and not altered by the government). Orwell's Description: "The landscape that he was looking at recurred so often in his dreams that he was never fully certain whether or not he had seen it in the real world. In his waking thoughts he called it the Golden Country. It was an old, rabbit-bitten pasture, with a foot-track wandering across it and a molehill here and there. In the ragged hedge on the opposite side of the field the boughs of the elm trees were swaying very faintly in the breeze, their leaves just stirring in dense masses like women's hair. Somewhere near at hand, though out of sight, there was a clear, slow-moving stream where dace were swimming in the pools under the willow trees."
• Goldstein, Emmanuel - The supreme enemy of the state. He was once a high-ranking member of the party, until he supposedly betrayed the party and begin engaging in revolutionary activities. He is the supposed head of the "resistance". Goldstein is to Ingsoc what Satan is to Christianity... The embodiment of pure evil. Orwell describes Goldstein as having "a lean Jewish face, with a great fuzzy aureole of white hair and a small goatee beard -- a clever face, and yet somehow inherently despicable, with a kind of senile silliness in the long thin nose, near the end of which a pair of spectacles was perched. It resembled the face of a sheep, and the voice, too, had a sheep-like quality." There are similarities between this fictional character and the real-life Russian, Leon Trotsky (shown right). Trotsky was one of the original fonders of the Soviet Union. But when he dared to disagree with the Soviet Union's version of Big brother, Joseph Stalin, he was exiled from the country. In his absence, Trotsky was tried for treason and all of his followers were purged from the party. Another possible root of the Emmanuel Goldstein character is the real-life female anarcho-socialist Emma Goldman. Goldman, like Orwell, participated in the Spanish revolution and held a similar view on politics. She too believed in the socialist system, but remained fearful of what a communist dictatorship would mean to personal freedoms. It is likely that Orwell was familiar with her and simply altered the female name of Emma Goldman to create the masculine Emmanuel Goldstein.
• Goldstein’s Book - One of the greatest acts of heresy that a citizen of Oceania can possibly commit is to read Goldstein's Book, The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism. The government portrays the book as the centerpiece of the Resistance -- the ultimate tome of all that is evil -- which is the reason Winston coveted it so. But when you get right down to it, all this book does is explain the structure of society in straightforward and honest manner. And under a totalitarian regime, that is the single greatest act of thoughtcrime possible. (Note: "Goldstein's book" is about 10,700 words long. This means that this "book within a book" comprises approximately 10% of the entire novel!. Given this fact, it almost appears that one of the primary motives for Orwell to write "1984” was provide himself with a vehicle to publish some of his more "far out" beliefs on the structure of society under the guise of the fictional character, Emmanuel Goldstein.)
• goodsex - Sex for the purpose of producing children for the party. The opposite of sexcrime.
• goodthinker - One who strongly adheres to all of the principles of Newspeak. (goodthinked, goodthink, goodthinked, goodthinking, goodthinkful, goodthinking, goodthinkful, goodthinkwise, goodthinker )
• Hate week - Week in which Oceanian citizens all attend rallies and parades to inflame hatred of Party enemies and heighten their efforts on behalf of Oceania.
• Ingsoc - English Socialism.
• Inner Party. Official Party members. Upper class. About 6 million individuals (or 2%) of the population in Oceania fall into this class. They posses most of the comforts of today's middle class (with the addition of two or three servants and possibly a helicopter).
• Jones, Aaronson, and Rutherford - Orwell's Description - "The story really began in the middle sixties, the period of the great purges in which the original leaders of the Revolution were wiped out once and for all. By 1970 none of them was left, except Big Brother himself. All the rest had by that time been exposed as traitors and counter- revolutionaries. Goldstein had fled and was hiding no one knew where, and of the others, a few had simply disappeared, while the majority had been executed after spectacular public trials at which they made confession of their crimes. Among the last survivors were three men named Jones, Aaronson, and Rutherford. It must have been in 1965 that these three had been arrested. As often happened, they had vanished for a year or more, so that one did not know whether they were alive or dead, and then had suddenly been brought forth to incriminate themselves in the usual way. They had confessed to intelligence with the enemy (at that date, too, the enemy was Eurasia), embezzlement of public funds, the murder of various trusted Party members, intrigues against the leadership of Big Brother which had started long before the Revolution happened, and acts of sabotage causing the death of hundreds of thousands of people. After confessing to these things they had been pardoned, reinstated in the Party, and given posts which were in fact sinecures but which sounded important. All three had written long, abject articles in The Times, analysing the reasons for their defection and promising to make amends." "Some time after their release Winston had actually seen all three of them in the Chestnut Tree Cafe. He remembered the sort of terrified fascination with which he had watched them out of the corner of his eye. They were men far older than himself, relics of the ancient world, almost the last great figures left over from the heroic days of the Party. The glamour of the underground struggle and the civil war still faintly clung to them. He had the feeling, though already at that time facts and dates were growing blurry, that he had known their names years earlier than he had known that of Big Brother. But also they were outlaws, enemies, untouchables, doomed with absolute certainty to extinction within a year or two. No one who had once fallen into the hands of the Thought Police ever escaped in the end. They were corpses waiting to be sent back to the grave." Their story is similar to that of the real-life Soviets Leon Trotsky, Lev Kamenev (Trotsky's brother-in-law), and Grigori Zinoviev. These three individuals were the last to oppose Stalin’s absolute rule. Of course, they lost out in the end. Kamenev and Zinoviev capitulated and agreed to sign statements promising not to create conflict in the movement by making speeches attacking official policies. Leon Trotsky refused to sign and was banished.
• joycamp - Forced-labor camp.
• Junior Anti-sex league - Organization promoting celibacy, and the eradication of the orgasm, because these things cause feelings of ownlife.
• Malabar Front - The front-lines in the war with Eastasia, located in present day India.
• malreported - When the Times reports a fact which the government later deemed untrue. You see, the government is never "wrong", the paper merely reported the facts incorrectly. This term was often used in describing newspaper articles that contained references to unpersons, unfulfilled economic projections, or altered government policies.
• malquoted - see malreported
• memory hole - A system of pipes, similar to pneumatic tubes, which were used to destroy documents. A document stuffed in the memory hole would be conveniently whisked away to the furnaces below - quickly & easily wiped from history.
• Miniluv - Ministry of Love (law and order). "The Ministry of Love was the really frightening one. There were no windows in it at all. Winston had never been inside the Ministry of Love, nor within half a kilometer of it. It was a place impossible to enter except on official business, and then only by penetrating through a maze of barbed-wire entanglements, steel doors, and hidden machine-gun nests. Even the streets leading up to its outer barriers were roamed by gorilla-faced guards in black uniforms, armed with jointed truncheons... One did not know what happened inside the Ministry of Love, but it was possible to guess: tortures, drugs, delicate instruments that registered your nervous reactions, gradual wearing-down by sleeplessness and solitude and persistent questioning."
• Minipax - Ministry of Peace (war)
• Miniplenty - Ministry of Plenty (rationing). The Ministry of Plenty controlled the entire economy.
• Minitrue - Ministry of Truth (propaganda) - Department of the government in charge of all record keeping, history re-writing, and prolefeed "It was an enormous pyramidal structure of glittering white concrete, soaring up, terrace after terrace, 300 meters into the air. The Ministry of Truth contained, it was said, three thousand rooms above ground level, and corresponding ramifications below. Scattered about London there were just three other buildings of similar appearance and size. So completely did they dwarf the surrounding architecture that from the roof of Victory Mansions you could see all four of them simultaneously. They were the homes of the four Ministries between which the entire apparatus of government was divided."
• misprints - see malreported
• Newspeak - The official language of Oceania. Newspeak is "politically correct" speech taken to its maximum extent. Newspeak is based on standard English, but all words describing "unorthodox" political ideas have been removed. In addition, there was an attempt to remove the overall number of words in general, to limit the range of ideas that could be expressed. The most important aim of newspeak was to provide a means of speaking that required no thought what-so-ever. It uses abbreviations or clipped conjunctions in order to mask or alter a word's true meaning. For example, words such as Miniluv and joycamp, allow the speaker to speak without actually being force to think about what they were talking about.. or at least, not as much as if they were required to use complete phrases such as "Ministry of Love" or "Forced Labor Camp". These words just roll right off the lips before the speaker can even contemplate what he is really saying. Reducing the number of words also removes any literary value to writing, because there would only be one distinct way to present any particular concept. It would be impossible to write a book like Common Sense , Uncle Tom's Cabin, or even 1984 in Newspeak. Not only would the correct words for certain concepts not be available, but a lack of adjectives would cause the writing would be completely bland and unemotional, which in itself would keep people from reading at all. Here is the official definition from the Merriam-Webster dictionary: new•speak ('nü-"spEk, 'nyü-), noun, Usage: often capitalized. : propagandistic language marked by euphemism, circumlocution, and the inversion of customary meanings. Etymology: Newspeak, a language "designed to diminish the range of thought," in the novel 1984 (1949) by George Orwell. Date: 1950
• Oceania - One of the 3 Superstates. (Political System: Ingsoc) Winston Smith's home. Comprised of North and South America, Britain, Australia, and southern portions of Africa. Newspeak is the official language of Oceania, but standard English is still spoken by many. Click here to view world map
• Oceania 'Tis for Thee - National Anthem of Oceania.
• Oldspeak - Standard English. Newspeak is based on Oldspeak, with all words which represent unpopular (or politically incorrect) ideas removed.
• oldthink - Holding on to old ideas and patterns of thought not consistent with current government policy (Ingsoc). Maintaining a belief that is no longer acceptable, but was normal just a few years prior.
• oldthinkers - Those who engage in oldthink Those who have not fully accepted the new Ingsoc way of thinking.
• Outer Party - Middle class. Bureaucrats, and other government employees. Comprising approximately 13% of population. There is a huge gap between the standard of living of Inner and Outer party members. Outer Party members have very little possessions, and almost no access to basic consumer goods. All outer party members have a telescreen in every room of their pathetic excuse for an apartment.
• ownlife - Individualism and eccentricity. A desire to do something for your own benefit. (i.e. hobbies, ownership of property, love, or any other Thoughtcrime)
• Physical Jerks - Morning Exercises. Participation was mandatory for all outer party members. These exercises took place every day 3 minutes after the morning wake-up call, which for office workers was at 7:15 am.
• Pornosec - Department of Minitrue. Produces the "lowest-kind" of pornography for the proles. In the Novel, it is described as a "sub-section of the Fiction Department which turned out cheap pornography for distribution among the proles. It was nicknamed Muck House by the people who worked in it". They "produced booklets in sealed packets with titles like Spanking Stories or One Night in a Girls' School, to be bought furtively by proletarian youths who were under the impression that they were buying something illegal.
• prole - Proletarians. Approximately 85% of Oceania's population are in this class. Members of the party viewed them as animals. They are not as rigidly observed as members of the party, and very few (if any) have telescreens in their home. They are permitted to indulge in pornography, prostitution, and other acts considered thoughtcrime, simply because it would be impossible to observe all of them as rigidly as the party observes its own members. Plus, allowing them to indulge in these "little joys" helps to keep the masses content.
• prolefeed - Rubishy "Entertainment" and spurious news which the Party handed out to the masses. This includes written literature, movies, porn, music, and other various propaganda created for the proles. (For a modern example of prolefeed, just turn on your television or radio. With the exception of some scientific programming, everything else is prolefeed.)
• Recdep - Records Department - Department of the Ministry of Truth in which Winston Smith worked. Department responsible for correcting "mistakes" in past newspaper articles.
• Reclamation Centre - Colony for children made homeless during the Atomic Wars.
• ref - Reference.
• resistance - The resistance was the revolutionary group which was supposedly led by the arch-traitor, Emmanuel Goldstein. There is some question as to whether or not this group actually existed. The novel seems to imply that the resistance was simply fabricated by the government, or at the very least, that the police had agents posing as real resistance members in order to catch possible recruits. The only thing that is for sure, is that the party blamed every possible woe of society on this group. The resistance was blamed for spreading herpes, contaminating the water supply, forging government documents (which was the reason for so many "misprints" in the papers), abducting party members, helping to aim rocket bombs to targets on Airstrip One, and destroying industrial machinery. Every single thing that ever goes wrong is blamed on this group. For instance: Whenever the trains don't run on time, it is said that the resistance has alter the train schedule ... When a department does meet their production goal, it is said that the resistance has altered the original data, resulting in a over-estimation of production for that year.
• Room 101 - The final punishment for thoughtcriminals in the Ministry of Love. "The thing is in Room 101 is the worst thing in the world....The worst thing in the world varies from individual to individual. It may be burial alive, or death by fire, or by drowning, or by impalement, or fifty other deaths..... "
• Steamer - Prole word for Rocket Bomb
• sexcrime - Having sex for enjoyment. Also, even having sex in the hope to create a family of your own. The only time that sex is considered goodsex is when it is performed in producing offspring for the party.
• speakwrite - Voice recognition machines. (A fairly 'futuristic' concept, considering that this book was written in 1948)
• speedwise - (adverb) quickly. One of the rules of newspeak is that any word can be turned into an adverb by adding the suffix "-wise". This allowed the removal of repetitive words such as quickly and promptly from the language.
• Teledep - The Teleprograms Department of the Ministry of Truth
• Telescreen - Two way television. All party members has one in every room of their apartment. Because of this, the party member is never out of earshot of the latest party propaganda, and not one second goes by that they are not under the surveillance of the party. There was no way to change the channel, and the telescreen could not be turned off except by members of the Inner Party.
• Thoughtcrime - see crimethink
• Thinkpol - ThoughtPolice. Police force in charge of eliminating crimethink. The thought police monitor the public by way of spies (narcs), helicopters, and telescreens.
• two minute hate - Daily telescreen specials in which various elements of crimethink were packaged into a parade of horrible images and sounds, at which, the viewers were expected to boo, hiss, curse. and release any negative emotions upon. To hear the Two Minute Hate from the opening credits of the movie, click here
• unperson - Person that has been erased from existence by the government for breaking the law in some way. A unperson is completely erased from history. All records of their existence is removed from record, and all party members are expected to removed them from memory. To mention their name is considered thoughtcrime. This eliminates any possibility of martyrdom.
• ungood - Bad. One of the rules of newspeak is that any word can be turned into its antonym by adding the prefix "un-". This allowed the removal of repetitive words such as horrible, terrible, great, fantastic, and fabulous from the language. "After all, what justification is there for a word which is simply the opposite of some other word? A word contains its opposite in itself. Take "good", for instance. If you have a word like "good", what need is there for a word like "bad"? "Ungood" will do just as well -- better, because it's an exact opposite, which the other is not."
• upsub - Get authorization from superiors (Submit to "Higher-ups" for approval)
• vaporized - The act of being executed by the state, and having all records of your existence erased. Becoming an unperson.
• versificator - A writing machine. A mechanical device that produced "literature" and "music" for the masses. This was necessary so that a party member would not be forced to cloud their mind with such frivolous concepts. It produced rubbishy newspapers containing almost nothing except sport, crime and astrology, sensational five-cent novelettes, films oozing with sex, and even sentimental songs.
• Youth League - Mandatory children's group under control of the Thought Police. Similar to the "Hitler Youth". Their member's primary task is to monitor the activities of their parents.
• x yp n quarter - Method or writing a date. x= Year of the plan, n= quarter of year. (i.e. 3 yp 4th quarter)