Travessias (Aug 2018)
George Orwell’s 1984, language manipulation and the Lacanian Materialism
Abstract
The objective of this article is to analyze language manipulation in literature considering George Orwell’s dystopian novel, 1984. The totalitarian party in the novel, the Ingsoc, tries to manipulate the reality of Oceania society by creating a new language, the Newspeak, which widely spreads the political views established by the party. This ceaseless attempt to manipulate the language is characterized as one of several strategies imputed by the political apparatus to watch over and control the citizens, especially the members of the party, so that they cannot articulate dissenting thoughts to the dominant political ideology. Based on theories by Žižek on the Symbolic and big Other concepts, found in Jacques Lacan’s psychoanalysis, the results show that the interference in the Symbolic instance via language is harmful since it alters the way subjects conceive the reality, depriving them of their ability to distinguish the sensor imposed by the totalitarian politics in the novel, as well as their ability to strike back. Conversely, however, language interference reveals some flaws within the party, given that the need for investment in the creation of yet another mechanism of thought control - language - denotes that the party is not, in fact, completely effective in what it intends to do.
