Linguaggio e Informazione nel XX secolo tesina

INDICE

1. Introduzione p. 3

2. Inglese: Newspeak in Orwell’s “1984” p. 4

2.1. Features of Newspeak p. 4

2.2. The models for Orwell’s Newspeak p. 5

2.3. Newspeak elements in Nazi Germany and communist URSS language p. 7

2.4. Conclusions p. 8

3. Storia: L’informazione radiofonica nel regime fascista p. 9

3.1. L’avvento della radio in Italia p. 9

3.2. Il controllo del mezzo p. 10

3.3. Il Radiogiornale p. 10

3.4. Le “Cronache del Regime” p. 11

3.5. L’indottrinamento della gioventù p. 12

3.6. Conclusioni p. 13

4. Filosofia: La teoria del linguaggio di Wittgenstein p. 14

4.1. Il Tractatus: il linguaggio come immagine logica del mondo p. 14

4.2. Il secondo Wiggtenstein: il significato come uso p. 15

4.3. Linguaggio e forme di vita p. 16

4.4. Conclusioni p. 16

5. Bibliografia p. 17

2 1. INTRODUZIONE

Il motivo per cui ho voluto trattare il ruolo che l’informazione ha avuto nel XX secolo è il

mio interesse personale per i nuovi mezzi di informazione, ed in particolare Twitter, che in

questi ultimi anni sta profondamente cambiando le modalità in cui la popolazione fruisce

dell’informazione, in un modo che è sempre meno frontale e sempre più contributivo.

Ho voluto quindi analizzare come l’informazione è stata vista, interpretata e utilizzata,

nell’ambito della letteratura, della storia e della filosofia in un periodo in cui essa al

contrario era per forza di cose unilaterale.

Ho approfondito, in particolare, l’aspetto che riguarda lo stretto rapporto presente tra essa

e il linguaggio, evidenziando come un’alterazione voluta e mirata del linguaggio possa

essere strumento di distorsione e controllo sull’informazione e sulla popolazione. 3

2. INGLESE

Newspeak in Orwell’s 1984

One of the books in which the theme of language related to the control of information is

more important is George Orwell’s “1984”. In this book, where the author imagines a post

WWII regime, the ruling Party has developed a special kind of language used to keep the

population submitted narrowing the range of expression.

2.1 Features of Newspeak

The Newspeak is a language that the Party wants to impose over the whole population in

order to keep it under some kind of “mental control”, making them unable to think freely.

The main principles of Newspeak are

Diminishing of vocabulary:

•

While in any natural language there is a constant influx of new words to fulfill it’s function,

in Newspeak it’s just the opposite: it has to lose words constantly, as the aim of Newspeak

is not to enlarge the range of expression, line in any natural language, but to narrow it, so

that an individual is not even able to think critical or subversive thoughts, hence each word

related to ideas, things or persons not in line with the Party’s official line is banned.

An example of the way in which this reduction of the vocabulary is made, is the one

concerning adjectives: synonymous are banned and just one adjective is allowed. All the

shades of expressivity are reduced to the addition of some prefix, for example:

English Newspeak

good good

splendid plus-good

excellent double-plus-good

bad ungood

horrible plus-un-good

Words as empty shells:

•

To understand this principle of Newspeak we can start from the example of the Newspeak

word “blackwhite”, which has two meanings:

When applied to an opponent: “the habit of impudently claiming that black is white, in

• contradiction of the plain facts”

When applied to a Party Member: “loyal willingness to say, believe and know that

• black is white when Party demands this”

This is a clear example of Newspeak’s ambiguous words. It can be mistaken with

polysemy but there is an important difference: in Newspeak the speaker chooses which

meaning to attach to the word, ideally in an unconscious way. As a result, words cease to

have any meaning whatsoever and become just “empty shells” ready to accommodate

whatever meaning they are told to accommodate.

4

Evidently, a language consisting of such words cannot be clear, but is used to confuse the

speech instead, in order to make it adaptable to the Party line

Overuse of ready-made phrases:

•

Every language has its own ready-made phrases and there is nothing wrong in itself, the

problem is if, as it is in Newspeak, they are the large majority of the speech and are

chosen by the Party.

The reason why the Party wants the population to use this kind of language is pretty clear

and simple: ready-made phrases make you think less, since they offer you a way of

expressing your ideas in the way that the party wants you to express them, and, in the

long term, to make you think like they want you to think.

Those phrases are often themselves abbreviated to further narrow and alter their meaning.

As a result, a speech based on this kind of phrases is independent of consciousness and

not ideologically neutral, as it reflects the thoughts of the ones who “created” them, the

Party.

An example of this is that, as Orwell writes on the Appendix, “the associations called up by

a word like Minitrue are fewer and more controllable than those called up by Ministry of

Truth”

Antonymous euphemisms:

•

While euphemisms, words with the aim to avoid directly naming something unpleasant, are

present in every natural language and have nothing bad in themselves, Newspeak uses a

particular type of euphemisms: the antonymous, a kind of euphemism that means almost

the opposite of what it appears to mean.

Newspeak uses antonymous to alter the perception of things by the population: for

instance, “Minipax”, the Ministry of Peace, is actually the Ministry of War, and the so called

“Joycamp”, are labor camps.

2.2 The models for Orwell’s Newspeak

But what effectively inspired Orwell in the invention of the Newspeak? They’re probably

two:

Houyhnhnms’s language in Swift’s “Gulliver’s travels”

•

The Houyhnhnms are the inhabitants of the last land that Gulliver visits in the 4th and last

book of the novel “Gulliver’s Travel” by Jonathan Swift.

They’re horses endowed with reason, that had developed, as Swfit writes, a “sophisticated

way of communication”

Charles Ogden’s Basic English

•

What is basic English? It’s a sort of extremely simplified version of English developed in

the 1920s by Charles Ogden with two aims:

to make it an international auxiliary and universal language

• to develop a first stage in learning English by foreigners

• 5

Charles Ogden, in fact, when working on a book where he was comparing definitions of

every kind of thing, noticed that, whatever you were defining, certain words keep coming

into definitions, no matter how diverse the thing you were defining.

This suggested him that there might be a limited set of words in terms of which all other

words might be stated: that's how Basic English started. He selected 850 words with which

a person could make himself understood and speak within everyday topics, and this made

Basic grew very popular in the 1930s and 40s as we can see by the number of manuals

published in those years and, more importantly, by the number of books translated into

Basic, starting with the Bible.

Comparison between Newspeak, Houyhnhnms’s language and Basic English

Now that we outlined a brief introduction to these two models, we can make a comparison

between them and the Newspeak by the point of view of the previously explained

Newspeak principles.

Diminishing of vocabulary

• Newspeak Houyhnhnms’s language Basic English

There are fewer words that Use fewer words that in Use fewer words that in

in standard English to standard English because standard English to make it

narrow the range of many notions common to easier to learn and be

expressivity us are entirely missing, and understood by foreigners

so are the related words

Elimination of synonymous

• Newspeak Houyhnhnms’s language Basic English

All the synonymous are There isn’t variety of words There aren’t synonymous

banned in favor of a single because because it has to be very

word to express them all “their wants and passions simple and understandable

are fewer than among us” by foreigners

Words as empty shells

• Newspeak Houyhnhnms’s language Basic English

Words and are just “empty Houyhnhnms’ words are He who translates writings

shells” that accommodate empty shells because they into Basic has the power to

whatever meaning they are don’t communicate any decide what is the real

told to accommodate notion or emotion meaning of what is being

said

6 Overuse of ready-made phrases

• Newspeak Houyhnhnms’s language Basic English

There are a lot of Ready-made phrases are

ready-made phrases to common for the structure of

make people think less and the language itself

be orthodox to the Party

line

2.3 Newspeak elements in Nazi and communist URSS language

Orwell invented Newspeak in the same way that physicists invented ideal gas: although it

doesn’t exist, it is a convenient model to show in full the characteristic of real gases.

Orwell's Newspeak is an ideal model that does not exist, but it enables him to describe

with an hyperbole the characteristics of real languages.

We can see, comparing the language in use in two totalitarian regime of the 1900’s, the

Nazi Germany and the Communist USSR, that, although exaggerated, the elements of

Newspeak are very much the same as the ones of German and Russian of the time.

Diminishing of vocabulary

• Germany USSR

Many words were banned: children Whole branches of knowledge, especially

couldn't be named with biblical names, but in the field of economy, simply did not

only with “orthodox” ones (Arian) names; exist, and so the correspondent terms;

Use of superlatives was forbidden for Many goods and services disappeared

advertisements, as it was an exclusive of from the lives of the soviet people: those

the regime for the propaganda. terms weren’t banned from the

vocabularies, but effectively died in the

common use.

Words as empty shells

• Germany USSR

The word “FANATIC”: “socialist democracy”: positive meaning

before nazism: something negative and “bourgeois democracy”: false democracy

dangerous,

during nazism: it became, in its language, “terror”: is something negative

a positive epithet, a synonym of “red terror”: highly positive connotation

courageous, self-scarfing and so on. 7

Overuse of ready-made phrases

• Germany USSR

The phrases used to describe military Many catch phrases obsessively repeated

events were standardized: by the propaganda like:

the number of enemy soldiers killed was “rotten capitalist system”

•

always “unimaginable” or “countless”, all “the myth about human rights”

•

the battles were called either “grand “the kingdom of communism”

•

offensive” or “grand battle”: ordinary battles “the chains of capitalism”

•

or offensive did not exist.

Antonymous euphemisms

• Germany USSR

The Soviet army in Afghanistan: a

• “limited contingent” of the soviet troops,

“To be taken for safekeeping” meant “to be while the number of soldiers was actually

stolen”, said for example about the goods really big;

of Jews arrested or deported: the Soviet army stationed in the eastern

•

they were “taken for safekeeping” since Germany: “group of soviet troops”, where

party officials never steal. group, not being a military term,

implicates a small number.

2.4 Conclusions

Through the comparison between Newspeak and German and Russian languages under a

regime, we can see that, although evidently exaggerated, a lot of elements of Orwell’s

Newspeak were present in those languages, showing how right his idea about the link

between dictatorial power and speech was.

A well studied language imposed over the population has the power to reduce dissent to

silence, to make people think less and not only be submitted under the regime, but to do

so without them even knowing it.

8 3. STORIA

L’informazione radiofonica nel regime fascista

In Italia il nascere delle moderne tecniche di comunicazione di massa è contemporaneo

alla nascita dello stato totalitario. Il rapporto che si è stabilito fra potere e informazione ha