Comparing Language In Brave New World And Nineteen Eighty

In the dystopian novels Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-Four, language is a form of oppression. Brave New World is a world where scientific progress, complete with new Greek and Latin terminology, has led to a perfectly happy, overly medicated society. In Nineteen Eighty-Four, language has been simplified to a select few Old English or Middle English words, limiting a person’s ability to express their discontent about their fascist leaders. Both novels show people imprisoned by the language they use, be it complex scientific jargon or so simplified it has become another language. In Brave New World, new meanings to Greek and Latin words create the science required for the dystopia; in Nineteen Eighty-Four, most loanwords are erased

Mr. Foster, a worker at the Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Centre, claims proudly that there is “Nothing like oxygen-shortage for keeping an embryo below par,” and that “an Epsilon embryo must have an Epsilon environment as well as an Epsilon heredity,” meaning that classes are not merely familial or economic, but environmental as well. In order to make the class difference insurmountable, only the highest class foetus receives enough oxygen to develop properly. The five classes that emerge from hatcheries such as the Central London Hatchery are called “alpha,” “beta,” “gamma,” “delta,” and “epsilon.” The appropriation of the Greek alphabet, plus the Latin suffixes “-plus” or “-minus,” signify how scientifically-minded the community is. Huxley deliberately used Greek and Latin as not only scientific terms, but social terms, demonstrating how scientifically-minded this society is. The OED cites Brave New World as the first text to use the words “epsilon” and “gamma” as types of people, with “epsilon” being “a person of low intelligence” and “gamma” being a person of third-rate intelligence (OED*). Although British teachers had been using the Greek alphabet with “minus” or “plus” added on for sub-classification for several years, Brave New World is unique in using the letters as names of five social

Of the new words used in the novel, “Newspeak” and “doublethink” are the most popular, being repeated 84 and 31 times respectively. “Think,” “new,” and “speech” are cognates from Old Frisian, entering the English language before the 13th century, with “speech” first cited around the year 725. “Double” is a Middle English word with Old French, Italian, and Latin ties, while “speak,” a variant of “speech,” is also a Middle English word, first cited after the 1300s. These words have remained constant in the England language for hundreds of years, and it only makes sense that they would be used to create a simplified version of the English language. Introducing words from other languages would complicate Newspeak, but Old English and Middle English words’ meanings are “rigidly defined,” making Newspeak a far simpler language than modern English (A vocab). Since Newspeak is used to limit its speakers’ ability to express themselves, the fewer words the language has, the easier it is to stop people from saying things that they aren’t allowed to