Use Of Language In Animal Farm, By George Orwell

Conner Koe – 1330997

Jessica Swain

English 1A03 – Tutorial 28

March 20th, 2014

The ability to effectively understand and use language is arguably one of the greatest tools one can possess when communicating. Language allows individuals to comprehensively interact, offering them the means to relate, transfer ideas, share stories, etc. The use of language has often been used throughout history as a method to positively motivate and inspire groups of people into a necessary state of change. Such is the case in the beginning of the famous novel, Animal Farm, by George Orwell. Throughout the novel, Orwell accentuates just how powerful and persuasive language, as well as the manipulation of language, can be. This power becomes immediately evident in the novel when old Major gives his prophetic final speech, inspiring the animals to rise-up and rebel against the farm owner Jones and the rest of the human race. But as Orwell also demonstrates in the novel, the manipulation of language can similarly have an adverse effect, specifically when the subjects of such manipulation do not have a proficient understanding of the language at hand. The power of such manipulation becomes apparent later on in the story when Napoleon utilizes Squealer in several instances to spread propaganda and twist the context of language around the farm in order to enhance dominance and maintain the authoritative power of the pigs over the other animals. Through the events and use of his characters within the story, Orwell emphasizes how language can become an instrument of power. He accentuates how it can be used as a positive method of motivating, as well as how in the absence of proper proprietors, it can be used to manipulate others for control.

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...s again with a false scenario, “Here Squealer looked very sly. That, he said, was Comrade Napoleon’s cunning. He had seemed to oppose the windmill, simply as a manoeuvre to get rid of Snowball, who was a dangerous character and a bad influence … ‘Tactics, comrades, tactics!’” (39) Squealer convinces the animals that Snowball had originally stolen the plans from Napoleon, and that it was Napoleon’s tactics all along to oppose the windmill prior to Snowball being expelled (39). It becomes evident that the pigs rely on the manipulation of language so as to diminish any ideas against Napoleon and trick the animals into believing they are loved and treated justly by their leaders.

Squealer constantly manifests the idea into the animals that Napoleon has sacrificed everything for them, that he loves all of them deeply, and that he would never lie about the commandments.