Ragg It: November 2010

Newspeak is a fictional language in George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. The term was also used to discuss Soviet phraseology. Orwell included an essay about it in the form of an appendix in which the basic principles of the language are explained. Newspeak is closely based on English but has a greatly reduced and simplified vocabulary and grammar. This suits the totalitarian regime of the Party, whose aim is to make any alternative thinking—"thoughtcrime", or "crimethink" in the newest edition of Newspeak—impossible by removing any words or possible constructs which describe the ideas of freedom, rebellion and so on. One character, Syme, says admiringly of the shrinking volume of the new dictionary: "It's a beautiful thing, the destruction of words."

The basic idea behind Newspeak is to remove all shades of meaning from language, leaving simple dichotomies (pleasure and pain, happiness and sadness, goodthink and crimethink) which reinforce the total dominance of the State. Similarly, Newspeak root words served as both nouns and verbs, which allowed further reduction in the total number of words; for example, "think" served as both noun and verb, so the word thought was not required and could be abolished. A staccato rhythm of short syllables was also a goal, further reducing the need for deep thinking about language. (See duckspeak.) Successful Newspeak meant that there would be fewer and fewer words – dictionaries would get thinner and thinner.

The "A" group of words are for simple concepts, such as "eating" and "drinking". Groups of words such as the "B" group convey more complicated topics. The only way to say "bad" is with ungood. Something awful or extremely terrible is called "doubleplusungood". The "C" group is for very technical vocabulary. Since the Party does not want people to be intelligent in multiple fields, there is no word for "science". There are separate words for different fields.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspeak