Name Brooklyne 5798 50 View of Life in '1984 Miko Date Period 3 Forbidden Love ... Fear... Btroyed LANGUAGE & DEVELOPMENT 1984 A Novel by GEORGE ORWELL URANCE IS STRENGO BI IS WATL YOU n the classic novel 1984, George Orwell explores a fictional time when the government is controlled by a totalitarian regime. The regime seeks complete and total control over the entire state and its citizens. They use control tactics such as constant surveillance, limits of independent thought, controlling access to information and the regulation of speech. The government has invented a new language called Newspeak which is replacing Oldspeak (the English we now use). Newspeak limits language in order to limit thought. The regime believes that by limiting the language used by its citizens, they make it impossible to speak or even think of rebelling against them. Newspeak highlights the idea that if a language does not have a means to express certain ideas, its speakers cannot conceptualize them. Orwell attempted to warn his readers that a state that creates the language and mandates how it is used can control the minds of its citizens. Could this really happen? Could a government actually limit our ability to think of the concept of freedom by removing the word from our vocabulary? B enjamin Lee Whorf Linguist Benjamin Lee Whorf contended that language determines the way we basic ideas." Whorf used the term think: "Language itself shapes a [person's] linguistic relativity or linguistic determinism to refer to the idea that language influences thoughts. For example, consider the word snow. Whorf estimated that the Inuit have many words for snow (including separate words for damp snow, falling Benjamin Lee Whorf snow, and melting snow) because their survival depends on living in snow. According to Whorf's theory, different terms for snow help the Inuit see that different types of snow as different. For people who speak two different languages, such as English and Japanese, it's obvious that a person may think differently in different languages. Bilingual individuals have revealed different personality profiles when taking the same personality test in their two languages. On the other hand, critics claim that Americans have many words for snow(sleet, slush, blizzard, dusting, and avalanche). Another possibility, is that instead of language being the cause of certain ways of thinking, thought produces language. The only reason that Inuit language might have more words for snow than English, is that snow is considerably more relevant to Inuits than it is to people in other cultures. Since the birth of Whorf's hypothesis, studies have claimed to discredit it. Still, the linguistic-relativity hypothesis has not been entirely scrapped. A newer version of the hypothesis suggests that speech patterns may influence certain aspects of thinking. For example, the use of pronouns affects our thinking. Nurses, secretaries, and school teachers are often referred to as she, while doctors, engineers, and presidents are often referred to as he. 7. What is Newspeak? 8. Why did the government invent Newspeak? 9. What is linguistic relativity?. 10. What evidence is cited for Whorf's beliefs? 11. Why do you think linguistic relativity is controversial?