Orwell and the Dept. of Corrections

QUESTION: What is the connection between Orwell's theory of language as expressed by Politics and the English Language and 1984, and the reference to prisoners as "bodies" by the Corrections Dept.?

ANSWER: In 1984, Orwell describes a "future" totalitarian society in which the police state dominates and controls every aspect of life. Newspeak, the language of the party, is systematically designed to eliminate the possibility of unorthodox thinking. It does this by reducing and perverting vocabulary until the ideas associated with political freedom cannot be verbalized.

Orwell's Politics and the English Language, while laying out pitfalls to avoid in written English, also expands on the theory of language developed at greater length in 1984. What is important to Orwell is the intimacy of the connection between language and thought. We are verbal creatures, whose ideas and collective memory are all embodied in the words we use. We create the words we need to express the thoughts and feelings we experience, and these words in turn re-create us, shaping our political lives and our psychological capacities. Without clarity of thought, clear writing is impossible, and the discipline of writing coherently helps us to think more rationally. Although Orwell was particularly offended by the "party line" political sloganeering of his own time, an alert reader could easily pick out ten cliches which substitute for real thinking in any issue of today's New York Times.

The relevance of this discussion to modern law and politics cannot be missed. When the Department of Corrections refers to prisoners as "bodies" it engages in a deliberate linguistic de-humanization of inmates which is consistent with the ideology of its bureaucracy. The guards insulate themselves from the emotional consequences of their work by the use of such language; it is possible to empathize with a person, but not with a number. "Bodies" are there to be counted, but they contain no suffering souls.

Once aware of the debasement of language in this way, the thinking person begins to see this phenomenon everywhere. In fact the very title of the "Corrections" Department is overtly Orwellian, containing as it does the false promise of rehabilitation at the very moment in history when educational and religious guidance is being withdrawn from prisons for "budgetary" reasons. Funds for continuing education and for prison chaplains have been targeted for elimination just this week. Meanwhile since the recidivism rate from our State Prisons is around 75% even in the best of times, it is clear that few are "corrected" by incarceration.

Why not be more honest, and call our prisons the "Department of Punishment?" Or, D. of Vengeance? But then, why is the police torture apparatus in 1984 called the Ministry of Love? To understand this misuse of language is to comprehend both Orwell and our own political landscape.

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Last updated on September 25, 1998
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