Even More Thoughts on Symbols, Words, and George Orwell

Hi, this is Eric W.

What particularly interests me is that Orwell and Hayakawa seem to disagree over whether "the word is the thing" (are symbols connected to what they are representing?) or not. Orwell states in his Appendix that Newspeak's purpose was to eliminate certain words and render their corresponding thoughts "literally unthinkable," and to "diminish the range of thought." He states that many crimes would soon be impossible to commit with the implementation of Newspeak "simply because they were nameless and therefore unimaginable."

However, Hayakawa and many of you respond that eliminating the word does not eliminate the feeling, as Hayakawa writes that "the word is not the thing" and thus the eliminated word could easily be replaced, as some feelings do not need words.

I do see now that the world of 1984 is a dystopia and while the Party may have been able to eliminate ideas, words, and prevent new words from springing up again, in real life (as many of you mentioned) new words may be created. However, in real life it often is difficult to do so. For example, I would like all of you to imagine a new kind of color, a color that none of us have ever seen before. I'd like you to now assign a name to that color and then explain to me what this new color looks like. I feel that attempting to explain what "patriotism" is and its contradictory set of meanings to someone who has never before encountered the concept or the word (such as a typical 1984 Party member) would be similar to trying to describe a new type of color to someone who had never encountered it before.


Regarding this thought from Sam:

The concepts of freedom, liberty, and justice [from the past], however, are still vivid in Winston's mind, despite the efforts of the Party to erase them.

In my interpretation, Winston is unsure of whether the past actually was any better or if any such ideals actually exist. Orwell writes this about Winston:
"How could you tell how much of it was lies? ... The only evidence to the contrary was the mute protest in your bontes, the instinctive feeling that the conditions you lived in were intolerable and that at some other time they must have been different."

Winston certainly has feelings that something is not right, but in order to express his emotion as more concrete ideas he would need such words as "liberty" and "equality." Nothing prevents him from inventing a new word to describe this feelings (although the Thought Police would soon catch him) but how could Winston explain the meaning of his new word to anyone else? It'd almost be like describing a new color . Thus, restricting certain words and preventing new ones being formed in their place does have at least some restriction upon thought. Of course, such a condition is only feasible in 1984's dystopia and in the real world, we could easily create a new word.

I wonder if 1984 is almost a "map" of the real world "territory," albeit an intentionally distorted one. Orwell's book was intended as an example of what society could become at its worst, so perhaps it is a symbol? Anyway, the Thought Police could never exist in the real world (I hope), and so any effects upon our thoughts of what particular language we learned is not as exaggerated as in 1984 (provided that we do not start teaching only Newspeak in our schools.)

Once again, Jabberwocky shows a good example of feelings transcending words but...

I still believe that the particular language we happen to have been taught still has at least some effect upon our thoughts, although it does not wholly control them. Newspeak and the Andamanese language are exaggerated examples, but the effect still exists to a lesser extent with other real life languages.
Thoughts?

Moving on from Orwell:

Hayakawa emphasizes that symbols are independent of what is being symbolized and that too many times, we confuse the two. Perhaps one reason is that some ideas and thoughts are too difficult to understand without the help of symbols. For example, Hayakawa writes that symbols of patriotism (like a flag lapel pin) are sometimes valued above actual patriotism. But what is patriotism? Is it burning a flag or pledging allegiance to it? Supporting a war or protesting it? TIME Magazine recently pondered over this question in a cover article, but I still am not too clear. Does the symbol not almost become what is being symbolized in these cases? Such a nebulous concept (patriotism) might sometimes be replaced with the concrete symbol (flag) because the concept is too hard to express clearly to others.

As Sam's example of the snake shows, clearly the word is not the thing. But how else can we define some things without using symbols? For example, take the sound of a duck. In English, the duck goes "quack quack." In French, it goes "coin coin." In Esperanto, it goes "gik gak." All right, so the word is not the symbol as the different versions of "quack" in different languages show. But then what is the sound of a duck? In this case, the symbol practically is what is being symbolized. Is it?

Any clarification would be appreciated. Thoughts?