Tyr S Day, Oct. 15: Politics and the English Language

Tyr’s Day, Oct. 15: Politics and the English Language EQ: How do Reason, Words and Truth build Integrity (or not)?

 Welcome!  Integrity: Buildings, Ethics, and Rhetoric o Areopagitica o Paradise Lost  Existential Integrity: Reason, Words, Truth  George Orwell: Three Essays o Politics and the English Language o Propaganda and Demotic Speech o The Prevention of Literature  The First Debate: Three Excerpts One has to think fearlessly, and if one thinks fearlessly one cannot be politically orthodox. ELACC12RL-RI2: Analyze two or more themes or central ideas of text ELACC12RI3: Analyze and explain how individuals, ideas, or events interact and develop ELACC12RL4-RI4: Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in text ELACC12RL6: Distinguish what is directly stated in a text from what is really meant ELACC12RI6: Determine an author’s point of view or purpose in a text ELACC12RI8: Delineate and evaluate the reasoning in seminal British texts ELACC12RL10: Read and comprehend complex literature independently and proficiently. ELACC12W9: Draw evidence from literary or informational texts to support analysis ELACC12SL1: Initiate and participate effectively in a range of collaborative discussions Integrity The Pantheon in Rome (Italy!) has stood for 2,000 years because its parts work together to distribute stresses, giving it what engineers call “structural integrity” (photo by Corbin Saunders) Existential (Personal) Integrity A Self is strong because of harmony between thinking, words, actions seeking and serving Truth

A Self is weak – literally, lacks integrity – because no harmony; disconnect between thinking, words, actions which thereby avoid Truth

Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart (thoughts) be always acceptable in thy sight, O Lord (Truth) (Psalm 19:14) Philosophical (Rhetorical) Integrity A thinker/speaker/writer is strong because thinking, words, actions in harmony, seeking and serving Truth

Right Reason Rational, logical, ethical thought seeking Truth, resulting in proximity to Good and God  Areopagitica o Right Reason strengthened by vigorous “trial by what is contrary” (reading/rejecting Evil) o Words must be judged in terms of Right Reason

 Paradise Lost o Satan’s words do not connect to Truth (“from the terror of this arm doubted his empire”) o Satan’s words do not even connect to his thoughts (“Vaunting aloud, but rack’d with deep despair”) o Satan’s thoughts do not seek Truth (“The mind is its own place, and in itself/Can make a Heaven of Hell”), creating “Wrong Reason” = Sin = Hell Eric Blair, a.k.a. George Orwell (1903-1950)

 Journalist, Essayist, Novelist (Animal Farm, 1984)  “A power of facing unpleasant facts” o “Civilized” life depends on brutal, shameful truths we rarely see or admit o These truths often hidden by imprecise, cloudy language – sometimes intentionally o Job of writers/thinkers is to discover, expose truth  Three Essays o Politics and the English Language o Propaganda and Demotic Speech o The Prevention of Literature As we watch clips of the first Presidential Debate, sit with your essay groups and evaluate the candidates in terms of rhetorical integrity:

Do words match truth? Do words seek to convey or hide truth? Do words clearly convey thoughts, or not? WWOS? (What Would Orwell Say?)

http://www.foxnews.com/on- air/fox-news-debates/index.html Now, freewrite:

 30 words – The question was, “How would you create jobs?” – but both talked a lot about family issues. Cite one example, and briefly – did that clarify the answer, or distract from it?  30 words – write down as many SPECIFIC ideas as you can remember each candidate proposing; then, count them, and answer: In the two minutes, which did a better job of telling you specific things he’d do? (not which you liked better, but which you remember better) (If you can’t think of one – what does that tell you?)  30 words – comment on the debate format – men at podiums in suits, taking turns talking to a moderator and looking at the camera. How might a different format change the debate? Turn in today:

 Orwell Essay Reading Guide  Debate Freewrite

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George Orwell, “Propaganda and Demotic Speech”

1. Define propaganda, as Orwell uses it here:

2. Define demotic speech, as Orwell uses it here:

3. “The thing that nearly always strikes you” about official speeches and writing is, according to

Orwell, “their ______from the ______.”

4. What, says Orwell, “seems to be instinctively avoided” in official writing and speaking?

5. They are full, he says, of words and phrases “which no ______would ever

______of using.”

6. Summarize the problem he describes the Air Raid sirens and posters:

7. Summarize what he saw happen in a pub during a news broadcast about Dunkirk:

8. “The main weakness of propagandists,” says Orwell, “is their failure to notice” what?

9. “If phrases … don’t mean anything to the average man,” says Orwell, “then” what?

10. If you simplify, and make writing like speech, says Orwell, “you are not … likely to say

‘______’ when you mean ‘______.’”

11. What accent, says Orwell, is the worst for speakers to use if they want to be understood? 12. “Some day,” says Orwell, “we may have a genuinely ______government, … which

will want to ______what is ______, and what must be ______next,

and ______.” George Orwell, “The Prevention of Literature”

1. What two things does Orwell say nobody does at the conference honoring Milton’s Areopagitica?

2. Name two things Orwell mentions as having “distorting effects” on writers:

3. “In the past,” writes Orwell, “the idea of ______and the idea of ______

______were mixed up.”

4. A heretic,” says Orwell, “was one who refused to outrage” what?

5. “The controversy over freedom of speech,” says Orwell, “is at bottom a controversy of the

desirability, or otherwise, of” doing what?

6. “Freedom of the intellect,” says Orwell, “means the freedom to report” what?

7. “And not to be obliged,” he continues, “to fabricate” what?

8. According to Orwell, “Totalitarianism demands” what?

9. “And in the long run,” he continues, “probably demands” what?

10. “A totalitarian society,” he writes, “would probably set up a ______system of thought.” What does he mean?

11. “Literature,” writes Orwell, “is an attempt to” do what? 12. “To write in plain, vigorous language,” says Orwell, “one has to think ______, and

if one thinks ______one cannot be ______.”

 Define: orthodox –

13. “Wherever there is an enforced ______,” writes Orwell, “good writing ______.” George Orwell, “Politics and the English Language”

1. “Most people,” says Orwell, agree that the English Language is in trouble, but assume what?

2. “Now, an ______can become a ______,” says Orwell, and goes on to describe a

process whereby “language …. becomes ______and ______because our

______are ______, but the ______of our ______

makes it ______for us to have ______.”

3. Bad writing, says Orwell, “consists in” what?

4. “It is easier – even quicker, once you have the habit – to say

than to say ______.”

5. “A scrupulous writer,” says Orwell, “will ask himself questions.” List three:

6. Bad writing happens, says Orwell, when you “shirk” that duty and let “the ready-made phrases ….

______your sentences for you – even ______your ______for you,” so

that you end up “partially ______your ______even from ______.”

7. A writer or speaker who strings together clichés has, says Orwell, “gone some distance toward

turning himself into a ______.” 8. “Political speech and writing are largely the ______of the ______.” List two:

9. “When there is a gap between one’s ______and one’s ______aims,” writes Orwell,

“one turns … to long words and exhausted idioms, like a ______spurting out ______.”

10. “If ______corrupts ______,” says Orwell, “______can also corrupt

______.” He compares clichéd phrases to “a packet of ______.”

11. “Let the ______choose the ______,” says Orwell, “not the other way around.”

12. Orwell says, “The worst thing one can do with words is” what?

“Political language,” says Orwell, “is designed to make ______sound ______and ______, and to give an ______of

______to pure ______.”