Why is the ruthless totalitarian regime described in Orwell's novel purging Oldspeak and imposing new speak? What assumptions are being made about the relationship between language and thought?
New speak was created as a form of control. By limiting a persons vocabulary your ultimately limiting the way they think because we think in the language that we speak, so by narrowing down the amount of words that people are able to use you are making it harder for people to think outside the box or be innovative or curious, because they are unable to communicate anything outside the little language they know their thought are controlled.
an example of this are the ways in which they are allowed to express positive and negative. they are given 2 key words; (good, bad) there are only 6 words to describe good and bad things. by controlling a persons vocabulary they are also controlling their expression. For example if something horrific were to happen the word bad would ultimately be used even though the word is insensitive to the situation. Also if something amazing were to happen something along the lines of the word good would also be used.
What i am trying to express is that not only does it limit a persons thoughts it also effect their emotions because if something were to happen that would cause you great sadness you would be forced to think of it as being bad because its all you know even though it is completely inappropriate for the situation but because you wouldn't be able to think of it as being something tragic or horrendous you wouldn't feel that way either.
What i am trying to say is that language is almost directly parallel to thought! and everything we think, we think using words and language so by limiting our language you limit our thoughts and by limiting our thoughts you ultimately limit out emotions and expression.
I think the effect that language has on us as human beings is so interesting, the idea that we think what we feel through the language we speak and that limiting that language could go as far as changing the way we feel is remarkable.
