• orrk@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      10 months ago

      it’s not newspeak, it might be euphemisms but the meaning of what is being said is alive and well, the major hallmark of newspeak is to limit the ability to convey ideas via conversation

      • TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        edit-2
        10 months ago

        That was the end goal of Newspeak, but it hadn’t been achieved. It was a slow process.

        You could argue this is what they’re doing, training people to talk in a sterilised way. That it would become so normalised that anybody trying to speak normally would be dismissed as cringey or whatever. All to the benefit of advertisers.

        Maybe that’s a huge leap, but I think that was the gist of what they meant.

        • orrk@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          10 months ago

          avoiding certain words does not create newspeak, but rather the inability to use a limited set of words outside a given context, circumventing speech restrictions is arguably the least newspeak thing possible, as it basically makes any attempt at new speak impossible.

      • stingpie@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        10 months ago

        To be precise, newspeak does function by a direct reduction of vocabulary. Instead, newspeak works by expanding the number of meanings a single word can have, so that every sentence can be interpreted as supportive of the party, and the ‘grammatically correct’ meaning of the sentence is the supportive interpretation.

        The closest approximation of newspeak in English is the sentence “That didn’t work, did it?” If you respond “Yes,” that can be interpreted as “Yes, you are correct, that didn’t work.” And if you reply “No,” that can’t be interpreted as “No, that didn’t work.”

        • DragonTypeWyvern@literature.cafe
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          edit-2
          10 months ago

          Adapting language to bypass censorship is very much not Newspeak

          It’s quite literally the opposite of Newspeak, an artificial language designed to constrict speech and prevent the spread of complex ideas.

      • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        10 months ago

        the major hallmark of newspeak is to limit the ability to convey ideas via conversation

        Slowly constricting the number of words that can be publicly spoken does work us toward that end. Folks who think they’re cleverly sidestepping the latest hurdle are only getting corralled deeper into the pen.