Politics and the English Language
George Orwell
At first glance, Politics and the English Language sounds like the sort of essay students are assigned and immediately forget. It is only fourteen pages long, the title sounds dry, and most people think it is a depressing book about grammar or writing style.
However, Orwell, one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century, believed something far more important was at stake than grammar. As he watched language become increasingly careless and imprecise, he worried that people's thinking would follow. He believed that when language becomes careless, thought eventually follows.
When people stop choosing their words carefully, they begin describing reality less accurately, and over time, their thinking becomes less accurate as well. Orwell believed this creates a dangerous cycle: careless language produces careless thinking, which makes clear thinking even more difficult. His essay begins with writing, but quickly expands into a larger question: what happens when the language people use becomes muffled and no longer reflects reality itself?
That is why this short essay has remained influential for nearly eighty years.
What This Teaches
Politics and the English Language teaches your child to pay attention to language itself.
Orwell asks readers to go beyond identifying an author's argument and examine the words carrying that argument. His concern is simple: language does not merely express thought, it also shapes the way it is formed.
1. Say it Before Orwell Does
Throughout the essay, Orwell repeatedly presents examples of bad writing and then explains their shortcomings.
Before reading these explanations, stop and ask your child:
What is this author actually trying to say?
Then work together to rewrite it in plain English. After stripping away the layers of complicated language,, students are often surprised by how ordinary the underlying idea turns out to be.
This exercise develops a habit that becomes increasingly valuable as students grow older: learning to separate verbose wording from valuable thought.
2. Ask What Reality Disappeared
One of Orwell's strongest observations is that political language often makes ugly realities sound cleaner than they really are.
As your child reads, ask:
What truth is this phrase preventing me from seeing?
For example, Orwell discusses expressions such as "transfer of population." Rather than simply saying that people are being forced from their homes, the phrase makes the event sound procedural.
Yet behind it may be families suffering, involuntarily leaving behind their entire lives with little more than bare necessities.
Instead of focusing solely on the phrase, help your child search to understand what is actually happening. Students quickly begin noticing the same pattern elsewhere, where softer language makes difficult truths easier to accept.
3. Ask the question that opens the speech
Orwell worries that people begin borrowing phrases instead of forming their own thoughts.
Rather than examining an idea for themselves, people inherit a ready-made way of talking about it and often an already-made conclusion as well.
For this section, play a game called "Rephrase the Phrase." Have your child choose one slogan, cliché, or stock phrase Orwell would dislike and explain the same idea without using the phrase itself.
For example:
"For the greater good."
What good?
For whom?
At what cost?
Orwell's concern is that a phrase can create the feeling of understanding before understanding actually exists. Replacing the phrase forces the mind to do the work the phrase was doing for it.
Final Question
When do words help us understand reality, and when do they prevent us from seeing it clearly?
Few essays teach a skill students can apply every day, but Orwell's essay is one of them. The more carefully students learn to read language, the more carefully they learn to think.
Reading Rooms
Reading Rooms was built to help students read great works more carefully, discuss them more thoughtfully, and write stronger essays about them. Explore our Honors 9th–12th Grade literature curriculum and reading tools at readingrooms.org.
Thank you for Reading!
