Politics and the English Language
Apr. 17th, 2004 07:41 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dreamer_easyOrwell, on obfuscation: Politics and the English Language.
And here's a picture - Donald Rumsfeld, on the mess in Iraq:
"I certainly would not have estimated that we'd have had the number of individuals lost in the last week. If someone had said, 'Would you, a year ago, have expected you would be where you are at the present time?' obviously . . . one would not have described where we are."
Or, in English:
"I didn't guess so many Americans would die in just one week. We didn't see this coming."
(OK, to be fair, spoken English shouldn't be judged as harshly as written English, which has time to be redrafted. But Rumsfeld's euphemistic rambling betrays exactly the mentality Orwell describes. <- how's *that* for a sentence? Holy cow!)
And here's a picture - Donald Rumsfeld, on the mess in Iraq:
"I certainly would not have estimated that we'd have had the number of individuals lost in the last week. If someone had said, 'Would you, a year ago, have expected you would be where you are at the present time?' obviously . . . one would not have described where we are."
Or, in English:
"I didn't guess so many Americans would die in just one week. We didn't see this coming."
(OK, to be fair, spoken English shouldn't be judged as harshly as written English, which has time to be redrafted. But Rumsfeld's euphemistic rambling betrays exactly the mentality Orwell describes. <- how's *that* for a sentence? Holy cow!)
