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A Language in Decline

 

             The English language as we know it has suffered a massive decline over recent years due to many various factors, including social, political, and religious. Each one of these different factors has had a lasting impression on the English language. No one factor alone has been the cause of the decline. A mass mixture of culture, politics, religions, and social classes are all to be held responsible for the decline of the English language.
             In 1946 George Orwell published "Politics and the English Language", and in it he analyzed the effects of the political world on the English language. In this essay he states "A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts." In making this statement, his point is that the process is reversible. Written Modern English is full of mistakes that go unnoticed or uncorrected and thus allows these mistakes to spread and be thought of as "correct use" of Modern English. In order to create a resurgence of the Modern English Language these mistakes must be found and corrected or the decline will continue to spread. In his essay he points out five different passages that were published with mistakes and points out that they all have two factors in common. The first factor is that they all possess stale imagery. This simply means that they do not paint a clear enough picture with the words that are used within the context. Orwell refers to many of the metaphors used within the passages as "dying metaphors". Writers still use these metaphors many times without the knowledge that they are outdated and do not paint a vivid picture for the reader. When this goes uncorrected writers continue to use the same "dead" metaphor and the language in their writing remains stale and lackluster.


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