One of the people on this list is George Orwell, the British journalist, essayist and novelist. Unlike many students, my first encounter with Orwell wasn’t through 1984 or Animal Farm. Before I’d read any of Orwell’s novels, I read his classic essay Politics and the English Language as an English major in university. That’s when I fell for George. And, I’m not the only one.

This essay has such an academic following that this week in New York a public conference (which will also be webcast live for those of us outside the thriving metropolis) will be held:

There You Go Again: Orwell Comes to America invites historians, linguists, cognitive experts, journalists, government officials, and political consultants to assess the current state of public discourse — and journalism’s response to it — one year before a hotly contested presidential election. The panels explore the past, present, and future of deceptive political speech, and assess what can be done to bring more realism and honesty into the conduct of America’s public affairs.What Orwell Didn’t Know: Propaganda and the New Face of American Politics, an anthology featuring twenty prominent writers and thinkers, will be released at the time of conference.

For those unfamiliar with the essay, one author featured in the upcoming book put it quite simply:

Politics and the English Language begins as a lesson, and quite a good one, in how to write well (delivered in the form of an attack on people who write badly) and ends with the hope that better writing can engender a better society.

And exactly how is an impressionable young language student not expected to fall in love after reading this?

The title isn’t sensational, and it may scare away those fearing that the essay is highly (and dryly) political in nature. No doubt it is political in nature; the examples given to support his claims tend to come from historical political propaganda. But, Orwell would have argued (as we can still argue today) that all language is political. Today we have school politics, office politics, neighbourhood politics, family politics, political correctness . . . the vast majority of our language is used in some political context, and politics isn’t solely the concern of those in political office. I have yet to hear a student assigned this text complain that its content is inaccessible or irrelevant because it’s “all about politics.”

You can see a preview of four essays from the new book on the L.A. Times website. Each commentary focuses on a different aspect of this multi-dimensional essay: rewriting history; the misuse of words (especially the word “democracy”); the political use of language to “defend the indefensible” and the fear that sloppy writing will lead to sloppy thinking, just to name a few.This is not only a how-to lesson in writing. It’s a how-to lesson in thinking and it’s a reasonable yet challenging text for high school seniors. More than that, though, it’s a rare piece of writing that says, “Here’s how to use language properly, and here’s why it’s so important that you learn this.” Every student I’ve worked through this essay with has been fascinated at both the content and the relevance to their own lives. In a society bombarded by media and deceptive language, every student who reads this piece sees it for what it is: a personal tool of defense against the “lazy thinking” that politicians, advertisers and authority figures would prefer we demonstrate so that their message (and therefore their power) goes unchallenged.

Everyone studying for the SAT or ACT should include Politics and the English Language in their study material. The full text is freely available online, and is also included in the appendix of the anthology What Orwell Didn’t Know: Propaganda and the New Face of American Politics.

If you like the preview on the L.A. Times, then consider purchasing the whole anthology which deconstructs the text in a variety of essays relating to language, politics, war and media. You can purchase from Amazon.ca using the link below. It’s the same price as ordering directly, but about fifty cents of your purchase price will go to me instead of Amazon. If enough of you do it, I’ll be able to enjoy a nice coffee while I read my own copy in my bean bag chair!

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