The Newspeak Language

To start off, the definition of language is: the words, their pronunciation, and the methods of combining them used and understood by a community. Well, since that is the definition then isn't the language used in Oceania the same as the language we use. I mean, it is correct that their language is different but it is basically the same as our language. The definition states that "language" would be used and understood by a community. That then meaning that in a way our language and their language follows the definition of language. The only difference though, is that it seems that their use of language is more complex. In the book Syme is in charge of taking words away. We don't take words away(at least I don't believe we do). We just have words that have the same meanings but also have a bit of uniqueness with each individual word at the same time. For example, the word "mad". Mad has many other synonyms such as furious, enraged, indignant, or even ballistic. Then those words have many other synonyms and so on. If it weren't for being able to use other words, how would we be able to express ourselves the way we want to be expressed? Lets say I was really mad, and mad just didn't make the cut for explaining how mad I was. Well, then I could say that I was enraged or infuriated. Those words just make everything sound better and explained more. It seems that in our book, they want everything having to do with the language to be more simple. Personally, I don't think language should be simple. It should be difficult so we can learn new words that when said might make a conversation more interesting. Syme also speaks of the 11th edition of the Newspeak Dictionary. This to me shows me that they get rid of words fairly quickly and make up words fairly fast. My question to that is how? I know that I would just like to stick to the words in our dictionary rather than getting rid of them and making up completely different names. Some may say that, that would be lazy but I think that the people in Oceania are lazy. If they decide that they want to stick with saying things like, "ungood" instead of "bad" then that is lazy. They feel the need to rid of synonyms and antonyms. They believe that there isn't any reason to have a word just because it is the opposite of another word. In our society we feel that we need synonyms and antonyms. Without synonyms or antonyms, how would we even begin to think about spicing up a conversation or book? We just couldn't live like that. One part of the book Syme says, "Do you know that Newspeak is the only language in the world whose vocabulary gets smaller every year?" I guess all I'm trying to say is why. Why would the government want them to "narrow the range of thought"? I guess I'm just going to have to continue reading to figure this story out.