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The Politics of Oxymoron, by Roger Sandall |
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In this essay, published in "The New Criterion", Roger Sandall explores the use of Orwellian language to debase our concept of civilisation. He begins with some commentary on Huntingtons "Clash of Civilisations" whose title prompts him to observe: "But what chiefly concerns me is Huntington’s use of the term 'civilizations'." For behind the claim that the modern world consists of "civilizations" (plural), and not just "civilization" (singular), a lot of linguistic mischief is afoot.By degrading the concept of universal "civilization" and elevating a multiplicity of "civilizations" in its stead, Huntington mimics an already well-established and disastrous precedent—the transformation of "culture" (singular) into a multiplicity of uncultures, noncultures, and unmistakable anticultures. More than fifty years have passed since Orwell wrote of "the need to recognize that the present political chaos is connected with the decay of language, and that one can probably bring about some improvement by starting at the verbal end..." Tendentious political language, he went on, "is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind." (more)
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