telescoped words and phrases had been one of the characteristic features
of political language; and it had been noticed that the tendency to use
abbreviations of this kind was most marked in totalitarian countries and
totalitarian organizations. Examples were such words as Nazi, Gestapo,
Comintern, Inprecorr, Agitprop. In the beginning the practice had been
adopted as it were instinctively, but in Newspeak it was used with a
conscious purpose. It was perceived that in thus abbreviating a name one
narrowed and subtly altered its meaning, by cutting out most of the
associations that would otherwise cling to it. The words Communist
International, for instance, call up a composite picture of universal
human brotherhood, red flags, barricades, Karl Marx, and the Paris
Commune. The word Comintern, on the other hand, suggests merely a
tightly-knit organization and a well-defined body of doctrine. It refers
to something almost as easily recognized, and as limited in purpose, as
a chair or a table. Comintern is a word that can be uttered almost
without taking thought, whereas Communist International is a phrase over
which one is obliged to linger at least momentarily. In the same way,
the associations called up by a word like Minitrue are fewer and more
controllable than those called up by Ministry of Truth. This accounted
not only for the habit of abbreviating whenever possible, but also for
the almost exaggerated care that was taken to make every word easily
pronounceable.
In Newspeak, euphony outweighed every consideration other than
exactitude of meaning. Regularity of grammar was always sacrificed to it
when it seemed necessary. And rightly so, since what was required, above
all for political purposes, was short clipped words of unmistakable
meaning which could be uttered rapidly and which roused the minimum of
echoes in the speaker?s mind. The words of
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