UNIVERSITATEA CRETIN DIMITRIE CANTEMIR BUCURETI

FACULTATEA DE LIMBI I LITERATURI STRINE

LUCRARE DE LICEN

Conductor tiinific:
CONF. DR. BOGDAN TEFNESCU

Absolvent:
ILIE ALEXANDRA SCARLET

BUCURETI 2003
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UNIVERSITATEA CRETIN DIMITRIE CANTEMIR BUCURETI

FACULTATEA DE LIMBI I LITERATURI STRINE

Relative Versus Absolute Values. A Critical Approach to the Function of Language in a Totalitarian System.

Conductor tiinific:
CONF. DR. BOGDAN TEFNESCU

Absolvent:
ILIE ALEXANDRA SCARLET

BUCURETI 2003
2

CONTENTS

Chapter 1
1.1. 1.2. INTRODUCTION The Aims 1.2.1. Basic Assumptions The Marxist Approach to Literature 1.2.2. From Discourse Analysis to Critical Discourse Analysis
1.2.2.1. An Overlook on Discourse Analysis 1.2.2.2. A Divorce The Aims of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA)

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6 8 8 9
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1.2.3. Formal Features in the Analysis of Discourse

1.2.3.1. The Marxist Thesis Social Struggle in Discourse 1.2.3.2. Discourse as Social Practice A. Language and Discourse B. Discourse and Orders of Discourse C. Class and Power in Capitalist Society D. Dialectic of Structures and Practices 1.2.3.3. Discourse and Power A. Power in Discourse B. Power behind Discourse 1.2.3.4. Discourse and Ideology A. Implicit Assumptions B. Coherence C. Inferencing D. Common Sense and Ideology 1.2.3.5. Formal Features in the Analysis of Discourse A. Description B. Interpretation C. Explanation

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14 15 16 17 17 18 18 18 18 19 19 19 20 20 20 21 23 25

Chapter 2
2.1. The Absolutist Tradition
2.1.1. German Idealism 2.1.2. The Social Theory

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26
27 27

2.2. The Marxist Theory

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2.2.1. Dialectical Materialism 2.2.2. Class Struggle and Capital 2.2.3. Revolution

29 32 33

2.3. From Marxism to Stalinism The Age of Totalitarianism 2.4. A Short Critique of the Inconsistency of the Marxist Theory

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Chapter 3
3.1. Orwells Political Orientation 3.2. An Ambiguous System: Relative Truth and Absolute Power Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four The Road to Totalitarianism
3.2.1. A Fairy Tale 3.2.2. some animals are more equal than others. Relative Truth 3.2.3. Nineteen Eighty-Four 3.2.4. Two plus two make five. Absolute Power

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44 54
54 57 58 62

Chapter 4
The Application of Critical Discourse Analysis 4.1. CDA Applied to the Marxist Discourse 4.2. CDA Applied to CDA 4.3. CDA Applied to Newspeak 4.4. A Different Type of Discourse: Winston and Julia, in 1984 Conclusion Bibliography

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68 68 71 73 76 79 81

CHAPTER 1

1.1. INTRODUCTION
This paper is concerned with the analysis of function of language in a totalitarian system. The totalitarian standpoint claims to be in possession of absolute truth, the only system of thought capable to deal with the problems of life, problems that are of a diverse difficulty impossible for the common people to understand them. So a totalitarian mind would proclaim the absolute relativity of knowledge and would hide its absolute control of information under the mask of the voice of the people, the Saviour.

Our Leader, Comrade Napoleon, announced Squealer, speaking very slowly and firmly, has stated categorically categorically, comrade that Snowball was Joness agent from the very beginning yes, and from long before the Rebellion was ever thought of. Ah, that is different! said Boxer. If Comrade Napoleon says it, it must be right. (Orwell 1983, 43)

But the face of Big Brother seemed to persist for several seconds on the screen, as though the impact that it had made on everyones eyeballs was too vivid to wear off immediately. The little sandy-haired woman had flung herself forward over the back of the chair in front of her. With a tremulous murmur that sounded like My Saviour! she extended her arms towards the screen. Then she buried her face in her hands. It was apparent that she was uttering a prayer. (Orwell 1983, 751)

To this thesis, I intend to counterpoise the view according to which language is not only an ideological vehicle for class struggle. I believe that life, due to its various instances, contains a wide range of perspectives, quantitatively and qualitatively different, and that people subscribe to these instances in accordance to their individual beliefs which are not only socially dependent, but also express a personal tinge. Thus, I intend to prove that language use provides other types of discourse that promote cooperation and negotiation between individuals and social classes. Therefore, I shall argue for the relative knowledge of life, proving that truth is valid more or less depending on context.
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The critical approach that Im going to use is called Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and it is based on a radical viewpoint according to which language is an ideological vehicle that expresses absolute power struggle at every social level: from the personal level to the official one. I intend to prove that the ideological use of language to dominate other people doesnt have an absolute value. This thesis is particular to a totalitarian system, famous for its manipulative techniques of individual and social oppression. Therefore, in the first chapter of this paper I present the critical methodology insisting on its basic criteria that claims that discourse is shaped by social forces and in turn, it remoulds the human beliefs by means of ideological assumptions. Ideology is the basic strategy through which power struggle is maintained in the social strata. In chapter 2, I discuss the origins of the thesis of social struggle, starting from the German Idealism (the root of absolutism) reaching the moment of the Marxist theory of class struggle which, further on, transformed in the oppressive thesis of the totalitarian age. In chapter 3, I introduce the reader to Orwells literary creation. I make a short presentation of his political orientation in order to understand the nature of his most important novels, Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four. In this chapter I also dwell upon the problems of language, the way Orwell perceived them, with respect to the totalitarian system of informational control. In chapter 4, I apply Critical Discourse Analysis to a piece of text from Marxs Communist Manifesto, to some of the discourses in Orwells Nineteen Eighty-Four, and also I make a critique of CDA , applying its own methodology on a piece of text from the book of Norman Fairclough Language and Power, the promoter of CDA. In applying CDA to the Marxist discourse and to Newspeak, I intend to show that these types of discourse promote the idea of absolute knowledge and absolute power, therefore they are oppressive. Applying CDA to CDA, I intend to prove that CDA contains means of ideological persuasion and that it is a critical method that has a radical root (claiming that the social struggle determines ideological language use). Applying CDA to a piece of conversation between the main protagonists in Nineteen Eighty-Four, Winston and Julia, I intend to prove that this type of discourse does not contain the critical assumptions of CDA, therefore it is not an ideological discourse, justifying in this way my thesis of the relativity of truth.

1.2. The Aims 1.2.1. Basic Assumptions The Marxist Approach to Literature
This paper is mainly concerned with Critical Discourse Analysis applied to literary work. This requires some explanations about the perspective on the basis of which this critical trend analyses the literary work. First of all, Critical Discourse Analysis is rooted in Neo-Marxist and Foucauldian social theory and claims that discourse is one of the principal activities through which ideology is circulated and reproduced. From this standpoint, the literary work is considered to be the articulation of social and historical forces (Davis & Schleifer 1991, xii). Contemporary Marxist thought explains that culture is best understood in relation to the idea of the social nature of human life, a nature that has always been conflictual, leading to clashes between individuals or social classes, in their struggle for power. Due to this perspective of human evolution, dialectical criticism situates literature as a social practice. Many Marxist critics describe the dialectical forces shaping and working within art. In Discourse in Life and Discourse in Art, M. M. Bakhtin insists on the dialogical nature of linguistic, psychological, ideological, and artistic, and social relations: Verbal discourse, taken in the broader sense as a phenomenon of cultural communication, ceases to be something selfcontained and can no longer be understood independently of the social situation that engenders it. (Bakhtin 1926, 96 in Davis & Schleifer 1991, 198) He argues that verbal discourse is a social event; it is not self-contained in the sense of some abstract linguistic quantity, nor can it be derived psychologically from the speakers subjective consciousness taken in isolation (Bakhtin 1926, 105) The extra-verbal - the material/historical base enters into verbal discourse including literary discourse as an essential constitutive part of the structure of its import. In this regard, Bakhtin argues, consciousness itself, insofar as it is a verbal phenomenon, is not just a psychological phenomenon but also, and above all, an ideological phenomenon, a product of social intercourse (Bakhtin 1926, 115 in Davis & Schleifer 1991, 198). In other words, the phenomenon of private experience, meanings, feelings, exists in dialectical relationship to public social foundations. In Literary Theory, Terry Eagleton argues that critical discourse is power, a part of the political and ideological history of our epoch. (Eagleton 1983, 203 in Davis & Schleifer 1991, 200) Many contemporary critics including Jameson, Williams, Eagleton, Spivac, Edward Said, and many of the feminist critics share a strong sense of critique as a historically situated activity that request from the critic a deeper implication. Any literary theory, Eagleton says, is
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either bound up with political beliefs and ideological values or is blind to power. (Eagleton 1983, 203 in Davis & Schleifer 1991, 200) Marxist approaches to literature in the late century have demanded that criticism become more overtly political, that it attempt, as Marx said, not simply to interpret but to change the world (see section 2.1, revolution). The dialectical criticism works out on the basis that human practice bears an endless motion (see section 2.1, dialectics), that no mode of production (), no dominant society or order of society cannot exhaust it. (Williams 1977, 43 in Davis & Schleifer 1991, 201) For Marxist criticism, textual events, that is discourses, produce an image of history as social struggle, of class struggle. This practice is embedded in Critical Discourse Analysis, whose purpose is to increase consciousness of how language contributes to the domination of some people by others, because consciousness is the first step towards emancipation. (Fairclough 1992, 1) The meaning of emancipation is that of change, as in Marxs revolutionary statement the point is to change [the history], not only to discuss it. Thus, Marxist critical practice unmasks its particular moving rhetoric that proves an unreliable method of discourse analysis. Nevertheless, let us establish what Discourse Analysis is, and then see what Critical Discourse Analysis contributes with in this matter.

1.2.2. From Discourse Analysis to Critical Discourse Analysis 1.2.2.1. An overlook of Discourse Analysis
For a better understanding of the principles of Critical Discourse Analysis, I shall introduce in this section the basis from which CDA has parted, namely Discourse Analysis, but first a definition of discourse is required whose ambiguity was discussed by Teun van Dijk in Discourse as Structure and Process (1998). He states that discourse is a form of language use and in addition, he suggests a more theoretical concept of discourse which is more specific and at the same time broader in its application. This concept would include some other essential components, namely who uses language, how, why and when. One characterization of discourse that embodies some of these functional aspects is that of a communicative event. That is, people use language in order to communicate ideas or beliefs, and they do so as part of more complex social events. For instance, in such specific situations as an encounter with friends, a phone call,
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a job interview, during a visit to the doctor, or when writing or reading a news report. This interactional aspect of discourse is sometimes also described as a form of verbal interaction. So far, the concept of discourse has accepted three main directions: (a) language use, (b) the communication of beliefs, and (c) interaction in social situations. On the other hand, we use the word discourse more concretely as a count noun, and refer to single, particular conversation or news report, as in this discourse or a discourse on the front page. In that case, we can even use the plural discourses when referring to several instances of text or talk. It was Harris (1952) who first used the term discourse analysis when he touched upon syntax of units of communication larger than words or sentences. Ever since the 1960s, discourse analysis has gradually grown into a research topic of much concern, and the last two or so decades of the twentieth century in particular witnessed a nearly geometric increase in the number of articles and books dealing with discourse analysis couched within various theoretical frameworks. Furthermore, M. L. Apte argues that Discourse analysis, though primarily a field of inquiry in linguistics, has now became multidisciplinary in nature and the object of inquiry may mean different things to sociolinguists, anthropologists, psychologists, and computational linguists, especially those interested in artificial intelligence. A major problem in discourse analysis is the elusive nature of the object of inquiry: Discourse as a linguistic text constantly emerges and re-emerges, is created and recreated in keeping with the appropriate sociocultural context. (Concise Encyclopaedia of Pragmatics 1998, 463). The main focus in all such investigations is on the linguistic text with varying degrees of sociocultural context taken into consideration. The basic issue, then, is one of demonstrating how extralinguistic knowledge as reflected in cognitive and social structures and independent of communication is brought into the speech situation so as to convey the participants intentions and purposes in linguistic interaction. Brown & Yule talk about the way discourse analysis is defined from a sociolinguistic point of view:

Sociolinguists are particularly concerned with the structure of social interaction manifested in conversation, and descriptions emphasise features of social context which are particularly amenable to sociological classification. They are concerned with generalising across real instances of language in use, and typically work with transcribed spoken data. (Brown & Yule 1991, viii)

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The role discourse analysis plays has been highlighted by Johnstone when she claims that discourse analysis can help in answering any question that could be asked about humans in society. The point on which she focuses is the relationship between discourse and the world, reinforcing the claim that discourse is both shaped by and helps to shape the human life world, or the world as we experience it. Further on, with respect to the role of structure in discourse she thinks that discourse is fundamentally the result of flexible strategies, not fixed rules. On the other hand, the critical methodology of Fairclough is built upon the idea that conversation is strictly based on a fixed patterns (see section 1.2.3. members resources) to which people resort at. Johnstone also discusses about the connections between discourse and peoples purposes intentions and goals, claiming that all discourse is both adaptive and strategic (Johnstone 2002, 196). She ultimately examines conventions for interpreting verbal art before considering performances of identity, concluding that Discourse is not either completely a matter of strategy or completely a function of the social construction of individuals and the world (Johnstone 2002, 224).

1.2.2.2. A Divorce The Aims of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA)

Critical discourse analysis offers sociolinguistics a critical approach to examine more fully the interaction between language and social structures, to explain how social structures are constituted by linguistic interaction. Critical discourse analysis has made the study of language into an interdisciplinary tool and can be used by scholars with various backgrounds, including media criticism. Most significantly, it offers the opportunity to adopt a social perspective in the cross-cultural study of media texts. As Gunter Kress points out, CDA has an overtly political agenda, which serves to set CDA off...from other kinds of discourse analysis and text linguistics, as well as pragmatics and sociolinguistics. While most forms of discourse analysis aim to provide a better understanding of socio-cultural aspects of texts, CDA aims to provide accounts of the production, internal structure, and overall organization of texts. One crucial difference is that CDA aims to provide a critical dimension in its theoretical and descriptive accounts of texts (Kress Critical Discourse Analysis, 1979 in Birch 1993, 39).

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More specifically, according to Kress's definition, CDA treats language as a type of social practice among many used for representation and signification (including visual images, music, gestures, etc.). Texts are produced by socially situated speakers and writers. The relations of participants in producing texts are not always equal: there will be a range from complete solidarity to complete inequality. Meanings come about through interaction between readers and receivers and linguistic features come about as a result of social processes, which are never arbitrary. In most interactions, users of language bring with them different dispositions toward language, which are closely related to social positionings. History must also be taken into account, as ideologically and politically inflected time. Finally, precise analysis and "descriptions of the materiality of language" are factors which are always characteristic of CDA. In addition to language structure, ideology also has a role to play in CDA. Kress stresses that any linguistic form considered in isolation has no specifically determinate meaning as such, nor does it possess any ideological significance or function. Consequently, the defined and delimited set of statements that constitute a discourse are themselves expressive of and organized by a specific ideology. Language, can never appear by itself-it always appears as the representative of a system of linguistic terms, which themselves realize discursive and ideological systems (Kress 1979, in Birch 1993, 41). For example, in The chairman has advised me that... The Chairman occupies first position and has the emphasis conveyed by that, in the equivalent passive clause I have been advised by the Chairman that that emphasis now attaches to I. Hence a syntactic form signals not simply the prior presence of a specific ideological selection, it also signals or expresses the meaning or content of that ideological choice. (Kress 1979, in Birch 1993, 41) CDA typically examines a combination of linguistic features to discern how language functions in the reproduction of social structures. Because one way of enacting power is to control the context of a speech situation, CDA focuses on both macro- and micro-level discourse patterns that signify power and the legitimization of ideas. Macro-level features include organizational and contextual features of discursive events that restrict speakers and their ideas from being heard and limit speakers control of context. These macro-level features are discursive effects of institutional power structures such as social status, expertise, and race, and are discerned from contextualized descriptions of the speech event. Micro-level features include pragmatic, semantic, syntactic, and phonological properties. These features are examined for elements including, but not limited to turn-taking strategies, social meanings, politeness, use of hedges, affinity markers, intonation, and laughter. In addition, critical discourse researchers often
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include analyses of genre, rhetorical style, and argumentation to determine the production and reproduction of power and dominance. An example of a critical discourse analysis approach to the examination of class-based ideology is Faircloughs (1989) Language and Power. Fairclough applies CDA to explain how linguistic elements function to structure the social category of class. He sees language as a social practice developing from, as well as maintaining social conditions that give rise to power relations aligned with socioeconomic class. The approach to language that is adopted by Fairclough, is called critical language study (CLS), in which Critical is used in the special sense of aiming to show up connections which may be hidden from people such as the connections between language, power and ideology (Fairclough 1989, 5). CLS analyses social interactions focusing upon their linguistic elements, trying to show up their generally hidden determinants in the system of social relationships, as well hidden effects they may have upon that system. The aims of Faircloughs theory are directed in two ways: theoretically, his study is meant to spread the idea that language is a main tool in the production, maintenance, and change of social relations of power, by which he explains that power relations are exercised through coercion (including physical violence) and through consent. His thesis is that the prime means of manufacturing consent is ideology. His more practical aim is to help increase consciousness of how language contributes to the domination of some people by others (Fairclough 1989, 1). In a more recent study, he declares that:

CDA is not just another form of academic analysis. It also has aspirations to take the part of those who suffer from linguistic discursive forms of domination and exploitation. Part of the task is to contribute to the development and spread of a critical awareness of language as a factor in domination. (Fairclough 1995, 186)

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1.2.3. Methodological Means in CDA

1.2.3.1. The Marxist Thesis Social Struggle in Discourse

Fairclough argues that Critical Language Study is not just another approach to language study, but an alternative to this study, meaning that it implies another demarcation of language study into approaches and branches, with different relationships between them. This standpoint comes to plead for an all-encompassing method of discourse analysis (that includes linguistics, sociolinguistics, pragmatics, cognitive psychology, and conversational analysis and discourse analysis). Fairclough points out that as long as power has the capacity to impose and maintain a particular structuring of some domain or other, in terms of hierarchical relations of domination and subordination, he can notice the same taxonomy related to mainstream linguistics, about which he complains it divided the above mentioned disciplines, into sub-disciplines, privileging linguistics proper. Mainstream linguistic is an asocial way of studying language, which has nothing to say about relationships between language and power and ideology. (Fairclough 1989, 7) His intention is to place the social study of language at the core of language study, within a functionalist approach (associated particularly with Michael Halliday), because the hierarchical structuring in mainstream linguistics relegates the social nature of language to a sub-discipline." Fairclough takes the sociolinguistic approach as a general premise in CLS, because this discipline studies socially variable language practice. The trend in sociolinguistics is to observe and describe the sociolinguistic variation in a given society, but Fairclough complains that this discipline neglects to answer how in terms of the development of social relationships of power was the existing sociolinguistic order brought into being? (1989, 8) He considers that both language and social classes are dominated by ideologies, since in a given society there is a constant conflict of interests and a social struggle for domination (see section 2.1. class struggle):

Social classes in the classical Marxist sense are social forces which occupy different positions in economic production, which have different and antagonistic interests, and whose struggle is what determines the course of social history. In terms of this conception of social class, the sociolinguistic facts can be seen as the outcome of class struggle and represent a particular balance of forces between classes. (Fairclough 1989, 8)
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His focus is centered upon the dual relation to power of the sociolinguistic conventions which incorporate differences of power, and at the same time they arise out of and give rise to particular relations of power (1989, 2). Faircloughs thesis outlines a dialectical relationship between discourse and social practice, that is these two social instances are shaped by the power struggle between social classes, a conflict that determines the interaction between discourse and social practice. Sociolinguistic conventions are ideologically shaped. Ideology legitimizes the social relations because the ideological assumptions are power based: Ideologies are closely linked to language, because using language is the commonest form of social behaviour, and the form of social behaviour where we rely most on common-sense assumptions. (1989, 2) Social conditions shape discourse (language use), and cognitive processes (of producing and interpreting texts). The cognitive processes are codes of thinking in a certain directions, that is every individual thinks in relation to the type of discourse (s)he takes for granted: the way people interpret features of texts depends upon which social - more specifically, discoursal conventions they are assuming to hold. (1989, 19) Fairclough establishes a framework of discourse, that has a dialectical nature, explaining the reciprocal determination between discourse and social practice, power, and ideology. These three types of relationship to discourse will represent the main concern of the next sections.

1.2.3.2. Discourse as Social Practice

The central idea in Faircloughs approach, is that language is centrally involved in power, and struggles for power, and that it is so involved through its ideological properties. The major themes he discusses in relation to social practice, are the following: A. Language and discourse: the term language is replaced with the notion of discourse, meaning language as social practice determined by social structures. B. Discourse and Orders of discourse: orders of discourse determine discourses, because of their institutional origin C. Class and power in capitalist society: orders of discourse are ideologically shaped by power relations in social institutions and in society as a whole.

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D. Dialectic of structures and practices: discourse has effects upon social structures, as well as being determined by them, and so contributes to social continuity and social change.

A. Language and discourse In Faircloughs terms, discourse is a form of social practice. Language is a socially conditioned process, constrained by non-linguistic parts of society. Between language and society, Fairclough points to an internal and dialectical relationship: Language is a part of society; linguistic phenomena are social phenomena of a special sort, and social phenomena are (in part) linguistic phenomena. (1989, 23) He establishes a distinction between discourse and text, where text is generally used for a written transcription of what is said. In this frame, text is a product rather than a process. Whereas discourse stands for a process of social interaction, in which texts are included (as part of discourse). In this respect discourse has two functions: it is a process of production (in which text is a product), and a process of interpretation (in which text is a resource). Hence, discourse analysis will include text analysis, and the analysis of the productive and interpretative processes, on the basis of the formal properties of the text: analysis of the traces of the productive process, and analysis of the cues of the process of interpretation. Productive and interpretative processes involve an interplay between properties of texts and MR (members resources, representations on the basis of which people interpret and produce utterances), which people have in their heads through education as: values, beliefs, assumptions, etc. Discourse involves social conditions of production and social conditions of interpretation that are related with three different levels of social organization: the level of social situation (the immediate social context); the level of social institution; the level of society as a whole. In turn, social conditions shape the MR (the means of production and interpretation) and the way in which texts are produced and interpreted. In this way, discourse analysis involves not only the analysis of processes of production and interpretation, but also the analysis between texts, processes, and social conditions, that correspond to the following terms: texts, interactions, and contexts. Therefore, CDA deals with these three dimensions of discourse: texts, interactions and contexts, in three correspondent stages:

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 Description is concerned with formal properties of the text. Interpretation is concerned with the relationship between text and interaction. Explanation is concerned with the relationship between interaction and social context.

B. Discourse and orders of discourse Discourse is conventionally determined, by institutional conventions which are named by Fairclough, orders of discourse (originally from Michel Foucault). These conventions embody particular ideologies. These ideologies are embedded in conventional types of discourse and practice. People act in conformity with due preconditions, related to social conventions: people are enabled through being constrained; they are able to act on condition that they act within the constraints of types of practice or of discourse. (Fairclough 1989, 28) The orders of discourse (discourse types) differ in terms of their relationship (conversation, media discourse, etc). Discourses are structured in orders of discourse due to their relationship with power that has the capacity to ideologically control orders of discourse. C. Class and power in capitalist society The dominant bloc that controls society ideology, is an alliance of the state with the capitalists (1989, 32). Power is exercised economically, politically, and ideologically; the ideological control is more significant and is essentially exercised in discourse. The dominant class exercises and maintains power through coercion and consent: () through coercing others to go along with them, with the ultimate sanctions of physical violence or death, or through winning others consent to, or at least acquiescence in, their possession and exercise of power.(1989, 33) Fairclough is of opinion that power relations are always relations of struggle; they are not reducible to class relations, but they also occur between groupings of various sorts women and men, between ethnic groups, between young and old. Still the most fundamental relations in class society are class relations and class struggle. Ideology aims at maintaining the position of the dominant class, in certain key discourse types (advertising, interviewing, counselling, etc.), which legitimizes the existent social relations. In modern society, ideology is mainly used for the exercise of power by consent. Social control through consent ignores the presence of power in the orders of discourse, which assures the ideological practices to become naturalized: one

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feature of the contemporary discourse is the tendency of the discourse of social control towards simulated egalitarianism, and the removal of surface markers of authority and power. (1989, 37) D. Dialectic of structures and practices There is a dialectical relationship between discourse and social structures. As well as being determined by social structures, discourse has effects upon social structures and contributes to the achievement of social continuity or social change. It is because the relationship between discourse and social structures is dialectical in this way that discourse assumes such an importance in terms of power relationships and power struggle: control over orders of discourse by institutional and societal power-holders is one factor in the maintenance of their power. (1989, 37) The social role in discourse practice, has been replaced by Fairclough with another ambiguous term: the subject. In one sense of subject, one is referring to someone who is under the jurisdiction of a political authority, and hence passive and shaped; but the subject of a sentence, for example, is usually the active one, the doer, the one causally implicated in action. Social subjects are constrained to operate within the subject positions set up in discourse types, as I have indicated, and are in that sense passive; but only through being constrained they are made able to act as social agents.

1.2.3.3. Discourse and Power

Fairclough focuses upon two major aspects of the relationship between power and language: power in discourse, and power behind discourse. A. Power in discourse Faircloughs example of a type of face-to-face discourse is seen as an unequal encounter: participants are unequal, where powerful participants control the contributions of non-powerful participants (1989, 46). He mentions three types of constraints, that rely on: contents (on what is said or done), relations (the social relations people enter into discourse), and subjects (the subject positions people can occupy). B. Power behind discourse Power behind discourse means that the whole social order of discourse is placed and held together as a hidden effect of power. Standardization is the processes that hide power

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behind discourse. As means of establishing the standard language, there are codification and prescription. Codification aims at attaining minimal variation in form through setting down the prescribed language code in a written form in grammars, dictionaries, pronouncing dictionaries, spelling books; prescription imposes the designation of the forms of the standard as the only correct ones (1989, 57).

() any given piece of discourse may simultaneously be a part of a situational struggle, an institutional struggle, and a societal struggle (including class struggle). This has consequences in terms of our distinction between power in discourse and power behind discourse. While struggle at the situational level is over power in discourse, struggle at the other levels may also be over power behind discourse. (Fairclough 1989, 70)

1.2.3.4. Discourse and Ideology

In this matter, the concern comes upon common sense in the service of power upon how ideologies are embedded in features of discourse which are taken for granted considered as common sense. Fairclough states that assumptions and expectations are implicit, backgrounded, taken for granted, things that people are not consciously aware of. He discusses the features of discourse that are ideologically determined; these are implicit assumptions, coherence, and inferencing. A. Implicit assumptions Assumptions are based on our interpretation of the world. As long as they are ideological shaped, our interpretation and production of a text will rely on formal features of the texts, namely, traces, for interpretation. The traces constitute cues for the text interpreter, how draws upon his/her assumptions and expectations to construct ones interpretation of the text. This paradoxical process is called by Fairclough the interpretation of an interpretation (1989, 80) B. Coherence In order to interpret a text from the point of view of coherence, one must work out how the parts of the text link to each other. Another step is to figure out how the texts fit with the previous experience of the world of the interpreter: in other words, one must establish a fit between text and the world.
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Fairclough uses the notion of coherence to specify the type of connection between the sequential parts of a text, and between parts of a text and the world. These are connections that people make as interpreters of texts; they are not made by the text itself. But, in order to arrive at such an interpretation, one must draw upon the background assumptions and expectations mentioned above. Such commonsense assumptions and expectations of the interpreter, are parts of the MR, already discussed as members resources. C. Inferencing This particular process of interpretation has to do with coherence between the sequential parts of the texts. Implicit assumptions chain together successive parts of the texts by supplying missing links between explicit propositions, which the reader or the hearer either supplies automatically, or works out through a process of inferencing. Also, texts can be fitted to worlds either automatically, or through inferential work. D. Common sense and ideology Ideological common sense as discussed by Fairclough, has the property to establish social relations between various social groupings, relations that are based on power struggle. Usually people take for granted the assumptions about the world, which are in fact linguistic structures imposed by those in power: common sense is substantially, though not entirely, ideological (Fairclough 1989, 84). Ideological common sense must be understood as common sense in the service of sustaining unequal relations of power (1989, 85). Ideology is most effective when its process is less visible, because invisibility is achieved when ideologies are brought to discourse not as explicit elements of the text, but as the background assumptions which on the one hand lead the text producer to textualize the world in a particular way, and on the other hand lead the interpreter to interpret the text in a particular way: Texts do not typically spout ideology. They so position the interpreter through their cues, that she brings ideology to the interpretation of texts. (1989, 85)

1.2.3.5. Formal Features in the Analysis of Discourse

Fairclough has established three stages in the practice of Critical Discourse Analysis, already mentioned in 1.2.3.1.: A. Description of text. B. Interpretation of the relationship between text and interaction.
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C. Explanation of the relationship between interaction and social context.

A. Description In analysing texts, the focus constantly alternates between the cues inherent in the text (what is there in the text) and the means of the text production (the discourse types which the text is drawing upon). For the text analysis, Fairclough sketched three formal features: vocabulary, grammar, and textual structures. In turn, these formal features may have three types of values: experiential, relational, and expressive. Experiential value refers to a trace of and a cue to the way in which the text producers experience of the natural or social world is represented; experiential value has to do with contents and knowledge and beliefs. Relational value refers to a trace of and a cue to the social relationships which are enacted through the text in discourse; this type of value has to do with social relationships. Expressive value refers to a trace of and a cue to the producers evaluation of the particular instance of reality it relates to; this type of value has to do with subjects and social identities. A.1. Vocabulary The particular use of words may represent a perfect code for ideological difference between text and the world. The experiential value of the vocabulary can provide can be found within the ideological scheme of the text that classifies behaviour, through overt signification, occurrence of the word, collocation of the words, metaphorical uses of words: for example, in psychiatry, the use of the word imprisonment of a patient is substituted by a metaphorical use, so as to give lesser degree of offence: solitary confinement (Fairclough 1989, 113). In the text there are also used classification schemes, that have an ideological focus. These refer to the type of words and the number of words that focus upon a particular aspect of reality. The ideological scheme embeds meaning relations between words, such as synonymy, hyponymy, antonymy, relations that underlie the discourse type, and specify the ideological bases of discourse types. The relational values of the text impose a dual aspect of the texts content: it is socially dependable, and in turn, creates social relationships. The producers of texts adopt strategies of avoidance, using euphemism, or formality. These strategies are best achieved through pragmatical devices, as expressing politeness, concern for ones face, respect for status and position. The expressive values reside in the speakers or authors evaluation of social practices, through drawing on classification schemes, which are in part system of evaluation already enriched with ideological assumptions. The expressive values of words are a central
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concern for the people interested in persuasive language. Since discourse types differ, so do the expressive values. For example, the expression political consciousness may have a positive connotation in a descriptive discourse type (say, a didactical text) and it may change its value into a negative one according to the authors ideological beliefs. A.2. Grammar In what concerns the ideological function of grammar, the experiential value operates a codification of events, relationships, people, human objects (animals, things), special, temporal circumstances, manner of occurrence. Fairclough identifies three types of grammatical processes, which can be selected ideologically depending on their function. These processes relate to actions, and form the syntax of Subject-Verb-Object (SVO); events, in the form of Subject-Verb (SB); and attributions, in the form of Subject-Verb-Complement (SVC). What is particular for these syntactic constructions is that they imply the relationship agent-patient; in the construction SVO, there are two participants, one of which must be a patient and the choice is exclusively ideological. If in the text predominates the type SV, it involves only one participant that could be animate or inanimate, and not always an event, it may be in the form of a question. Again the selection is ideological with respect to the background assumptions of the author. The form of SVC is also important in the text production; it involves only one participant which appears in reported speech and not active in itself. It includes possessive verbs, like have, obtain, etc. together with nonpossessive verbs, like be, feel, look, seem. Also adjectives and nouns have an essential value, because they assign properties of the participant (e.g. dangerous, menace). Another important expressive value comes from the specification of the agency, that could be obfuscated, so as to hide causality, responsibility of the action. Agency is ideologically hidden through inanimate agents: inanimate nouns, abstract nouns, nominalizations. Other means of expressive values, are found in positive or negative sentences. In negative sentences, the matter is expressed in terms of what is right and what is not right in reality, hiding the real problems through ideological constrains. Grammatical features with expressive values are found in the modes of the sentence, modality, and pronouns. Modes of the sentence involve the relationship between the speaker or writer and the addressee: in the declarative mode (SV), the relational value has an informational aspect: giver (of information) and receiver. In the imperative mode, the speaker is passive and the addressee is active, and this is only possible in the power relations in which the speaker asks and the hearer acts compliantly. In different types of questions, the addressee, again is active, because (s)he provides information at the request of the speaker. Modality is expressed through modal verbs, and other types of formal
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features, such as adverbs (probably, possibly; definitely, etc.), and tense (simple present tense is realizes a categorical modality). The personal pronouns also have an essential relational value in text. The most important pronouns are we and you. When used by the speaker we has an inclusive value, claiming implicit authority to speak for the others. The use of the pronoun you has many actual and potential addressees. When ideological aims are at stake, you is an antonym, keeping distance with a potential opponent; but you used as an indefinite pronoun shows a relation of solidarity between the authority and the people. The relational value is expressed through modal auxiliaries, but also through tenses. The use of simple present tense shows a categorical commitment to the truth or non-truth of the proposition. The use of this tense represents a claim to knowledge due to the ideological interest. The prevalence of categorical modalities supports a view of the world as transparent, meaning that there is an intention to avoid interpretation and representation from the part of the hearers. In addition, the attention must not skip over the relation between the main clauses and the subordinate clauses. The main clauses may be more informationally prominent, thus hiding the real content, which in fact is forced to be presupposed, with the help of the background assumptions. A.3. Formal features Beside the values of these formal features, Fairclough discusses the turn-taking system, which represents the relationship between the speaker and the hearer. He claims that in power relations, turn-taking is very limited, whereas in equal social relations, turn-taking develops by negotiation. Still, Fairclough believes that negotiation is only an ideal form of social interaction. (1989, 134) B. Interpretation This stage is concerned with the discourse process, that is the way in which people produce and interpret texts, on the basis of formal features and commonsense assumptions that have the same ideological value. Fairclough interprets the discourse process in relation to social context: the intertextual context and presupposition; and in relation to text: speech acts; schemata, script, and frame; topic and point. B.1. Intertextual context and presupposition The interpretation of intertextual context is a matter of deciding which series a text belongs to, and therefore what can be taken as common ground for participants, or presupposed.

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Fairclough believes that the interpretation of more powerful participants may be imposed upon others: so having power may mean being able to determine presuppositions. (1989, 152) Presuppositions are not properties of texts, they are an aspect of text producers interpretation of the intertextual context. Formal features are the main means by which presuppositions are cued in texts. The typical formal features that code presuppositions are the definite article, subordinate clauses, wh- questions, and that- clauses. Presuppositions can be sincere or manipulative, or can have ideological functions, when what they assume has the character of common sense in the service of power (1989, 154). Presuppositions are given the value of something already known to the people, and thus they appeal to background knowledge. since texts always exist in intertextual relations with other texts, Fairclough explain that this relation is dialogic, a property which is known under the general term of intertextuality. B.2. Speech acts Speech acts are a central aspect of pragmatics, which is concerned with the meanings which participants in a discourse ascribe to elements of a text on the basis of their MR (see section 1.2.3.1.) and their interpretation of context. The speech acts are indirect and relatively direct and indirect. The directness and indirectness of speech acts determines the discourse types, showing the type of relations that he participants perform. Indirectness is observed when the power relations are very clear, when the person requested to do something is more powerful than the requester: Indirectness is a way to mitigate an imposition. (Fairclough 1989, 157) B.3. Frames, scripts and schemata These three notions are part of the MR, and they constitute interpretative procedures. They are mental representations of aspects of the world, and share the property of the typical mental representations that vary ideologically. Schemata (plural schema) refer to a particular type of activity (modes of social behaviour) in terms of predictable elements in a predictable sequence. They are mental representations of the larger-scale textual structures, which operate as interpretative procedures. Frames refer to natural or artificial entities; they constitute the topic of discourse. Types of frames (see section 1.2.3.3.) represent animate beings (man, woman, dog, etc.), inanimate beings (a house, a car, etc.), series of events combining the two entities above (an air crash, a car factory, etc.). Scripts represent the subjects in the activity, or the relationships between the subjects. They classify the ways subjects behave in social activities, or the ways subjects interrelate.

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B.4. Topic and point The point of a text can be understood in terms of the effect of a text, because it is the point of the text that is generally remembered, on the basis of presupposition. Whereas the point is intertextually alluded, relying on the interpreters MR, the topic is the over subject of the text, the experiential or the content aspect of the point. The ideological imprint is more evident in the creation of the point of the text in order to impose the desired effects on the interpreter. C. Explanation The last stage, interpretation, referred to the function of MR in the production of discourse, while the present stage deals with the social constitution of MR, the change of MR, and the reproduction of MR in discourse practice. As long as social structures shape MR, in their turn MR shape discourses. From this dialectical relation the discourse and the ideological assumptions constantly reshape each other in the context of social struggle. So explanation is a matter of seeing a discourse as part of processes of social struggle, within a matrix of relations of power. (Fairclough 1989, 163) In terms of effects, a discourse may reproduce its own social determinants and MR, or it may contribute to their transformation. The investigation of the effects of discourse occurs at the three levels of social organization: societal level, institutional level, and situational level. That is the societal, institutional, or situational determinants impose their societal, institutional, and situational effects by means of discoursal MR. But the thing that interests the most in the explanation of the discourse process is the ideological nature of MR that is, the assumptions about culture, social relationships, and social identities which are incorporated in MR, as seen as determined by particular power relations in the society and institution, and in terms of their contribution to struggles to sustain or change these power relations.

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CHAPTER 2

2.1 The Absolutist Tradition

Before I declare my aims, I should like to establish the two aspects of the concept of absolutism that would support my further argumentation and would introduce the general aim of the present chapter. First, I shall use the concept of absolutism as a philosophical attitude about the holistic value of truth that encompasses both theory and practice, based on the Hegelian dialectics. The second reading of this term would outline the social aspect of the absolutist tradition as a political ground of totalitarianism. Because the most part of the presentation in this chapter will be dealing with introducing the reader to the Marxist theory that will provide relevant arguments for the content of chapter 2 and 3, I shall make notice of the philosophical and political influences of Marxism. (2.0.) Further on I shall outline the main concepts of Marxism, each concept having an additional note that will establish Marxism as a social philosophy that remained broadly collectivist, as distinguished from the individualist tenet of liberalism. (2.1.) The subchapter 2.2. intends to follow the transformations in the Marxist frame of revolution towards a change in the content of socialism within an extremely radical perspective the way Marxism was applied to the Russian context. In the last subchapter (2.3.) I shall endeavor to make a short critique of the Marxist thesis to foreground its lack of consistency and trustfulness, an attempt that will appear again within a much (broader) analytical presentation in the discourse analysis in chapter 4. (As I have already stated in the introductory chapter) I have chosen the two tenets of the term absolutism in order to first prove the feebleness of its theoretical argument. It is clear that on a logical ground the statement the dialectical process affects all of the manifold facets of human life, according to Hegel, or the statement nothing is final, absolute, sacred, according to Engels, would betray the presupposition that even the theory of the Absolute fails the test of being absolute because it itself undergoes the change. In this tune the subchapter 2.3. will bear a brief critique of the Marxist dialectical materialism. The second meaning of absolutism that I intend to foreground is related to the Romantic tradition of the national state, especially to Hegels idealism, who envisioned the necessity of a unitary state as absolutely rational, the expression of the eternal being of spirit.
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The tradition of absolute power of the state goes far back to the sixteen century, to Machiavellis The Prince, that stated the necessity of an absolute monarch endowed with a principled character, who, regardless of his virtual cruelty, could realize the unitary, national state of Italy. Or to the monarchical absolutism spread in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, in France, Spain, Prussia, and Tudor England. The monarchical absolutism defended itself with the simple argument that it was the divine right of the kings that justified even the most tyrannical rules and rulers. However, at the beginning of the twentieth century the problem of an absolute monarch that was to secure order in the state, was no longer viable. The new problem was how to maintain the power of the leader. The focus was no longer to secure the national borders, but the limits of the leading party. The absolute monarchy turned into the most radical form of absolute and oppressive single-party government, characteristic for totalitarianism. To understand the origin of the Marxist socialism I shall further introduce its philosophical influences following a diachronic presentation.

2.1.1. German Idealism The German Idealism is best represented in the philosophical systems of Fichte, Schelling and Hegel, whose common ground was the metaphysics of the Absolute. It defines itself through the Romantic influence and through a new alliance of philosophy with religion. The three philosophers mentioned above shared a theological family and academic background that gave their system of thought an almost religious character; thence the absolute idealism that had as central premises the world as a whole regarded as a Spiritual or cosmic self and the problem of volition and moral in the manifestations of the self and the world. The most prominent presence within the absolute Idealism was Hegel. His main concern was to find the role of reason in nature, experience and in reality, under the assumption that reason - unlike the theory of Kant who considered that reason is the form that mind imposes upon the world (Britannica 25, 755) is inherent in the world itself.
In its broadest aspects his philosophy was intended to deal with a problem that had grown more and more acute as modern science progressed, the oppossition between the conception of the natural order required by scientific methodology and that implicit in traditional religious and ethical ideas. () The centre of Hegels philosophy was therefore a new logic, purporting to set

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forth a new intellectual method, the dialectic, which should bridge the gulf between reason, fact, and value. (Sabine 522)

Therefore the Hegelian philosophy expressed an organic and totalitarian theory of truth and reality: the Real is the rational and the truth is the whole (Britannica 25, 755). For Hegel the Absolute, the Whole is a mobile universal entity that undergoes permanent change, determining the evolution of human life, which he called it the dialectical process. Besides the theory of dialectics, Hegel also expressed the necessity of a unitary German state, mostly in the tradition of Machiavellis The Prince an imperative must for the absolute power of the state as the embodiment of the nations will:

In Hegels interpretation of history, it is the nation, rather than the individual or any other groupings of individuals that form the significant unit. The genius or the spirit of the nation (Volkgeist), working through individuals but largely in independence of their conscious will and intention, is the true creator of art, law, moral, and religion. () The state is therefore the director and the end of national development. It overlaps and includes all that the nation produces that is morally and spiritually significant for civilization. (Sabine 522-523)

2.1.2. The Social Theory In the middle of the nineteenth century there raised in France and in England a reaction of the Empirical and scientific tradition against the vague German metaphysics. In France, Auguste Comte called his philosophy Positivism, by which he meant a philosophy of science so narrow that it denied any validity whatsoever to knowledge not derived through the accepted methods of science (Britannica 25, 755). In England, the chief representative of the Empirical tradition from Bacon to Hume was John Stuart Mill who mistrusted the metaphysics of the Absolute and made way for a theory of social science. Famous for his contribution to the theory of ethics and the political theory of Liberalism, Mill argued for the liberal rights of free development of human individuality, for the principle of representative democracy and pointed up the dangers of class-oriented legislation. A radical counterpart to Mills liberal ideas was presented in Marxs philosophy of social revolution. Marx took a great deal of the Hegelian ideas but he applied them to a more laic

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dimension. For example Hegels metaphysical idea of estrangement, was used by Marx to express the alienation of the worker from the benefit of the products of his work, the hard treatment of human labour as a mere commodity and of man as a thing. Still influenced by Hegels totalitarian system of thought Marx transformed the dialectical idealism into dialectical materialism, according to which society is a moving balance of antithetical forces that produce social change. The most controversial point is that all ideas (including philosophical theories) are not purely rational and thus independent of external circumstances but depend upon the nature of social order in which they arise. In The Communist Manifesto he advocated the cause for a violent overthrow of the established order the bourgeois that exploited the underlying social strata. He upholded the idea of the formation of a Communist Party to stimulate proletarian class-consciousness toward the seizure of power and the institution of a just Socialist society. I have made this introduction of the Marxist theory and of its philosophical influences in order to assure a historical frame for the next stage of this chapter, a presentation and discussion of the most important aspects of Marxism, which it will be a more analytical stage that will provide a wider comprehensiveness of my intention related to the critical analysis of language, that will be found in chapter 4.

2.2. The Marxist Theory

In this subchapter, I shall present the main concepts of the Marxist theory, insisting upon dialectical materialism, class struggle and capital, and the necessity of revolution, of which dialectical method is central to Marxism. I am mostly interested in the assessable aspect of Marxism, than in its descriptive aspect, that is the problem that is essential for this paper is to foreground the importance of dialectical materialism, a concept that determined the line of class struggle and justified the socialist revolution. 2.2.1. Dialectical Materialism Dialectics represents the drive of the Marxist philosophy, a token that explains the mechanism of the other concepts of the Marxist materialism. Hegels idealistic dialectics, which contained the grain of revolutionary thought, represented the most important influence upon Marxs theory of social revolution, among other philosophical theories of the radical French

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thinkers as Lassalle or the French astronomer Pierre Laplace, and of the English economic philosophers as David Hume and Adam Smith. Living in an epoch of wide economic and political changes of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, Hegel became a devote of the French Revolution because he saw in these changes the expression of a national movement that could prepare the scene for a unitary German state. Hegel viewed and explained the cosmos as a continuous process of unfoldment. There is nothing immobile. The Absolute Idea lives and manifests itself only in the process of uninterrupted movement, development. Everything flows, changes, and vanishes. The ceaseless movement, the eternal unfoldment of the Absolute Idea determines the evolution of the world in all its aspects. In each phenomenon, in each object, there is the clash of two principles, the thesis and the antithesis, the conservative and the destructive. This struggle between the two opposing principles resolves itself into a final harmonious synthesis of the two. The conflict between the two contradictory elements included in the antithesis creates movement, which Hegel, in order to underline the element of conflict, styles dialectic. The result of this conflict, this dialectic, is reconciliation, or equilibrium. Hegel regarded every phenomenon as a process, as something that is forever changing, something that is forever developing. Every phenomenon is not only the result of previous changes; it also carries within itself the germ of future changes. It never halts at any stage. The equilibrium attained is disturbed by a new conflict, which leads to a higher reconciliation, to a higher synthesis, and to a still further dichotomy on a still higher plane. Thus, it is the struggle between opposites that is the source of all development. Marx also took close attitude to Feuerbachs philosophy, which advanced a new anthropological or human principle in opposition to the old theological Deistic principle. He began to expound a materialist philosophy in opposition to the then prevailing idealistic thought. This was how he arrived at the most radical deductions from the Hegelian system. According to Marx, man is the product of his environment, and of conditions; he cannot therefore be free in the choice of his profession, he cannot be the maker of his own happiness. Still, Marx preserved the dialectical frame and he began an investigation of the manner in which this historical process was accomplished showing that it has always resulted from a struggle between opposites, between contradictions that had appeared at a certain definite stage

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of social development. Fredrick Engels, Marxs contemporary and close friend, explained the dialectical motion of matter in Dialectics of Nature:

Change of form of motion is always a process that takes place between at least two bodies, of which one loses a definite quantity of motion of one quality (e.g. heat), while the other gains a corresponding quantity of motion of another quality (mechanical motion, electricity, chemical decomposition). Dialectics, so-called objective dialectics, prevails throughout nature, and so-called subjective dialectics (dialectical thought), is only the reflection of the motion through opposites which asserts itself everywhere in nature, and which by the continual conflict of the opposites and their final passage into one another, or into higher forms, determines the life of nature. (Engels)

While Engels took a closer look at the philosophical work, Marx was more preoccupied with the practical aspect of dialectic. Marxs main concern was that theory should be supplemented by practice. The critique of facts, of the world about us, the negation of them, should be supplemented by positive work and by practical activity. In Theses on Feuerbach a critique of Feuerbachs passive philosophy, Marx maintained that the business of philosophy is not only to explain this world, but also to change it. As the dialectical motion affects all the fields of life, it follows that human evolution is subjected to this process. Hence, historical Materialism is the application of materialistic dialectics to understanding human history. It is based on the premise that the motion of human beings, the processes humans are subjected to and engage in, are no different than the processes of nature; that humans do not exceed nature, but are instead a part of it. From this, Marx and Engels explained the foundation of human history:

This conception of history depends on our ability to expound the real process of production, starting out from the material production of life itself, and to comprehend the form of intercourse connected with this and created by this mode of production (i.e. civil society in its various stages), as the basis of all history; describing it in its action as the state, and to explain all the different theoretical products and forms of consciousness, religion, philosophy, ethics, etc. etc. arise from it, and trace their origins and growth from that basis. Thus the whole thing can, of course, be depicted in its totality (and therefore, too, the reciprocal action of these various sides on one another).
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It has not, like the idealistic view of history, in every period to look for a category (e.g. measuring periods of history in accordance to certain ideas), but remains constantly on the real ground of history; it does not explain practice from the idea but explains the formation of ideas from material practice. Accordingly it comes to the conclusion that all forms and products of consciousness cannot be dissolved by mental criticism, by resolution into "self-consciousness" or transformation into "apparitions", "specters", "whims", etc. but only by the practical overthrow of the actual social relations which gave rise to this idealistic humbug; that not criticism but revolution is the driving force of history, also of religion, of philosophy and all other types of theory. (Marx, The German Ideology)

2.2.2. Class Struggle and Capital As we have seen, historical materialism affects life in its totality, according to which Marx described the evolution of all human societies based upon a dialectical process of the clash of economic forces or classes, a view which was shared by Engels too, in Socialism: Utopian and Scientific. Marx argued that a change in the economic systems would bring about economic contradictions and economic conflict that, in turn, would give rise to social and class conflict. In the opening lines of The Communist Manifesto Marx proclaims: The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles. If for Hegel the mechanism of history was warfare between nations, for Marx it was a revolutionary struggle between classes. As in all societies, Marx argued, ones economic status defined ones class. Feudalism, like primitive communal society, manifested contradictions. Marx stated his point in The Manifesto, that each society contains the seeds of its own destruction. In time, a middle class of artisans and industrial entrepreneurs emerged to challenge the already existing classes of landlords, who owned the land, and the peasants or serfs, who farmed it. The economic system resulting from this process is capitalism. Under capitalism, there are also two dominant social classes, which Marx defined in terms of ownership of the means of production. He called the two classes the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. The bourgeois are the people how own the means of production the land, the housing, and the factories. The proletarians are the working class that work in factories but does not own the means of production; rather the proletarians own only their labour, which they must sell on the labour market. The bourgeoisie owns not only the means of production, it also controls the political institutions, using them to preserve and promote its own economic interest. In Marxs view, law,
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courts, police, legislatures and other governmental institutions serve primarily to protect the economic interests of the dominant class and to suppress other classes.

Modern Industry has converted the little workshop of the patriarchal master into the great factory of the industrial capitalist. Masses of laborers, crowded into the factory, are organized like soldiers. As privates of the industrial army, they are placed under the command of a perfect hierarchy of officers and sergeants. Not only are they slaves of the bourgeois class, and of the bourgeois state; they are daily and hourly enslaved by the machine, by the overlooker, and, above all, in the individual bourgeois manufacturer himself. The more openly this despotism proclaims gain to be its end and aim, the more petty, the more hateful and the more embittering it is. (Marx, The Communist Manifesto)

Like earlier societies, capitalism contains the seeds of its own destruction. Marx maintained that the number of people in the bourgeois class would diminish as capital accumulated in fewer and fewer hands. Monopolies would replace competing economic interests, thus concentrating more power in the hands of a minority. The proportion of powerless and alienated workers would increase until they constituted the vast majority of the population. Their alienation would eventually explode in a socialist revolution, in which the workers would take over the means of production and hold them in common, public ownership. Nevertheless, the problem of social struggle was not new in history. In the seventeenth century, it was Thomas Hobbes that talked about the original state of nature, which is a state of war, more exactly, the struggle of every one against every one. Marxs view had a metaphysical root about the conflictual nature of matter that reflects itself upon human nature as well, hence the class struggle. This perspective is an appeal to the collective aspect of society. On the other hand, Hobbess view was to be treated within the individualist tradition that reproached the individuals their egoistic nature. While Hobbes suggested the necessity of absolute monarchy in order to protect people from their own selfishness and evil, Marx claimed for revolution as the inevitable solution towards the communist society. 2.2.3. Revolution Marxs social philosophy reflects a social change of a great importance, the rise to consciousness and finally to political power of the industrial working class. The social revolution
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as the objective of the proletariat, was to equalize not civil liberties but economic differences and to bring into being a society in which there are no social classes. The outcome of the Marxist central method, the dialectical materialism, encompasses the whole Marxist theory: the dialectical process provides the change towards higher forms of life (Engels); the revolutionary practice is the result of the permanent class struggle, a change that assures the transformation of capitalism into communism. The proletariat is the first class of immediate producers able to transform society and become its master, because it is the only class that produces its means of existence (yet unable to make use of it). Between the two antagonistic classes, the proletariat is the active element, liable to realize the change, the revolutionary movement of history: "The coincidence of the changing of circumstances and of human activity or self-changing can be conceived and rationally understood only as revolutionary practice. (Marx, Theses on Feuerbach). It is this conception of the role of labour, of production, that constitutes the methodological and empirical point of departure of the Marxist theory of history. From it are developed the key concepts of "forces of production", "relations of production" and "mode of production" which in turn culminate in the theory of the social revolution:

In the social production of their life, men enter into definite relations that are indispensable and independent of their will, relations of production which correspond to a definite stage of development of their material productive forces. The sum total of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which rises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. At a certain stage of their development, the material productive forces of society come in conflict with the existing relations of production, or what is but a legal expression for the same thing with the property relations within which they have been at work hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an epoch of social revolution. (Marx, Preface to a Critique of Political Economy)

Between Socialism, as the stage following the revolution, and Communism, as the aim of the proletarian movement Marx established a distinction. In his Critique of the Gotha Programme, Marx suggested that socialism might be defined by the principle From each according to his ability, to each according to his work. In order
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words, every citizen under communism will work for the benefit of the society and will be paid in accordance with how much he or she needs. For Marx, Socialism was merely a transitory stage in the progression towards the final development of a classless, communist society. The socialist revolutions were expected to first appear in the most developed capitalist states, such as Germany or Great Britain. While Marxism presented itself as the theory of the international proletarian revolution, Stalins socialism in one country was clearly a major break with the Marxist tradition and a compromise with the theory and goal for the sake of power control. The failure of international revolution came firstly from the fact that during most of the nineteenth century, Russia was still a feudal society, far from having a well-developed and well-organized class of industrial workers. However, despite the countrys economic backwardness, Russian revolutionaries of the 1880s and 1890s were attracted to Marxism because it espoused the revolutionary transformation of society which suited the impatience of the Russian revolutionaries as Lenin and Trotsky, who were seeking to overthrow the tsarist government. Of all the above aspects of the Marxist theory, I shall keep an open eye upon the concept of revolution not only for its immediate effect upon social change, but mostly for its interpretative meaning, so controversial among the Western critique of Marxism. Its recurrence will be noted in the subchapter 2.2. as a historical fact, and in chapter 4, where the semantic variant of the term revolution would deal with the notion of change as the outcome of a dialectical process between the producer and the interpreter of discourse within Faircloughs linguistic theory of ideological use of language. Having by now a historical and theoretical background of the absolutist tradition as an all-encompassing form of thought and government, I shall proceed to the next stage of this chapter in which I intend to introduce the readership to the transformations that occurred within Communism in the Russia of twentieth century, stepping further to the epoch of terror and dictatorship. My focus will be placed especially upon the way in which a totalitarian rgime uses its particular methods to manipulate peoples decisions and beliefs, mostly by means of linguistic communication.

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2.3. From Marxism to Stalinism The Age of Totalitarianism

So far, the discussion has traced the roots of the absolutist frame of thinking and of governing. Further, my focus will be on the outcome of such a belief that life can be depicted in its totality (Marx) since the natural changes are inherent in the human evolution, a belief that culminates in a manichaeist outlook of the world, according to which the world has already established its criteria of evolution: the Good and Evil, the right and wrong in a permanent dialectical conflict. The present subchapter will deal with the totalitarian rgime in Russia, a useful introduction for chapter 3, because the main concern of George Orwells writings was the failure of Socialism and its absurd metamorphosis into an oppressive and mystical ideology mainly in the context of Russia and less about the Fascist Italy or the Nazi Germany. In Russia, capitalism was far from being a scarecrow to the proletariat, because there were no capitalists to oppress the proletariat, or at least there was not such an industrial development as in Germany or Britain; at the beginning of the twentieth century the oppression for the Russian people came mostly from the tsarist autocracy. Chief representatives of the revolutionary leaders were Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin. But, whereas Marxism claimed for an international revolution, clearly uttered in the Communist Manifesto You have a world to win! Proletarians of all countries, unite! Stalins proclamation of socialism in one country was a major turning point in the Soviet ideology. Both Lenin and Trotsky maintained the idea of international revolution adapting it to the situation in Russia. Yet, unlike Marx, who placed hopes for revolution solely on the working class, Lenin proposed an alliance of all the social classes that had suffered under the tsarist regime. In short he advocated an alliance of peasants (who constituted a majority in Russia) and workers, under the leadership of the Communist party. In his turn, recognizing the backwardness of Russia, Trotsky maintained that the success of the revolution was dependent upon revolutions elsewhere. He predicted, Without the direct State support of the European proletariat, the working class of Russia, cannot remain in power. (Trotsky, The Permanent Revolution). Supporting international revolution, Trotsky clashed with Joseph Stalin. The conflict of interests between the two ended in Trotskys being perceived as a threat to Stalin; he was removed from power, and forced to emigrate. Later he was murdered in Mexico City, at Stalins command.

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Stalinism emerged within the Bolshevik Party in the years following the Civil War and rose to dominance in the Soviet Union through a series of inner party struggles in the 1920s, finally achieving absolute control in 1928-29. Theoretically, it evolved out of Leninism, the development of Marxism, which expressed and guided to victory the workers' revolution of October 1917. Stalin did not ditch Leninism or Marxism openly. In order to retain the aura and prestige of Leninism, Stalinism had to perform two interconnected operations. First, the transformation of Marxism-Leninism from a developing practice-oriented doctrine into a fixed dogma, the equivalent of a state religion, was necessary. Stalin's aspiration in this direction appears clearly in his Oath to Lenin delivered shortly after Lenin's death:

In leaving us, Comrade Lenin ordained us to hold high and keep pure the great title of member of the party. We vow to thee, Comrade Lenin, that we shall honourably fulfil this thy commandment ... In leaving us, Comrade Lenin ordained us to guard the unity of our party like the apple of our eye. We vow to thee Comrade Lenin that we shall fulfil honourably this thy commandment, too ... In leaving us, Comrade Lenin ordained us to guard and strengthen the dictatorship of the proletariat. We vow to thee Comrade Lenin, that without sparing our strength we shall honourably fulfil this thy commandment too ... (Stalin, Oath to Lenin)

Stalin initiated the cult of Lenin, which glorified the founder of the Soviet state. He changed the name of Petrograd to Leningrad (city of Lenin) and renamed small town of Lenins birth Ulyanovsk, derived from Ulyanov, Lenins family name. The Order of Lenin was established as the highest civilian honour, and portraits of Lenin began to appear throughout the Soviet cities and in most offices and factories. Nevertheless, there was a huge discrepancy between Stalinist theory and the reality in Russia, that Stalin operated certain amendments, revising Leninism and Marxism to bring into line with actual Stalinist practice. One of such amendments was the theory of socialism in one country, a second transformation of Marxism-Leninism by his effective revolutionary rhetoric. The strategy of the early years of the Revolution the strategy of Lenin and Trotsky relied on stimulating international revolution to overthrow capitalism from within. The policy of socialism in one country changed this emphasis. It replaced reliance on the international class struggle with reliance on the power of the Soviet Union as a nation.
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Parting with the true Marxist socialism, defeating his principal opponents, Trotsky and Bukharin, Stalin took control over the secret police, the trade unions, the army, and launched his Second Revolution in 1928 and introduced in the system the First Five-Year Plan, determined to develop the Soviet Union and rapidly expand its economic and military might.

No comrades ... the pace must not be slackened! On the contrary, we must quicken it as much as is within our powers and possibilities. To slacken the pace would mean to lag behind; and those who lag behind are beaten. We do not want to be beaten. No, we do not want to. The history of old ... Russia ... she was ceaselessly beaten for her backwardness ... For military backwardness, for cultural backwardness, for political backwardness, for industrial backwardness, for agricultural backwardness... We are fifty or a hundred years behind the advanced countries. We must make good this lag in ten years. Either we do it or they crush us. (Stalin, Speech to business executives, 1931)

The programme socialism in one country was an evident return to traditional Russian values of nationalism, order, isolation, and xenophobia. Stalin formulated the concept of capitalist encirclement and the two camp theory of world affairs, both of which stressed the Soviet Unions isolation in a world dominated by capitalist powers. Stalin used this fear of a hostile capitalist world to legitimize his policies and his personal dictatorship. His aim was to inculcate in the Soviet citizens a strong link between himself and order. He employed propaganda and political and political repression to persuade people that the survival of the Soviet society was at stake and that, without the Vozhd (Leader) the whole society would crumble. Stalins preoccupation with power culminated in the development of an elaborate cult of personality. He was depicted as the Vozhd, the visionary leader of socialism, and the modern counterpart to Peter the Great and Ivan the Terrible. Stalinism represented a synthesis derived from the clash of the revolutionary organizational principles of Leninism with the traditionally Russian autocratic and nationalistic values of the tsarist rgime. The above presentation foregrounds two issues that represent the main concern of this paper: a hooked on power leader/party that maintains absolute control in the state under the assumption of having absolute knowledge of truth.

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With this statement, I have already sketched the basic features of an oppressive form of government acting through radical solutions that reside in a constant revolutionary ideology. We usually recognize such features in a totalitarian state and the reason for which I extended the presentation about Stalins form of government, is that the Stalinist ideology has been admitted to resemble totalitarian features. Still, for the sake of relevance it would be much wiser to give a complex definition of what totalitarianism is about.

Totalitarianism is a form of government that theoretically permits no individual freedom and that seeks to subordinate all aspects of the individuals life to the authority of the government. Italian dictator Benito Mussolini coined the term totalitario in the early 1920s to describe the new fascist state of Italy, which he further described as: All within the state, none outside the state, none against the state. By the beginning of World War II, totalitarian had become synonymous with absolute and oppressive single-party government. In the broadest sense, totalitarian is characterized by strong central rule that attempts to control and direct all aspects of individual life through coercion and repression. (Britannica, 11: 863)

Another important feature of a totalitarian system is the make-believe discourse of the leader to achieve support from the people. Yet, this support is not spontaneous, but depends on an charismatic aura of the leader, that inspires worship, fear, and all-knowing power. These reactions obviously resemble a religious character, but what is particular about the Stalinist method is the control over the peoples decisions and beliefs through the rhetoric of pathos. While Nazism and Italian Fascism are characterized by a mystical pathos that appeals to the religious imposition corrupted by a world of mythical figures Stalinist rhetoric is of a scientific make-up. It appeals to the scientific evolution and the only sacred entity that the people should praise, is the leader the Savior. The final aim of all this discursive fuss is not to impose fear or erase the enemies of the Party, but to cling to power: The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. () We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means, it is an end. (Orwell 2000, 895)

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According to Francis Bacon, Knowledge is power, and theoretically, he who has power is someone to be trusted because he is supposed to posses the knowledge. But a question seems to creep in: what kind of knowledge? or whose knowledge? The knowledge to be shared and used for, or the knowledge to be hidden and used against? The totalitarian ideology uses the lie as its most effective strategy to create confusion in the individuals mind in order to hide its real purpose and persuade the others that this lie is the truth: How can you tell how much of it was lies? It might be true that the average human being was better off now than he had been before the Revolution. (Orwell 2000, 786) In his book The Communist Censorship and the Shaping of the New Man, Bogdan Ficeac discusses about the strategies of manipulation in a totalitarian system, through informational control:

The main purpose of the leaders of a totalitarian system does not consist in ruling by force or destroying their enemies. Their purpose is to determine the people to give their believes an honest perspective, the way the leaders aim at. The new social system created by the dictators, presents the new man as its main unit, a man that thinks totally different from his or her predecessors. The use of force its just an auxiliary, a part of a huge system that recreates consciousness. In this system the manipulation of information has a crucial function. The control of information is the main instrument used to restructure the opinions, to change the perspective upon life experience, upon human relations, to recreate the system of ethical concepts, to rewrite history, to remould feelings.1

Ficeac makes a full account of the strategies of ideological manipulation with respect to mind control in a totalitarian system. He discusses eight strategies according to R. J. Liftons own classification in his book Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism (1969). These are: the control of human communication, the mystical manipulation, the request for purity, the cult of confession, the sacred science, the reshaping of language, the ideology beyond peoples
1

Bogdan Ficeac, ,,Cenzura comunist i formarea ,,omului nou, Bucuresti, Nemira, 1999, p. 13: ,,Principalul scop al liderilor unui sistem totalitar nu este acela de a stpni prin for sau de a-i distruge adversarii, ci de a-i determina supuii s gndeasc sincer aa cum vor ei, conductorii. Noul sistem social creat de dictatori are ca unitate reprezentativ ,,omul nou, cu o gndire total diferit de a predecesorilor. Fora este folosit ca un auxiliar, n cadrul unui ntreg sistem de recreare a contiinelor, sistem n care manipularea, n principal prin controlul informaional, are un rol determinant. Controlul informaiilor este instrumentul folosit n restructurerea concepiilor, n modificarea concluziilor experienei de via, n deformarea relaiilor personale, n recrearea sistemelor de norme morale i etice, n rescrierea istoriei, n remodelarea sentimentelor. 40

will, the social difference (Ficeac 2001). Some of these strategies are to be found in George Orwells Nineteen Eighty-Four to mention just one of them: the control of communication: Who controls the present controls the past. Who controls the past controls the future. (Orwell 1983, 856). So far, I have traced the transformations of Marxist socialism in Russia, changes determined by Stalins doctrine, which turned Marxism into an ideology devoid of its essential aim. Without a long tradition of abstract thinking, still a feudal society lacking in a welldeveloped industry, Russia failed to realize the proletarian revolution. The Russian intelligentsia of the 1940s got fascinated by the German doctrines that proclaimed the unity and the total comprehension of the world and in the context of backward Russia it becomes evident that the words could part with the real things still without turning into concepts; the invasion of the philosophical jargon made possible this clash between language and reality. (Thom, 188-189). The above discussion about totalitarianism has covered theoretical and practical aspects in Russia; this will provide a historical support for chapter 3 in which there will be a presentation of George Orwells literary creation and also a discussion about his political orientation. The next section holds a brief discussion on the Marxist theory and a critique of its inconsistency, based on the process of dialectical materialism.

2.4. A Short Critique of the Inconsistency of the Marxist Theory

The way Marx put it, the dialectics of motion is the process of nature; opposites are not only necessary to one another's existence, but can only be understood in their relation to each other, combined into a whole. Engels explained the dialectics of the whole natural processes:

Motion is the mode of existence of matter. Never anywhere has there been matter without motion, or motion without matter, nor can there be. Change of form of motion is always a process that takes place between at least two bodies, of which one loses a definite quantity of motion of one quality (e.g. heat), while the other gains a corresponding quantity of motion of another quality (mechanical motion, electricity, chemical decomposition). (Engels, Dialectics of Nature)

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Further, let us listen to the father of the socialism proclaiming the absolute efficiency of the dialectical materialism in all fields of life:

This conception of history depends on our ability to expound the real process of production, starting out from the material production of life itself, and to comprehend the form of intercourse connected with this and created by this mode of production (i.e. civil society in its various stages), as the basis of all history; describing it in its action as the state, and to explain all the different theoretical products and forms of consciousness, religion, philosophy, ethics, etc. etc. arise from it, and trace their origins and growth from that basis. Thus the whole thing can, of course, be depicted in its totality (and therefore, too, the reciprocal action of these various sides on one another). (Marx, The German Ideology).

Marx integrates the contraries in the same locus within a very vague term, the totality of the dialectical process. Due to the dialectical materialism which acts like an assurance of revolution, the totality can be change and still remain(!) totality, because in this ideological vat, there resides the element of change (e.g. the proletariat), that could revolute life and so, remould the totality imposing it different properties, as if some sort of chemical reaction would take place between two different elements each with different properties, the combination of which would create a single element whose new properties share the legacy, yet in a different formula. Engels presents this chemical process in the very theory of Dialectics of Nature:

The law of the transformation of quantity into quality and vice versa. For our purpose, we could express this by saying that in nature, in a manner exactly fixed for each individual case, qualitative changes can only occur by the quantitative addition or subtraction of matter or motion (so-called energy). All qualitative differences in nature rest on differences of chemical composition or on different quantities or forms of motion (energy) or, as is almost always the case, on both. Hence it is impossible to alter the quality of a body without addition or subtraction of matter or motion, i.e. without quantitative alteration of the body concerned. In this form, therefore, Hegel's mysterious principle appears not only quite rational but even rather obvious. (Engels, Dialectics of Nature)

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Dialectical materialism works perfectly in the case of the struggle between proletariat and capitalism. Nevertheless, Marx does not clear our curiosity about how socialism would be like after the revolution takes place. What opposite elements are there left for the struggle? Marxism seems to be in need of an opponent to stay true, plausible, otherwise this theory would prove its incompleteness. If the Marxist society reaches its point and becomes a single class society, what would be the use of class struggle, who would be in opposition to whom? A viable theory (and theories in general) should be in any circumstance likely to apply itself. If Marxism reaches its classless society how would it continue to exist, if it touched its aim, which would be the opponent if capitalism is defeated?

For dialectical philosophy, nothing is final, absolute, sacred. It reveals the transitory character of everything and in everything; nothing can endure before it except the uninterrupted process of becoming and of passing away, of endless ascendancy from the lower to the higher. (The End of Classical German Philosophy)

Guided by Engelss words - nothing is final, absolute, sacred, we would believe that everything is continuous, relative and lay. However, if this statement were taken for granted it would imply that even the above line nothing is final, absolute, sacred occurs under the same dialectical destiny it would bear the change and lose its force. Somehow, dialectics proves to be an inconvenient for its promoters. If applied to Marxism itself for Marxism is a part of the totality, too it would prove to be not final, absolute, sacred, hence it would reveal its transitory character and inconsistency. The thesis of absolute relativity is tricky enough for any ideology or for any utterance because it undermines its very basis. It would be sheer hypocrisy to claim that our mind could retain both the absolute and the relative thesis at once to justify the dialectical materialism. It would be suicidal to practice it, except for the ones that might believe in doublethink. I shall try to use this thesis in chapter 4, in text analysis using Critical Discourse Analysis Marxist at its basis, to prove its ideological nature and also its unreliable principle. The next chapter will get close to the literary side of this paper, with a presentation of Orwells literary creation and political orientation. The present chapter serves as a landmark for the aims of the next two chapters: it provides historical background to help understand Orwells

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literary creed; it also offers theoretical support for the main concern of chapter 4: the inconsistency of Faircloughs critical thesis.

CHAPTER 3

This chapter will be concerned with introducing the reader into Orwells literary creation. Chapter 2 has dwelt upon the absolutist tradition, from philosophy to politics, following the steps of history to understand the origins of the totalitarian practice. Since Orwell was concerned about the totalitarian threat in Britain and also in the entire world, a threat that came from the Russian form of government, he had a prolific political life, as well as a literary one. So I shall endeavour to present first, his political orientation in order to understand Orwells influences in literature, since he intended to make an art from his political creed. Thus, section 3.1. will present his political formation, and section 3.2. will deal with his most representative books, Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four, each of the novel having a brief discussion on the problems of language (section 3.2.2 and 3.2.4.), the way Orwell perceived it under the influence of the totalitarian politics.

3.1. Orwells Political Orientation

Orwells artistic (and journalistic) creation was constantly social oriented. His artistic creed can be found in his essay Why I Write (1946), in which he states that writing should reflect not the authors personality, but the truths which lie in the external world. Mostly he argued for the idea that good writing must always look outwards, must be motivated from without by politics:

What I have wanted to do for the past ten years is to make political writing into an art. My starting point is always a feeling of partisanship, a sense of injustice. When I sit down to write a book, I do not say to myself, Im going to produce a work of art. I write because there is some lie that I want to expose, some fact to which I want to draw attention, and my initial concern is to get a hearing. But I could not do the work of writing a book, or even a long magazine article, if it were not also an aesthetic experience. (Orwell 1984c, 11)

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His political orientation was of that of a socialist, but he was not a revolutionary socialist, although his literary creation - and I refer especially to Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four, turned into a world of anarchism. This was mainly because of the social and political insecurity at the beginning of the twentieth century, not only in England but on the whole European continent: The Spanish war and other events in 1936-7 turned the scale and thereafter I knew where I stood. Every line of serious work that I have written ever since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism, as I understand it. (Orwell 1984, 11) The socialist revolutions that shattered most Europe, imposed a feeling of pessimism and confusion in society that was sensed in literature, too. To understand Orwells motivation for his literary creation, let us take a look at his political development, joining its most important stages that have influenced his main works.

3.1.1. Burma Orwell joined the Indian Imperial Police in Burma in 1922. When arriving at Rangoon, he experienced something in the harbour that would be instrumental in changing him. From the ship, he saw a coolie being kicked by a white officer. The other passengers applauded this loudly; that was the proper way to handle things like that.

With each passing year in Burma, he became more convinced that he was in the wrong profession, and that the entire system of imperial rule was wrong, but he could not bring himself to say such things openly. Several years after leaving Burma, he wrote, Every Anglo-Indian is haunted by a sense of guilt which he usually conceals as best he can, because there is no freedom of speech, and merely to be overheard making a seditious remark may damage his carrier. All over India there are Englishmen who secretly loathe the system of which they are part.(Shelden 1991, 99)

Orwell stayed in Burma for five years and eventually he had to leave the police. What had happened was that he had had his eyes opened to imperialism and its effect on people. As a policeman he was part of the empires apparatus of oppression, and the short story A Hanging tells of Orwells disgust by being ruler over life and death, by being able to treat people as things. Orwell had begun sympathising with the oppressed. In Shooting an Elephant he says:
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Theoretically - and secretly, of course, I was all for the Burmese and all against their oppressors, the British. As for the job I was doing, I hated it more bitterly than I can perhaps make clear. In a job like that you see the dirty work of Empire at close quarters. (Orwell 2001, 18)

In The Road to Wigan Pier he expresses his discontent towards any form of government on the basis that it stands for oppression. However, in 1936 he rejects this as sentimental nonsense. He had realised that it would always be necessary to protect peaceful people from violence. In a society where crime pays, a harsh and ruthlessly administered criminal law is necessary. Already here appears a characteristic of Orwell that is to reappear in several of his texts. Many of his political ideas were never thought through properly. An anarchist would claim that Orwells theory is a poor one, because he only wants to do away with authorities. Orwell has no constructive ideas about a different social structure where the reasons for crime would be removed or at least reduced.

3.1.2. The Road to Wigan Pier In 1936, the Left Book Club asked Orwell to write something about the economically stricken industrial areas in Northern England. The Left Book Club had been founded in May 1936 by Victor Gollancz, who was the publisher of Orwells previous books. The attitude of the book club was anti-fascist and pro-Soviet. What Orwell wrote became The Road to Wigan Pier, and the book was not quite what the editors of the book club had expected. The book is in two sections and only one can be said to have something to do with what Orwell had been asked to write, i.e. a report on the conditions of the miners in Northern England. The other section is to some extent an autobiography in which Orwell describes his background and explains why he is in Northern England. He is there because he wants to see mass employment at its worst. Also, he wants to experience the most typical part of the English working class. Orwell sees this as an attempt to define his own relationship to socialism and what he means by socialism. This was one of the reasons why Victor Gollancz thought it necessary to pacify the readers of the left Book Club with a preface to the book, because

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Orwells description of socialism is at the same time a sharp criticism of the orthodox Left in Britain. Orwell thinks that socialism is the solution to the problems of the people and he sometimes wonders why socialism has not been implemented yet. The question must therefore be why socialism is on the retreat instead of on the advance. Not only are people not socialists, in certain cases they are even directly hostile towards socialism. Orwell will try to play the devils advocate and argue like a person, who is positive towards socialism and who is sensible enough to realise that socialism can work, but who always withdraws whenever socialism is mentioned. However, this is Orwell expressing his own views. Regarding the revolution, for many socialists it is not a question of the masses liberating themselves and the socialists joining the movement. To them, the revolution is some reform that "we, the clever ones, impose on "them, the lower classes. Orwell knows that it is not fair to judge a political theory from its followers. The problem, however, is that most people do (including Orwell himself) and that is why socialism is on the retreat.

3.1.3. Homage to Catalonia The Spanish Civil War broke out in July 1936, and having finished The Road to Wigan Pier Orwell went to Spain with his wife in December 1936. Orwell wanted to collect material for newspaper articles and perhaps join the fight. Orwell came in contact with the English communist party asking for their help but they refused any contact, because they regarded Orwell as politically unreliable. He therefore contacted the Independent Labour Party, which he knew from the magazine Adelphi that followed the line of the ILP. The ILP provided Orwell with introductory letters and this, more than any political sympathies, was the reason why Orwell was attached to the POUM (Partido Obrero de Unificacin Marxita a small revolutionary party). Orwell was attracted to the anarchist conditions in Barcelona, where he stayed during the first months of the Spanish Civil War.

It was the first time that I had ever been in a town where the working class was in the saddle. Practically every building of any size had been seized by the workers and as draped with red flags or the red and black flag of the Anarchists; (...) Every shop and caf had an inscription saying that it had been collectivized; even the bootblacks had been collectivized and their boxes
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painted red and black. Waiters and shop-walkers looked you in the face and treated you as an equal. (Orwell 2001, 8)

Orwell knew nothing, however, about the political side of the war and was not particularly interested either. He had come to Spain to fight against fascism and for common decency. In theory perfect equality existed in the POUM militias and in practice this was also so in most cases. To Orwell it was a prelude to socialism.

The thing that attracts ordinary men to Socialism and makes them willing to risk their skins for it, the 'mystique' of Socialism, is the idea of equality; to the vast majority of people Socialism means a classless society, or it means nothing at all. () And, after all, instead of disillusioning me it deeply attracted me. The effect was to make my desire to see Socialism established much more actual than it had been before. (Orwell 2001, 102-103)

After about three months at the front Orwell returned to Barcelona. The city was much changed from the last time he was there; the revolutionary atmosphere had gone.

No doubt to anyone who had been there in August, when the blood was scarcely dry in the streets and the militia was quartered in the smart hotels, Barcelona in December would have seemed bourgeois; to me, fresh from England, it was like to a workers' city than anything I had conceived possible. Now the tide had rolled back. Once again it was an ordinary city, a little pinched and chipped by war, but with no outward sign of working-class predominance. (Orwell 2001, 103)

Already in late 1936 the revolution had begun to swing to the right. At that time the USSR began supplying arms to the government troops. Along with Mexico the USSR was the only country that helped the republicans, which made it possible for the USSR to dictate the development. The Soviet foreign policy at that time was determined by the fear of fascism in Europe. Therefore, the country wanted to ally itself with especially France and England. For Spain it meant that in order to receive arms from the USSR they must keep within the bourgeoisdemocratic framework and not make a revolution.

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Orwell tells how, in May 1937 the situation in Barcelona had reached a point where something violent had to happen. The immediate cause of the unrest was that the government had ordered all privately held arms to be handed in. At the same time it was decided to set up a heavily armed unpolitical police force from which unions would be excluded. Also there was an increasing antagonism among people because of the greater and greater difference between rich and poor along with a feeling that the revolution had been sabotaged. In the street fight in which he took part, Orwell was shot by a sniper and returned to Barcelona after having been hospitalised in Tarragona, south of Barcelona.

In Barcelona, during all those last weeks I spent there, there was a peculiar evil feeling in the air - an atmosphere of suspicion, fear, uncertainty, and veiled hatred. The May fighting had left ineradicable after-effects behind it. With the fall of the Caballero Government the Communists had come definitely into power, the charge of internal order had been handed over to Communist ministers, and no one doubted that they would smash their political rivals as soon as they got a quarter of a chance. (Orwell 1983, 486)

After a while they had to flee across the frontier to France, and they returned to England in July 1937. Orwells experiences in Spain were to occupy him for the rest of his life and in the end lead to Nineteen Eighty-Four. He declared that for him time had stopped in 1936. In 1936 objective history disappeared. Orwell did not believe that history was 100 per cent objective, but there had always been events that you with reasonable certainty could assume had taken place. In Spain, however, he saw that newspaper articles had no relation to reality. History was written, not according to what had happened, but according to what should have happened in accordance with the various party lines. And when he returned to England he saw English newspapers repeat the lies of the Spanish press. Especially the left-wing newspapers with their more subtle form of distortion had been the main cause why people did not know what it was all about, but the bourgeois press had not kept back, either. In Spain he also saw a form of censorship that alarmed him. Instead of just censuring articles and leaving an empty space, something else was inserted so that it was impossible to see what had been censured and not.

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Orwell understood that the world was moving towards the totalitarian state. The enemy was of course still Hitler and Mussolini, but especially the USSR was dangerous, because the country was usually believed to be socialist. Orwell did not distinguish between fascism and Soviet communism, or Stalinism as it was also called. About the communist regime in Spain Orwell said the following in Spilling the Spanish Beans from September 1937.

The logical end is a rgime in which every opposition party and newspaper is suppressed and every dissentient of any importance is in jail. Of course, such a rgime will be Fascism. It will not be the same Fascism Franco would impose, it will even be better than Franco's Fascism to the extent of being worth fighting for, but it will be Fascism. Only, being operated by Communists and Liberals, it will be called something different. (Orwell 2001, 307-308)

3.1.4. Orwell and the Independent Labour Party In 1938 Orwell joined the Independent Labour Party (ILP). In the article Why I Joined the Independent Labour Party he explains why. First, he is a writer. The era of freedom of speech is coming to an end. For some years Orwell has succeeded in making the capitalists pay him to write against capitalism, but Orwell is not so nave to think that this can go on. Just look at what happened to freedom of speech in Germany and Italy - the same will sooner or later happen in England, as well.

I have got to struggle against that, just as I have got to struggle against castor oil, rubber truncheons and concentration camps. And the only rgime which, in the long run, will dare to permit freedom of speech is a Socialist rgime. () One has to be actively a Socialist, not merely sympathetic to Socialism, or one plays into the hands of our always-active enemies. (Orwell 2001, 35-36)

The reason for choosing the ILP, Orwell says, is that it is the only British party - big enough to be worth considering - that advocates something that he sees as socialism. It is not because he has lost all faith in the Labour Party, but they are about to throw everything overboard and prepare for an imperialist war. Orwell believes that the ILP is the only party that will take the right position on the imperialist war and to fascism, when it turns up in its British version. Furthermore, Orwell was with the POUM in Spain, and their policy was more or less the
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same as that of the ILP. At that time he did not particularly agree with the POUM, but the partys policy turned out to be the right one in the long term. This was the first and the last time that Orwell was a member of a political party, and it was perhaps a sign of how serious he took the problems of the time. Two years earlier he had fiercely attacked the orthodox Left in The Road to Wigan Pier, and he had seen the monstrosities that can result from following the party line. And now he himself joined a political party that - no matter how right its line seemed to Orwell - would entail a certain form of orthodoxy. Orwell was so worried that he had realised that it was no good fighting alone.

3.1.5. Coming up for Air Coming up for Air was written in 1939 while Orwell was in Morocco because of his tuberculosis. In Coming up for Air the war is just around the corner, and the main character George Orwell is convinced that the world will not be the same afterwards. The book is filled with nightmare visions of how it will be after the war; visions that would become Nineteen Eighty-Four.

But it isn't the war that matters, it's the after-war. The world we're going down into, the kind of hate-world, slogan-world. The coloured shirts, the barbed wire, the rubber truncheons. The secret cells where the electric light burns night and day, and the detectives watching while you sleep. And the processions and the posters with enormous faces, and the crowds of a million people all cheering for the Leader till they deafen themselves into thinking that they really worship him, and all the time, underneath, they hate him so that they want to puke. (Orwell 1983, 149)

It is interesting to see that the atmosphere of Nineteen Eighty-Four was already described in 1939, among other things because many critics have written off Nineteen Eighty-Four as just a dying mans hysterical nightmare. Also, Orwell continues his criticism of the Left, which he began in The Road to Wigan Pier. George Orwell is a member of the Left Book Club, and one night he and his wife attends a meeting arranged by the local Left Book Club section. Listening to the speaker George Orwell suddenly realises what it is all about.

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I saw the vision that he was seeing. And it wasn't at all the kind of vision that can be talked about. What he's saying is merely that Hitler's after us and we must all get together and have a good hate. Doesn't go into details. Leaves it all respectable. But what he is seeing is something quite different. It's a picture of himself smashing people's faces in with a spanner. () Hitler's after us! Let's all grab a spanner and get together, and perhaps if we smash in enough faces they won't smash ours. Gang up, choose your Leader. Hitler's black and Stalin's white. But it might as well be the other way about, because in the little chap's mind both Hitler and Stalin are the same. Both mean spanners and smashed faces. (Orwell 1983, 148-149)

3.1.6. Orwell and World War 2 In 1939, Orwell saw the coming war as capitalist-imperialist. In a letter to the English anarchist and writer Herbert Read he writes that it would be a good idea to start organising antiwar activities. It is clear that when the war has first started it will be impossible to do anything. If they do not start making pamphlets, etc. now, they will no be ready when the moment comes. Orwell was against the war because he thought it would lead to some kind of fascism in England. To him it was a repetition of Spain where some people during the civil war wanted to fight Franco in the name of bourgeois democracy. In England, now, they wanted to fight Hitler, but what was the idea of fighting against Nazism in the name of England? If one collaborates with a capitalist-imperialist government in a struggle 'against Fascism', i.e. against a rival imperialism, one is simply letting Fascism in by the back door. (Orwell 2001, 322) Furthermore, a defense of democracy would lead away from that very same democracy. But in 1940 Orwell writes in My Country Right or Left:

But the night before the Russo-German pact was announced I dreamed that the war had started. It was one of those dreams which, whatever Freudian inner meaning they may have, do sometimes reveal to you the real state of your feelings. It taught me two things, first, that I should be simply relieved when the long-dreaded war started, secondly, that I was patriotic at heart, would not sabotage or act against my own side, would support the war, would fight in it if possible. (Orwell 1984, 142)

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In The Lion and the Unicorn from 1941, Orwell says that there is nothing conservative in patriotism. Actually, patriotism is the opposite of nationalism, because it is an affection for something that is in constant change, and yet seems mysteriously unchanged. Patriotism is a devotion to a certain place, a certain way of living, which you think is the best in the world but which you do not want to force upon others. Patriotism is defensive, militarily as well as culturally - contrary to nationalism which is inseparable from lust for power. As a matter of fact, no real revolutionary has ever been internationalist, and with this Orwell implies that the English Left is not revolutionary. On the Left it has been the fashion for the past twenty years to sneer at patriotism and physical courage. And in an era of Leaders and bomber planes this is a disastrous attitude. Despite the sharp turn regarding the war Orwell was not as reactionary as it may seem. To him the war marked the beginning of the English revolution. In the same essay he writes:

But since a classless, ownerless society is generally spoken of as Socialism, we can give that name to the society towards which we are now moving. The war and the revolution are inseparable. We cannot establish anything that a western nation would regard as Socialism without defeating Hitler; on the other hand, we cannot defeat Hitler while we remain economically and socially in the nineteenth century. (Orwell 2001, 116)

The new socialist movement, however, had to take into consideration facts that so far had been unpopular with the Left, Orwell said. England was more united than most countries, and the English workers had more to lose than just their chains. The Left had to realise that the oldfashioned "proletarian revolution" was an impossibility. In all the years between the wars there had been no socialist program that was both revolutionary and feasible, which in Orwells opinion was mainly because no one really wanted any change.

The Labour leaders wanted to go on and on, drawing their salaries and periodically swapping job with the Conservatives. The Communists wanted to go on and on, suffering a comfortable martyrdom, meeting with endless defeats and afterwards putting the blame on other people. The left-wing intelligentsia wanted to go on and on, sniggering at the Blimps, sapping away at middle-class morale, but still keeping their favoured position as hangers-on of the dividend-drawers. (Orwell 2001, 120)

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At the beginning of the war Orwell had left the ILP. He thought that the ILPs policy would make it easier for Hitler. The ILP was pacifist, and Orwell now thought that pacifists were "objectively pro-Fascist, as he phrased it. Being against the war and trying to fight wartime activities in England, they indirectly helped Hitler. Orwell did not believe that you could remain neutral in this war. It was an illusion to feel above the war while eating the food that English seamen risked their lives for to bring to the country. Pacifist propaganda could only exist in countries with a certain freedom of speech, and the propaganda could only be effective against the very same countries. Orwell was not interested in pacifism as a moral concept, as this was useless in the present situation, in which Hitlers violence could be only fought with violence. Orwells texts from the first years of the war show a typical side of him, how his political views depended on the immediate situation he was in. It did not bother him to criticise the pacifists for views that he himself had advocated only a few years before and which he probably still held. But now the situation was such that these views were useless. The same applied to his attitude to political parties in general. Orwell could not deny his thoughts so as to follow the party line and be a good leader. That is why he left the ILP although he at another time and in another situation might have agreed with the partys ends and means.

3.2. An Ambiguous System: Relative Truth and Absolute Power Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four The Road to Totalitarianism

3.2.1. A Fairy Tale

Animal Farm, besides a parody of Stalinist Russia, intends to show that Russia was not a true democratic Socialist country. Looked at carefully, Orwell intended a criticism of Karl Marx as well as a novel perpetuating his convictions of democratic Socialism; these are other inherent less discussed qualities in Animal Farm besides the more commonly read harsh criticism of totalitarianism. Orwell shared many of Marx's viewpoints, but he did not share with Marx the same vision of a utopian future, only the prospects of a worldwide revolution. In 1943, Orwell felt that the people in England, because of their admiration for the Russian war effort, consciously or unconsciously overlooked the faults of the communist regime
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in the USSR. He also felt that the English communists used their position as unofficial representatives of the USSR to prevent the truth from coming out - just as they had done in connection with the Spanish Civil War.
Indeed, in my opinion, nothing has contributed so much to the corruption of the original idea of Socialism as the belief that Russia is a Socialist country. (...) And so for the past ten years I have been convinced that the destruction of the Soviet myth was essential if we wanted a revival of the Socialist movement. (Orwell 2001, 319)

That was why Orwell wrote Animal Farm as the story of the revolution betrayed. The tale is based on Orwells experiences in Spain that had subsequently led him to study power structures during revolutions, especially the Russian.

The idea for the book had been in the back of his mind since return from Spain. Having barely escaped from the long reach of Stalins agents, he began to reflect on how a genuine revolutionary movement in Spain could have allowed itself to come so completely under the control of a dictator living thousands of miles away. Of course, the fact that Stalin was able to supply the republic with arms was important, but the influence went beyond the ordinary level of bartering arms for political influence. Stalin enjoyed a god-like status, and the Soviets had expounded a mythology of the Russian Revolution which had given their activities a sacred aura. The Revolution was glorious, and everything done in its name was automatically part of that glory. Orwell saw how this powerful image had seduced not only the Spanish revolutionaries who wanted to think of themselves as comrades following the pattern of Soviet success but also well-meaning socialists everywhere. In his Preface to the Ukrainian edition of Animal Farm, Orwell speaks of his desire to combat the negative influence of the Soviet myth upon the Western Socialist movement. What better way to fight that myth than to create a mythical story of animals whose successful revolt against tyranny degenerates into a greedy struggle for power? (Shelden 1991, 400)

Although Orwell was an anti-Communist he was not on the side of traditional ruling class, neither so in Animal Farm. Throughout the book he is on the side of the animals, a counterpart for the working class. But from Day One of the revolution it is clear that a new elite is about to replace the old rulers. The pigs are the new elite (the Communist party). It was the pig called Major (the idealist visionary, clearly represents Marx) who had come up with his revolutionary theories and who had died before the revolution. In his talk, old
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Major tries to explain the animals' place in nature and how they can get out of it, very much like Marx's writing on the social consciousness of the proletariat in A Contribution to the Political Economy and the evil practices of bourgeois-controlled capitalism in The Communist Manifesto. After the breakout of the revolution, which happened spontaneously, the pigs assume leadership with Napoleon (read Stalin) and Snowball (read Trotsky) in front. The pigs assume privileges and end up ruling the other animals. The power struggle between Napoleon and Snowball does not mean that the pigs are divided. When it comes to defend their privileges against the other animals, they stick together. It is even probable that the situation would have been no different had Snowball won instead of Napoleon. Historical facts change according to what suits the pigs as in the case of the windmill. Originally it was Snowball's idea and Napoleon had of course been opposed to the windmill. But after Snowball has been driven away the mill is to be built after all. Those animals that vaguely remember how things were are told that actually it had been Napoleon's idea and that he had opposed Snowball for tactical reasons. Another example is the seven commandments that change concurrently with the pigs resembling human beings more and more. Eventually the seventh commandment, All animals are equal has had the following added: but some animals are more equal than others, in order to suit the pigs interests. In Animal Farm, Orwell is not on the side of the humans. The pigs are the villains in the tale and they become like humans. In the end of the book, pigs and humans are playing cards. When someone cheats, a row starts.
Twelve voices were shouting in anger, and they were all alike. No question now, what had happened to the faces of the pigs. The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which. (Orwell 1983, 66)

In other words, old and new tyrannies are the same. Authoritarian forms of government, whether based on social or political castes, are basically alike and they are all a danger to freedom - as has always been claimed by anarchists. Orwell argues against the Russian revolution that was betrayed in the same way that anarchists did as early as the 1920s. The anarchist traits in Orwell were to become more pronounced and form an essential part of Nineteen Eighty-Four.

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3.2.2. some animals are more equal than others. Relative Truth
Orwells critique of Marx is that Marx believed too much in a rationalized, educated proletariat that, asserts Orwell, can never exist. Marx was too theoretical in his judging the capability of the proletariat to change their life. To Orwell, the proletariat is too easily swayed by its leaders as well as its guiding ideologies. There are the leaders that Orwell detests just as much as a society that allows them to emerge. In Animal Farm, the proletariat is not very swift in recognizing its situations. The animals, indoctrinated by a discourse of revolution put forth by the pigs and perpetuated by the Seven Commandments painted on the barn wall and the song of the revolution, Beasts of England, do not realize that as the state of their society changes every time the discourse gets molded by a leader, it stays the same. The Seven Commandments, by the end of the novel, eventually become one commandment and Beasts of England, a song taught to the animals by old Major, is replaced by Animal Farm, a song taught by Minimus, the poet. The replacement of Beasts of England marks the crucial change from collective longing for a freer existence to a government-enforced enthusiasm for a utopia officially proclaimed and now achieved. It is the replacement of Beasts of England where Old Majors (Marxs) Animalism, represented by its lyrics, graphically fails, succumbing to a simple song such as Animal Farm. The reason for which animals accept all the changes at the farm comes from the ideological transformations of their reality. The best for the pigs to maintain their power was to keep a constant confusion among the animals, permanently changing the statements. The animals comply without pondering too much upon, for example, why the fourth commandment had changed in No animal shall sleep in a bed with sheets. Although they dont quite remember the commandments to have always been as such, they accept the charismatic pathos the pigs use, that somehow resemble a threat:

The rule was against sheets, which are a human invention. We have removed the sheets from the farmhouse beds, and sleep between blankets. And very comfortable beds they are too! But not more comfortable than we need, I can tell you, comrades, with all the brainwork we have to do nowadays. You would not rub us of our repose, would you, comrades? You would not have us too tired to carry out our duties? Surely none of you wishes to see Jones back? (Orwell 1983, 38)
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The seventh commandment ideologically moulded, clearly establishes the difference between the pigs and other animals, concerning their rights: All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others. But the difference does not consist in terms of equality between animals, reading it as in some animals (the pigs) are more equal (are better) than others. If equal can mean something desirable and good, it can also in a primary sense mean no more than identical or same. It is this meaning, I believe, that predominates in the slogan. The slogan should read, some animals (not the pigs) are more equal (are more the same) than others (the superior pigs). In this reading the pigs want less equality, not more; being more equal means that you belong to the common herd, not the elite. In the end this may lead to much the same conclusion as in the popular reading of the slogan - the pigs in both readings are marking themselves off from the other animals - but what is at issue here is the way equality is being defined, by the pigs and of course by Orwell himself. In the obvious reading of the slogan, equality is a desirable state of affairs, with the pigs claiming more of it for themselves; in the second reading, it is distinctly undesirable, and the pigs want nothing to do with it. Lower animals are equal, the higher ones decidedly unequal. The slogan allows different readings due to the exploitable ambiguities of its key term, equal. In Politics and the English Language Orwell lists equality as one of those words used in variable meanings, in most cases more or less dishonestly. Politically, the term equality varies, in Orwell view, according to the type of ideology. No matter the form of government, language is used to fit the partys creed. Obviously, the seven commandments were deliberately designed by its author to create problems of interpretation in a context where the manipulation of language is an essential part of the political process.

3.2.3. Nineteen Eighty-Four

In February 1944, Orwell writes in As I Please: The really frightening thing about totalitarianism is not that it commits atrocities but that it attacks the concept of objective truth: it claims to control the past as well as the future. (Orwell 2001a, 320) The Prevention of Literature from January 1946 is about the connection between the totalitarian state and history. Orwell wrote about this already in the 1930s but now seems to be even more clear on the subject.

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A totalitarian state is in effect a theocracy, and its ruling caste, in order to keep its position, has to be thought of as infallible. But since, in practice, no one is infallible, it is frequently necessary to rearrange past events in order to show that this or that mistake was not made, or that this or that imaginary triumph actually happened. Then, again, every major change in policy demands a corresponding change of doctrine and a revaluation of prominent historical figures. (Orwell 1984, 338)

Orwell believed that totalitarianism and the decay of language were connected. He focused especially on political language where you distorted events and concepts by calling them something else. You said things in such a way that you avoided producing an inner picture of them. As an example, in Politics and the English Language, Orwell imagined how an English professor would defend Russian totalitarianism. The professor cannot say outright, I believe in killing off your opponents when you can get results by doing so. Therefore he will probably say something like:

While freely conceding that the Soviet rgime exhibits certain features which the humanitarian may be inclined to deplore, we must, I think, agree that a certain curtailment of the right to political opposition is an unavoidable concomitant of transitional periods, and that the rigours which the Russian people have been called upon to undergo have been amply justified in the sphere of concrete achievement. (Orwell 1984, 356)

If thoughts can corrupt language, language can also corrupt thoughts. This idea would eventually lead to Newspeak. Nineteen Eighty-Four became Orwell's last book. It was published in the middle of 1949, and Orwell died in January 1950. But also in a figurative sense was this his last book. Nineteen Eighty-Four was the conclusion of almost everything that Orwell had written since 1936 when he with The Road to Wigan Pier began criticising the orthodox Left and when he went to Spain. In Nineteen Eighty-Four Orwell created a totalitarian universe, Oceania, with its own history and inner mechanism. In the fourth decade of the twentieth century, Orwell says in the book, all main political ideologies were authoritarian. Paradise on Earth had been rejected at the precise moment when it became feasible. Every new political theory, whatever its name, led to hierarchy and regimentation. After wars, civil wars, revolutions and counterrevolutions all over the world Ingsoc (Newspeak for English socialism) and its rivals appeared as fully developed theories.

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They were a continuation of various political systems, generally called totalitarian, and the development had long been obvious. After the revolutionary period of the 1950s and 1960s, Orwell continues, society had as always returned to the old class system with an upper, middle and lower class. But the new thing was that the upper class had realised that collectivism was the only way of ensuring the oligarchy. Private property was abolished by expropriating the capitalists, and in this way private property was concentrated on fewer hands, namely one: the Party was the new owner. The world of 1984 is divided into three super states (Oceania, Eastasia and Eurasia) that are at perpetual war with each other; the two against the third with the alliances changing constantly. Orwell says that it is a war with limited objectives in which none of the warring parties is capable of destroying the others. There are no material causes for fighting nor any ideological ones of any importance. What matters is to consume the products of the machine without raising the standard of living.

The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of the products of human labour. War is a way of shattering to pieces, or pouring into the stratosphere, or sinking in the depths of the sea, materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable, and hence, in the long run, too intelligent. (Orwell 1983, 856)

Furthermore, a general increase in the standard of living would destroy the hierarchical social structure since wealth would no longer be something dividing the classes. At the top of Oceania's hierarchy is Big Brother, who is infallible and all-powerful: Every success, every achievement, every victory, every scientific discovery, all knowledge, all wisdom, all happiness, all virtue, are held to issue directly from his leadership and inspiration. (Orwell 1983, 863) No one has ever seen Big Brother; he a sort of entity that for sure will never die. Big Brother is the guise in which the Party has chosen to appear to the world. Big Brother is somebody to whom you direct your love, fear and affection, as these are feelings more easily felt towards a person than an organisation. Below Big Brother in the hierarchy is the Inner Party followed by the Outer Party. The Inner Party is the brain and the Outer Party the limbs. And at the bottom of the hierarchy are the Proles, constituting about 85 per cent of the population. Orwell writes that nobody really knows anything about the Proles. Left to themselves they have reverted to a way of life that seems natural to them and that belongs to the past.
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The regime of Oceania has several methods of controlling the population. Agents from the Thought Police are everywhere and in all houses are telescreens capable of receiving as well as transmitting so that the occupants are under constant surveillance. Every day there is the Two Minutes Hate. People gather in front of the telescreens and watch a program that makes them scream and shout with hatred. To the book's protagonist, Winston Smith, the terrible thing is not so much that you are forced to participate but that it is impossible not to get carried away. The contents change every day but the main character of the program is always Emmanuel Goldstein (once a leading figure in the party but, because he engaged in counterrevolutionary activities, he is now a renegade). Goldstein (now leading the secret league, called the Brotherhood) has written a book, The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism in which the history and inner mechanism of Oceania are explained. At the end of Nineteen Eighty-Four it turns out that Goldstein is the invention of the Party and that his book is written by among others OBrien, who represents the Party and who is the villain of the book. Goldstein is used as a scapegoat to divert discontent and for exposing rebels like Winston, who confides in OBrien whom he thinks is a member of the Brotherhood. A major reason for the hysteria during the Two Minutes Hate is repressed sexuality. The Party is against sex and the goal is not just to prevent men and women from feeling loyal to each other, which in turn will prevent the Party from exercising its control. The real purpose is to remove pleasure from sex: () sexual privation induced hysteria, which was desirable because it could be transformed into war fever and leader worship. (Orwell 1983, 743) Apart from the mentioned concrete forms of control the Party also employs a more subtle form that is harder to fight against because it is aimed at the mind. First, the entire system is based on falsification of history - for two purposes. Outwardly the Party is infallible and is forced to change all information when it has been wrong in some connection or other. The second purpose is to eradicate memory from the minds of people. The only reason why people put up with their miserable conditions is that they have been told that it was much worse before the revolution. And as no correct information about the past exists, nobody knows if it is true. When it is necessary to manipulate with history and your own memory it is equally necessary to forget that you have done so. This is accomplished with a mental technique, which in Oldspeak was called reality-control and in Newspeak is called doublethink:

To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing
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them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget whatever it was necessary to forget, then draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again: and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself. That was the ultimate subtlety: consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the word 'doublethink' involved the use of doublethink. (Orwell 1983, 763)

3.2.4. Two plus two make five. Absolute Power

Newspeak is the official language of Oceania and its purpose is to fulfil the ideological demands of Ingsoc. In 1984 no one employs Newspeak as the only means of expression, but it is expected that Newspeak will have replaced Oldspeak around year 2050. Newspeak consists of abbreviations, and Orwell writes in his Appendix to Nineteen Eighty-Four on Newspeak that already early in the twentieth century abbreviations were part of political language. It was especially widespread in totalitarian countries and organisations. As examples, he mentions Nazi, Gestapo, Komintern, Inprecorr, Agitprop. From a totalitarian viewpoint, the advantage of abbreviations like these is that their meaning is limited and altered so that all associations are removed. The purpose of Newspeak is not only to be a medium for the ideas and worldview of Ingsoc; it is also meant to make all other ways of thinking impossible and thus remove all heretical thoughts.
Dont you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it. Every concept that can ever be needed will be expressed by exactly one word, with its meaning rigidly defined and all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten. () Every year fewer and fewer words, and the range of consciousness always a little smaller. Even now, of course, theres no reason or excuse for committing thoughtcrime. Its merely a question of selfdiscipline, reality-control. But in the end there wont be any need even for that. () In fact there will be no thought, as we understand it now. Orthodoxy means not thinking not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness. (Orwell 1983, 773)

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At a point Winston writes in his diary that he understands how but not why. This why George Orwell already asked in Coming up for Air in 1939, and in Nineteen Eighty-Four OBrien gives him the answer: The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power. () Power it not a means, it is an end. (Orwell 1983, 895) The matter of language Newspeak is central to the world of Nineteen Eighty-Four. Language is one of the key instruments of political domination, the essential means of the totalitarian control of reality. As Syme explains to Winston: The Revolution will be complete when the language is perfect. Newspeak is Ingsoc and Ingsoc is Newspeak. (Orwell 1983, 773) In chapter 2, section 2.2. I have mentioned the classification listed by Bogdan Ficeac with respect to the manipulation strategies in a totalitarian system. Among the eight strategies, the sacred science is the base on which the theoreticians justify the totalitarian ideology, heralding about the absolute value of the respective dogma, the only ideology that could possibly possess the truth. The sacredness manifests itself through the interdiction to question the value of the ideology; the bases of this ideology are considered to be beyond any doubt, and looking for answers about the ideological truth would be considered a sacrilege.

The theoreticians of totalitarianism deal with already known concepts, but they pervert them into completely new meanings, to suit their ideology only. For example, for Engles, the ethics has the class aspect, as Piotr Wierzbicki observed, in his book The Structure of the Lie. The usual Right does not exist any longer, being replaced by the objective right and the apparent right. Neither the common Truth exists, having been replaced by the truly objective truth and the apparently objective truth. The same process is applied to democracy: democracy in general is no longer valid, but there is true democracy and false democracy; the human rights also suffer the same split between fictitious and real human rights.2

Bogdan Ficeac, Tehnici de manipulare, Bucuresti, Nemira, 2001, p. 78: ,,Teoreticienii totalitarismului opereaz cu concepte deja cunoscute, dar le pervertesc, le ofer nelesuri cu totul noi, care s serveasc doar ideologiei lor. Spre exemplu, in viziunea lui Engels, morala capt brusc caracter de clasa, dupa cum observ Piotr Wierzbicki in Structura minciunii. Binele obinuit nu mai exist, ci apar binele adevrat i binele aparent. Nici adevrul obinuit nu mai exist, el fiind nlocuit de adevarul cu adevrat obiectiv i de cel doar aparent obiectiv. La fel nu mai exist democraie n general, ci democrai adevrat i democraie fals, drepturile omului se mpart i acestea n fictive i reale. 63

The dualism of the thought is the label of a totalitarian system. It assures the perfect interdependency between language and mind. As I have already mentioned above, if thoughts can corrupt language, language can also corrupt thoughts. Obviously, between doublethink and Newspeak there is a tight connection. The equation would be: if you doublethink you would definitely use Newspeak. Newspeak does not only have abbreviations it also consists of words that have two opposite meanings at the same time. This is the most important aim of doublethink: that is, a word which, respected two partys ideology, could have a positive meaning if it referred to a member of the party and it could be used in a negative sense to refer to an enemy of Ingsoc. This is the case for the three slogans: War is peace; Freedom is slavery; Ignorance is strength. War, instead of being an antithetical term to peace, because in Oldspeak had a negative connotation, in Newspeak was a hyponym for peace, so that the term peace turned into a hyperym for all the atrocities (crimes, tortures) that were done in the name of the party, to maintain peace. The same linguistic process happened to the term ignorance that in Newspeak had a positive meaning, due to its hyperym strength. So negative terms in Oldspeak had positive meaning in Newspeak, being included in the sense of the positive term (positive in Oldspeak). This meant that no matter how rude was an utterance aiming at the party, the expressions used, acted like masks to the true meaning. Moreover, the main problem was that in Newspeak there was no word that could have an opposite meaning to another, as long as one word could include two opposite meanings at the same time:

It was of course possible to utter heresies of a very crude kind, a species of blasphemy. It would have been possible, for example, to say Big Brother is ungood. But this statement, which to an orthodox ear merely conveyed a self-evident absurdity, could not have been sustained by reasoned argument, because the necessary words were not available. Ideas inimical to Ingsoc could only be entertained in a vague wordless form, and could only be named in very broad terms which lumped together and condemned whole groups of heresies without defining them in doing so. (Orwell 2001, 923)

The aim of doublethink was to make you accept these contraries, to think them. That is to accept both the appearance and the hidden meaning; both the real and the lie. In other words, doublethink is the offspring of the dialectical thought.

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Dialectics, so-called objective dialectics, prevails throughout nature, and so-called subjective dialectics (dialectical thought), is only the reflection of the motion through opposites which asserts itself everywhere in nature, and which by the continual conflict of the opposites and their final passage into one another, or into higher forms, determines the life of nature. (Engels, Dialectics of Nature)

Dialectical thought is based on the objective dialectics, a process which continues the motion independent of the change. In more practical terms, it didnt matter if words changed their meaning as long as the ideology was not affected. It didnt matter the party permanently changed the temporal evidences, all that was at stake was to maintain the power. People had to comply to the sacred science and believe, even if they knew it wasnt real, that Two plus two make five. Doublethink pretended that you should remember what to say in particular circumstances ordered by the party, that is to utter words, that for those born before the Revolution were obviously contrary to what they knew, it meant to tell lies. The main protagonist, Winston lives such a confusion:

How can you tell how much of it was lies? It might be true that the average human being was better off now than he had been before the Revolution. () Life, if you looked about you, bore no resemblance not only to the lies streamed out of the telescreens, but even to the ideals that the Party was trying to achieve. (Orwell 1983, 786)

Doublethink supposed to reach such a way of thinking that you should consciously accept and believe the lie (denying the objective reality) and when not necessary, to forget it; then, when needed again to draw it back from oblivion just as long as it is necessary, so as to forget it again, honestly convinced that you have never uttered it before. The Party named this process conscious deception. (Orwell 1983, 865) Doublethink is practically the totalitarian means of deceiving, of confusing you so as not to know what is right and what is wrong, just to accept the reality splitting by the ideology. On this matter, Orwells concern is understandable when, in The Prevention of Literature he makes a warning about the dishonesty of the various adepts of the totalitarian view:

Totalitarianism demands, in fact, the continuous alteration of the past, and in the long run probably demands a disbelief in the very existence of objective truth. The friends of

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totalitarianism () usually tend to argue that since absolute truth is not attainable, a big lie is no worse than a little lie. (Orwell 2001, 384)

This dualism of thought that divides the world between two opposing parties Good and Evil is the key word for Manichaeism. In her book The Wooden Language, Franois Thom examines the connection language-discourse-society, carrying an analysis of the structure of the wooden language and of the way this language determined the way in which people think. The Manichaeist view is built upon the opposition of the terms, e.g. progressionist versus reactionary. This dualist ideology is helped by the wooden dialectic, which, in fact, is an intellectual dishonesty, because this mental process simulates the comprehension process, it creates the illusion of thinking because the terms that are used feign the act of understanding. (Thom 1993, 78) Doublethink represents, in fact, the belief in the ordinary hypocrisy. If in Animal Farm the totalitarian system was incipient and the belief in the recommended lie was at its beginning, in the dystopian world of Nineteen Eighty-Four, hypocrisy turned into a sinister way of thinking; lying to yourself and lying the others meant that you were ideologically right. Because he lived in a time when the individual free thought was endangered by the totalitarian worldview, (a view that he understood it tended to spoil the genuine socialism), Orwell directed his attention towards the problems that political ideologies could determine, with respect to freedom of speech. He feared the Russian socialism, in its dictatorial aspect, could spread in other countries that had an old liberal tradition, the way Britain had. He expressed his concern about being ideologically right, a mental act that definitely meant doublethink:

A totalitarian society which succeeded in perpetuating itself would probably set up a schizophrenic system of thought, in which the laws of common sense held good in everyday life and in certain exact sciences, but could be disregarded by the politician, the historian, and the sociologist. Already there are countless people who would think it scandalous to falsify a scientific textbook, but would see nothing wrong in falsifying a historical fact. It is at the point where literature and politics cross that totalitarianism exerts its greatest pressure on the intellectual. (The Prevention of Literature, in Orwell and Politics, 2001, 384)

The socialist revolution that was attained in the courtyard of Animal Farm resulted in the world of Oceania. Orwells description of Oceania contains everything that the anarchists have said about the State, particularly the Marxist State.

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Because of the obvious anti-communism in Nineteen Eighty-Four, the book was a great success in the USA where McCarthyism had just reared its head. It was overlooked, however, that Orwell in the book says that all ideologies in the mid-twentieth century were authoritarian. Because Nineteen Eighty-Four was misinterpreted and in some cases misused, Orwell explained his standpoint in 1949:

My recent novel is NOT intended as an attack on Socialism or on the British Labour Party (of which I am a supporter) but as a show-up of the perversions to which a centralized economy is liable and which have already been partly realized in communism and Fascism. I do not believe that the kind of society I describe necessarily will arrive, but I believe (allowing of course for the fact that the book is a satire) that something resembling it could arrive. I believe also that totalitarian ideas have taken root in the minds of intellectuals everywhere, and I have tried to draw these ideas out to their logical consequences. The scene of the book is laid in Britain in order to emphasize that the English speaking races are not innately better than anyone else and that totalitarianism, if not fought against, could triumph anywhere. (Orwell 2001, 500)

CHAPTER 4

The Application of Critical Discourse Analysis

The present chapter is concerned with applying Critical Discourse Analysis to pieces of discourses from Marxs Communist Manifesto, Orwells Nineteen Eighty-Four, and from Faircloughs Language and Power. The aims are to prove that Faircloughs thesis of power struggle in discourse is inconsistent and can be turned against its own basis, and to prove that there are other types of discourse that do not embed struggle for power, in an analysis of a text from Orwells 1984. Each text will bear a descriptive analysis, foregrounding the most important formal aspects used in CDA (clichs, nominalizations, modality, special use of the pronouns, speech acts, etc.) in order to show if there are relational, expressive, and experiential values in the formal features of the text that could prove the respective text produces the climate for power struggle at the situational, institutional, and societal level. I shall continue with an interpretative

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discussion that will try to discover that the respective discourse is an ideological one that aims at manipulating the beliefs of the audience.

4.1. CDA applied to the Marxist discourse

Proletarians and Communists
You are horrified at our intending to do away with private property. But in your existing society, private property is already done away with for nine-tenths of the population; its existence for the few is solely due to its non-existence in the hands of those nine-tenths. You reproach us, therefore, with intending to do away with a form of property, the necessary condition for whose existence is the non-existence of any property for the immense majority of society. In one word, you reproach us with intending to do away with your property. Precisely so; that is just what we intend. From the moment when labor can no longer be converted into capital, money, or rent, into a social power capable of being monopolized, i.e., from the moment when individual property can no longer be transformed into bourgeois property, into capital, from that moment, you say, individuality vanishes. You must, therefore, confess that by "individual" you mean no other person than the bourgeois, than the middle-class owner of property. This person must, indeed, be swept out of the way, and made impossible. (Marx, The Communist Manifesto)

Description The type of discourse that will be analysed here, is a political manifest, through which a representative figure of a political grouping, here Marx, wants to make known the political program, the intentions, the creed, that is the ideology of the respective grouping. Hence, this type of discourse has a marked ideological tendency, especially directed at the adversary of the party. The subject position of the speaker is a dominant one, the Communist Party that pleads for the cause of the oppressed class of proletarians. In this text, the subject position of the hearer is not that of the proletarians, but that of the bourgeois class, the capitalists. The proletariat has an ideological position, backgrounded by the speaker, whereas the bourgeoisie has an overt subject position, due to the imperative mode of the sentences.

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This stage will foreground the formal features in the above text. These formal features will be explained in terms of the three types of formal values discussed in chapter 1, section 1.2.3.5.; these values are experiential, relational, and expressive that determine the correspondent effects in the text, related to knowledge and beliefs, social relations, and social identities, respectively. In terms of relational values of the textual features, in the text above there can be noticed the marked presence of the personal pronouns you, and we, with their additional correspondents your, us, our. Obviously since this text is a discourse that talks about class struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, the use of formal features will reveal these conflictual relations. So the use of the pronoun you has an antithetical value; you is the formal representative of the bourgeoisie, a cue that has an exclusive value, meaning that the capitalists are the true enemies of the proletariat. The first person pronoun we has an inclusive value. The speaker identifies himself with the people for whom he pleads. The appeal to the direct opponent - you in addressing ones interlocutor is more direct than the use of, say the 3 rd person pronoun singular or plural s/he or they, as in s/he says, they declare, which is a much far away referent than you. Referring to my direct opponent with you and not with a distant they or s/he, brings my adversary in the front of the battlefield, on the very scene of judgement, the judgement of the people. The same value has the pronoun we (with his correspondent us), which is an inclusive we, meaning that the party and the people are a single body, they have the same purpose. Another important aspect of the relational values in this text resides in the use of present tense simple. There is no other tense overt in the text. This shows the expressive value of the text, which implies categorical authority, where the function of simple present tense is that of generic function, that establishes a truth impossible to deny. The last paragraph in this text contains a modal verb must, used twice. The use of modality, implies relational meaning of obligation, and the expressive modality of categorical truth expressed by the present tense: you must confess, and this person must be swept out. The authoritative and categorical tone is also visible in the feature of the direct speech acts: you reproach, you say that, you mean. This tone is amplified by the declarative verbs say, reproach, mean, in the simple present, as if the opponent would always complain, as if reproaching would be an usual aspect of the adversary. This directiveness of the speech act suggests a strong and foregrounded position of the speaker, dominant through his ideology, a position which reveals itself from the nature of the relational value of formal features. The
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implications of the ideological use of language is also obvious from the imperative modality in the use of must - the authority of the speaker is not to be doubted. There are some other words that have an implicit tendency to struggle. The phrasal verb to do away with is repeatedly used in this text four times, and only in the end of the paragraph will reveal its real meaning: the speaker chooses to unmask his intention, that is to eliminate his opponent, not by directly expressing it, but by the choosing hidden meaning: in the end he states that the opponent must be swept out and made impossible. It is clear that the relations between formal features are so connected by means of ideology, so that it may render a conflictual social relation. The next stage will give a broader interpretation of the type of discourse that The Communist Manifesto belongs to, as well as the explanation of the effects it has in the social context. Interpretation The interpretation of the above text will operate with the situational context by which we understand the activity type inherent in discourse, and with the intertextual context by which we understand the function of the speakers (and hearers) previous (intertextual) experience. The activity type of the present piece of discourse, has the form of political manifest, that gives it a dual societal status: in politics and in society. In the piece of discourse, above the social status of the hearer is definitely different that of the people for which he pleads. Although he does not address directly to the proletarians, the wide recognition of his authority is fatherly like, that speaks for his son, so the main reason for the production of this discourse (the proletariat) may not be present since the authority will speak for it. Therefore, the political manifest acts like a vehicle for power. The intertextual context refers to both the speakers and the addressees background assumptions, which in the text above are explicit through the visible traces of struggle that in this particular text are ideological created. In Marxs discourse there are linguistic traces to interpret it as ideologically shaped. His discourse of class struggle has been taken for granted by politicians and linguists, ever since to the present day, expounding in a more complex practice of discourse as power determined. Faircloughs linguistic approach is rooted in the Marxist thesis of social struggle for power. As I have already proved, Marxist discourse is ideological, constantly generating change in the social structures, which proves to be wavering and non-constant. Therefore, this type of discourse is unreliable and inconsistent.

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4.2. CDA applied to CDA

The next piece of discourse is part of Faircloughs theory itself. It is a text from his book Language and Power, and its analysis intends to prove that CDA is a radical theory and leaves room for logical contradictions. The starting point in Faircloughs theory is that linguistic conventions are characterized by diversity, and power struggle. Therefore conventions are heterogeneous; that is, every discourse type has its own ideological assumptions. But, he is of opinion that homogeneity can be achieved in discourses, being imposed by those how have power. So, he admits that social relations are characterized by power, which manifests mostly by means of linguistic conventions, and which is held by any person or social grouping because power can be won and exercised only in and trough social struggles (Fairclough 1989, 43). Following his statement that any given piece of discourse may simultaneously be a part of a situational struggle, an institutional struggle, and a societal struggle (1989, 70), we may reach a logical premise that can be stated as such: any discourse has its own ideology. Ideologies embed struggles for power. Therefore, any discourse expresses and determines power struggle. With this conclusion, the following procedure would be to prove that if any discourse means social domination and power struggle, this would imply that even Faircloughs theory expresses an oppressive tendency in the scope of linguistics and in the social context. The piece of text that will be analysed is from the beginning of Faircloughs book, chapter 1, where he states his theoretical aims.

This book is about language and power, or more precisely about connections between language use and unequal relations of power (). I have written it for two main purposes. The first is more theoretical: to help correct a widespread underestimation of the significance of language in the production, maintenance, and change of social relations of power. The second is more practical: to help increase consciousness of how language contributes to the domination of some people by others, because consciousness is the first step towards emancipation. (Fairclough 1989, 1)

Description At the level of vocabulary, there can be noticed words with experiential values, expressing the beliefs of the writer. These beliefs are used in this text with implicit meanings. The very beginning of the first sentence this book is about language and power, places the
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terms language and power in the same locus, at the same level of debate, implying a certain connection between these two notions. This idea is made overt in the second part of the sentence introduced by means of adverbial modality precisely. At the grammar level, the experiential values are noticed in the marked use of nominalizations, such as: production, maintenance, change, consciousness, emancipation, domination. Nominalization has the property to avoid the specification of the agent: who does all these actions? The phrase to help correct a widespread underestimation of the significance of language in the production, maintenance, and change of social relations of power contains five nominal terms, and two verbs in the infinitive mode. The construction lacks event, and the participle widespread expresses unclear agency. The whole piece of text contains only four verbal forms in the indicative. Three of them are in the simple present is, which express a categorical commitment on the part of the text producer; the other form is in the perfective form, have written, that has the same categorical value. According to his own statement, categorical commitments present the world as transparent, as if no interpretation or investigation would be needed. This is because the text lacks agency, that could provide a medium to looking for answers to understand why is language and power connected? or other inquiries of the kind. Interpretation The activity type presents a theoretical discourse, which has a dual societal status: it refers to social context and to the scope of linguistics. In this way the discourse acts as medium for promoting the writers ideology about the function of language use, taking as his audience any reader interested in the respective domain. The subject position of the writer is a dominant one, imposing his ideological assumptions on the basis is the background knowledge: the formal features of the text do not specify who shares this belief, but it presupposes that as long as there are conflictual aspects in conversation, language is a means to maintain power struggle. The explanation of the text would leave uncovered the Marxist root of the respective theory. The belief that ones theory could help increase consciousness brings to the stage the Marxist Communist ideal, that was to rise to consciousness the working class towards a better life. This perspective upon life, that maintains the belief that social relations are of a conflictual nature, is an exaggerated point of view, and the theory of absolute relativity of truth (that resides in the absolutist tradition) bears a more absurd conscienceness. One cannot immediately take for granted the above theory, without a minimum of inquiry upon the problem; still the belief in such a theory would prove a conflictual nature of ones self72

consciousness, therefore proving the lack of consistency and trustfulness of ones system of thought.

4.3. CDA Applied to Newspeak

Further I shall make an analysis of a text from Nineteen Eighty-Four from which I intend to foreground the verbal devices that would prove the respective discourse is the vehicle for a certain ideology, leading to the oppression of the hearer. The discourse bellow is from Part III, chapter 2. It is an instance of the interrogatory of Winston, after the Thought Police caught him and Julia. The interrogatory is held by one of the Party members, OBrien that Winston believed to be a friend. The so-called interrogatory is in fact, a process of brainwashing meant to induce the Partys ideology by means of torture with electric shocks. Winston is tied up onto a bed connected to electric wires that induce him painful impulses controlled by OBrien. The torture is more or less painful depending on Winstons answers, which are supposed to respect the Partys principle doublethink. As Winston is not compliant, the torture is both physical and mental.

OBrien smiled faintly. You are no metaphysician, Winston, he said. Until this moment you have never considered what is meant by existence. I will put it more precisely. Does the past exist concretely, in space? Is there somewhere or other a place, a world of solid objects, where the past is still happening? No. Then where does the past exist, if at all? In records. It is written down. In records. And - ? In the mind. In human memories. In memory. Very well, then. We, the Party, control all records, and we control all memories. Then we control the past, do we not? But how can you stop people remembering things? cried Winston again momentarily forgetting the dial. It is involuntarily. It is outside oneself. How can you control memory? You have not controlled mine! OBriens manner grew stern again. He laid his hand on the dial.
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On the contrary, he said, you have not controlled it. That is what has brought you here. You are here because you have failed in humility, in self-discipline. You would not make the act of submission which is the price of sanity. You preferred to be a lunatic, a minority of one. Only the disciplined mind can see reality, Winston. You believe that reality is something objective, external, existing in its own right. You also believe that the nature of reality is self-evident. When you delude yourself into thinking that you see something, you assume that everyone else sees the same thing as you. But I tell you, Winston, that reality is not external. Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else. Not in the individual mind, which can make mistakes, and in any case soon perishes: only in the mind of the Party, which is collective and immortal. Whatever the Party holds to be truth, is truth. It is impossible to see reality except by looking trough the eyes of the Party. That is the fact that you forgotten to relearn, Winston. It needs an act of selfdestruction, an effort of the will. You must humble yourself before you can become sane. (Orwell 1983, 886)

Description At the level of vocabulary, the text contains typical words for an ideological discourse type. The nouns humility, self-discipline, sanity, self-destruction, are related through synonymy, so as to serve the ideology that claims that being sane is to submit yourself to the Partys will. A case of antonymy can be noticed between the words individual, that is the person in its singularity, and collective, which refers to the position of the Party. Collective shares the same semantic value with immortal, expressing the indestructible force of the Party. At the level of grammar there can be noticed the special use of the personal pronouns we and you that express the adversary positions of the subjects. We is used to express the Party and its members at the same time. It is not an inclusive we that would include the people; it is in a situation of antonymy with the pronoun you, meaning that the hearer is an opponent to the speaker. A better illustration of the relationship between the subjects is given by the expressive values of the modes of the sentences. In the first part of this text the sentences are interrogative (Does the past exist concretely, in space?; Then where does this past exist?), with a didactic tone. In this case, the speaker is passive, waiting for an answer from the hearer which is active providing answers but only to the extent that he acts compliantly. In the second part of the text, the sentences are declarative, a case in which the receiver of the information is passive, and the giver acts dominantly through his information. The last sentence of the text is an imperative one, containing two modal verbs, must and can. The modals present their deontic value, which has the meaning of an imperative obligation that bears no delay or doubt, an act that has to
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be performed by the hearer. Another sign of domination is inherent in the use of the verb control expressed with a possessive verb. The use of the verb to be appears only in the present simple tense, an instance that expresses categorical commitment to the truth of the respective sentence: the act of submission is the price of sanity; the mind of the Party is collective and immortal. The categorical use of the tenses, from the part of the speaker imposes the line of thought in terms of what is wrong and what is right for the hearer to know, another prove of the dominating position of the speaker. Interpretation The activity type of this discourse is an interrogatory, more exactly a process of brainwashing. The aim is to impose the ideology of the Party, to change to line of thought of the hearer in order to make him compliant. This type of discourse does not contain presuppositions, as was in the case of the text from Faircloughs book (section 4.2.). This type of discourse (as shown in the analysis of Marxs discourse, section 4.1.) clearly expresses the oppressive nature of the relation between the speaker and the hearer. OBrien is the dominant subject, member of the Inner Party, calm and violent at the same time, in order to inspire fear. He changes his tone of voice or facial aspect depending on his success on Winstons mind. Winston, the dominated subject in this text, is a member of the Outer Party. In the first part of the text he smiles faintly, self-assured of the success of his torture, but during the conversation with Winston, he changes his calm: OBriens manner grew stern again. The ideology that is inferred in this text is the achievement of doublethink. Winston is tortured in order to be persuaded that he has no other choice but to believe in what the Party claims to be the truth: that there is no individual memory, no objective reality. Only the Party possesses memory and reason. The subjects have to accept two contradictory aspects of reality: the existent and the non-existent, to believe and to reject them as well in the same degree, and to activate them when and if the Party allows: Whatever the Party holds to be truth, is truth. It is obvious that this form of persuasion is completely oppressive and absurd. The categorical use of the simple present tense of the verb to be, imposes a generic aspect of the verb. The same thing happens with the Party slogans: War is peace, Freedom is slavery, and Ignorance is strength. Although each of the two words of the couple above can reverse but still mean the same thing. In Newspeak, war, ignorance, and slavery got a positive meaning because these words became hyponyms of a positive term: according to the Partys ideology, peace became a hyperym for all the atrocities and tortures that were made in order to maintain peace. The same happened with slavery and ignorance: the belief in doublethink allowed the Party to spread its
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ideology, and this paradoxical process assured the strength of the Party. As OBrien said, You must be humble yourself before you can become sane. And according to Faircloughs theory people can act only if they conform to a certain ideology: people are enabled through being constrained; they are able to act on condition that they act within the constraints of types of practice or of discourse. (Fairclough 1898, 28)

4.4. A Different Type of Discourse: Winston and Julia, in 1984

The text bellow is from Nineteen Eighty-Four, Part II, chapter 7. The situational context is the following: Winston and Julia are the most prominent couple in the novel. They dont comply to Big Brothers ideology; they love each other, and support reciprocally; their relation comes against the party rules, and for this reason they are almost certain that the Thought Police, the system which was meant to keep order in the inner Party, would find about their relation and would erase them, as was usually done with those that were against the Party. The piece of discourse bellow occurs in they hiding room, in the Proles district.

Has it ever occurred to you, he said, that the best thing for us to do would be simply to walk out of here before its too late, and never see each other again? Yes, dear, it has occurred to me, several times. But Im not going to do it, all the same. Weve been lucky, he said, but it cant last much longer. Youre young. You look normal and innocent. If you keep clear of people like me, you might stay alive for another fifty years. No. Ive thought it all out. What you do, Im going to do. And dont be too downhearted. Im rather good at staying alive. We may be together for another six months-a year-theres no knowing. At the end were certain to be apart. Do you realize how utterly alone we shall be? () The one thing that matters is that we shouldnt betray one another, although even that cant make the slightest difference. If you mean confessing, she said, we shall do that, right enough. Everybody always confesses. You cant help it. They torture you. I dont mean confessing. Confession is not betrayal. What you say or do doesnt matter: only feelings matter. If they could make me stop loving you-that would be the betrayal. (Orwell 1983, 842)

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Description At the grammatical level, there can be noticed the proper use of the personal pronouns: the distribution of the pronouns corresponds to the speaker (Winston) and to the hearer (Julia); the pronouns I and we belong to their person; I expresses not an authoritarian I, but renders the impression of the self. The use of the pronoun we does not have the relational value of an inclusive we, so as to confuse upon the degree of agency. The use of we in this text, is inclusive, but it has another property which holds on to negotiation; it is a sharing value we, that contains the sharing of knowledge between the two participants. At the syntactic level, sentences dont have a declarative or imperative value, that are meant to impose compliance upon the hearer. The sentences have a particular feature: the subordinate clauses contain the main part of the information, that is the manipulative intention is very weak in such structures, because the giving or the request of information is prepared in the main clause through questions: Has it ever occurred to you that; Do you realize how, or through simple, clear informational clauses: Weve been lucky; The only thing that matters is that. The sentence structure is not very complicated. The clauses are clear and short. Most of the sentences in this text follow the pattern of SV subject-verb, describing a flowing style of the conversation. The use of modals is rendered in its proper way; the selection of the modals is not directed only towards the hearer: the modal might (or may) has, in this text, the epistemic reading, that of possibility, and does not render the deontic imposition, that of permission, in the line: If you keep clear of people like me, you might stay alive for another fifty years. The deontic meaning of the use of modal shouldnt (in we shouldnt betray one another), expresses the speakers desire to stick together, to stay true to ones mind. This reading of shouldnt is not an authoritative meaning, but is more like a request for help, for reciprocal support. Interpretation The activity type is a conversation between a man and a woman. Their subject position is equal; their communication is flowing, active. It implies shared knowledge through the use of a balanced answering and questioning. The most important feature of this text is the turn taking system, which is rendered by direct and clear questions, and direct and short answers. The text has no metaphorical use of words or appeals to background assumptions that would have imposed presuppositions and unclear agency, in terms of who does the action. Also, there is no

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trace of struggle between the two. One important aspect is the subject position of the two people. They share in turn the position of the speaker and hearer, meaning that the social role is not fixed in the conversation. Therefore, the intention of domination upon the context of discourse, upon the situation, or upon the subject, is definitely excluded. There is no sign of social struggle. More than that, the two speakers support each other, an idea that can be noticed in the straight and decided nature of Julias utterances: What you do, Im going to do. And dont be too downhearted. Winstons utterances are not so much of a decided nature, and acts as counterpart for her; he doubts at their success, but the simple, yet straight attitude of Julia balances the tendency towards pessimism. So the discourse type does not have the experiential value of an ideological construction, therefore this discourse does not enter the pattern of Faircloughs theory; the relation between the two is not a relation of power, but is a cooperative relation.

In the present chapter, I tried to prove the inconsistency and the radical nature of Faircloughs theory, in two ways. First, by making an analysis of Marxs discourse to show that it is an ideological discourse that tends to dominate the point of view of the audience (section 4.1.). This evidence proves that the very basis of Faircloughs theory of class struggle in discourse, is itself corrupted, and leads to oppression. The second step was to analyse a text from Faircloughs book Language and Power (section 4.2.), in order to show that this thesis falls under the incidence of its own method. Claiming that any discourse has its own ideology and ideologies embed struggles for power, it would mean that even Faircloughs discourse expresses and determines power struggle. Besides the logical contradiction of his thesis, Faircloughs discourse proves to be a heavy texture. It contains lots of abstract words and expressions: ideological assumptions; synthetic personalization; a self-centered perception of interests; unambiguously exclusive we, etc., nominalizations: reproduction; transmutation; commonality, etc., and long and opaque expression: combining relational elements of conversational discourse which express solidarity (you etc.) with relational elements of a more traditional political type which express authority (speaking on behalf of the people). (Fairclough 1989, 191) Another aim of this chapter was to prove that there are other types of discourse that do not embed power struggle. For this, I have chosen a fragment from Orwells novel, 1984, a conversation between the two main characters of the novel, Winston and Julia. The analysis of this discourse (section 4.4.) illustrated that language use is not only a means of oppression, but it offers a proper medium for shared knowledge and mutual negotiation of the social position. This
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evidence is valid in the context of Newspeak (section 4.3.). The analysis of this particular discourse type proves a more violent way of oppression not only through consent but also through coercion imposing power by torture and brainwashing. This discourse type is specific to a totalitarian system and, in this respect the artistic creation of Orwell, represented a warning to the danger that the totalitarian philosophy could have upon the individuals mind, suffocated by doublethink.

CONCLUSION

In this paper I tried to prove, on one hand, that language can be a means of manipulation of people, but also that it is a prolific medium for reaching mutual cooperation, by shared knowledge between individuals. Discourse represents a very mobile form of life. By this I refer to all the instances of language, from written language to spoken language, the last also having its branches the media language. I do not reject the idea that language does not mean at all ideological use. The media control of information is a permanent proof that discourses can be manipulative. But what I wanted to prove was that the thesis of CDA can not be taken for granted without little pondering upon its methods. This critical approach is just a critique of the outside discourses, insisting upon the production of discourses, and not on the reader response of the discourses. This means that CDA does not take into consideration the diversity of the opinions of people. And my belief would be that this radical point of considering life in our society, absolute struggle for power and all-expanding manipulation of others, is a sort of underestimation of the individuals capacity to understand the political and the social mechanism. I believe we are born with the capacity to understand the interrelations that human built and this makes us keep them safe and out of conflict in order to maintain our own resistance to life. I do not deny our inborn nature for struggling to maintain control over our lives. And, this is the point we try to keep control not power, not in the manner in which the totalitarian system in Orwells 1984, is trying to do. Still, the problem of language manipulation is unfortunately a constant problem. In the contemporary society the radical attitude is obvious especially in the political discourses, that claim to take the part of the people, of the oppressed that cant express their problems. So these
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types of discourses embed a fight-like persuasion, their promoters believing they are the voice of the people, that protect the social rights of the citizens. In fact, these discourses turn into a lie, into an empty frame, that keep uttering duck sounds, in a constant quacking, as Orwell observed. This language is obviously a wooden language, a Newspeak, to which a sane mind wouldnt subscribe. The wooden language still clings on to the present language use, and what is more annoying is that the use of this type of language is more evident in the socialist countries, in the Eastern part of Europe. The voice of the people remains just a voice, that is forgotten immediately after the discourse ends, even by its speaker, but the problem remains in the minds of the people, confusing them with the artificial and heavy expressions. The method of CDA, is a kind of Newspeak, criticising others under the claim that this method is the best to prove the hidden intentions of the others. In this paper I tried to prove the inconsistency of such a method and its partiality towards self-critique, appealing to one of the most present English writers, George Orwell and to its most famous books, Animal Farm and 1984, because the problems of language manipulation that Orwell concerned about are still present in this century and continue to bother a safe conversation.

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