George Orwell
talked about various of the tricks that politicians are using in their writings
and speeches. In George Orwell’s Politics
and the English Langue, he listed several tricks such as dying metaphors,
operators, pretentious diction and meaningless words that politicians often
used to deceive audience. I strongly agreed with George Orwell that even today,
many politicians use many improper English languages to deceive audience.
President Obama who
is well known as a great speaker used some ‘bad languages’ in his speeches. He
used dying metaphors in his statement on the terrorist attacks in Paris on
November 15, 2015. President Obama said “France is our oldest ally. The French
people have stood shoulder to shoulder with United States time and again.” In
addition, Obama used another metaphor on his address to Syria on September 10,
2013. He said, “Let me make something clear: The United States military doesn’t
do pinpricks.” This metaphor is funny as it doesn’t make sense to compare pinprick
to military bombing.
In conclusion, I
strongly agreed with George Orwell that political language is designed to make
lies sound truthful and murder respectable. Since there are many tricks that politicians
deceive audience, we should to be careful when listen to political speeches.
Your topic draws my interest. Because English is not my first language, it's hard for me to find out dying metaphors in political speeches. Your examples give me a good understanding of that.I'd like to share my ideas for these two examples. In terms of the first one, "[standing] shoulder to shoulder" is quite a popular saying and has a good effect to make the mental distance between U.S. and France shorter. However, you choose this to be an example of dying metaphors. Maybe you think this saying is too old or it doesn't fit the actions that U.S. took, but to me, just for this sentence, I think this metaphor is acceptable. I almost agree with your opinion for the second example, but maybe citing more sentences next to that sentence will give me a more direct feeling that the metaphor is bad.
ReplyDeleteAll in all, I enjoy your post!