Ideological Discourse - 1984 by George Orwell

Do you know what ideological discourse is?
Teun A. van Dijk defines it as more than just one person’s beliefs, he states that ideological discourse has “a persuasive function: speakers want to change the mind of the recipients in a way that is consistent with their beliefs, intentions and goals.” (van Dijk) In that sense, Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four is probably one of the most known novels that contain ideological discourse.

First of all, the most successful way of transmitting ideologies is by concealing them. “Ideology is a sort of structure hidden in each discourse, which is transmitted and received in an opaque way. That’s why the ideological structure cannot be consciously seen by the audience” (Larraín). In the case of the “proles”, even the fact that they were not watched had a hidden meaning. For them is meant that they were free and everything was normal, but the reality was that they did not matter to the Party. One important factor that makes people not realize that they are being manipulated is language. The masses do not know in which situation they are because they do not have enough information and also because ideology is not presented directly, but through hidden meanings and ideas.

 

Secondly, alteration of the past was also a way to control people. By controlling the past, the Party was able tocontrol the present and make it seem like everything that they did and everything that happened made sense. With no real knowledge of the past, people would not notice that they were living in a present that was not as good as they were made to believe. This has to do with the possibility of creating History anew. Besides, history textbooks depicted a past that was terrible and made the present seem like paradise, and there was no way of telling if what the books said was true or not, because all information was controlled by the Party. This kind of situation is represented in the chapter 7 when Winston reads a history textbook that says the following: 

 

 “In the old days (it ran), before the glorious Revolution, London was not the beautiful city that we know today. It was a dark, dirty, miserable place where hardly anybody had enough to eat and where hundreds and thousands of poor people had no boots on their feet and not even a roof to sleep under. Children no older than you had to work twelve hours a day for cruel masters who flogged them with whips if they worked too slowly and fed them on nothing but stale breadcrusts and water”. (Orwell 93)

 

In contrast to that horrible past, people were presented with statistics about the present that showed that life was better now, stating that “people today had more food, more clothes, better houses, better recreations — that they lived longer, worked shorter hours, were bigger, healthier, stronger, happier, more intelligent, better educated, than the people of fifty years ago” (Orwell 95). These statistics were transmitted through the telescreens, which were in every house and room. This is clearly an example of the use of propaganda to shape people’s thoughts and knowledge in order to maintain an ideology. It also exemplifies the use of technology and mass media, like the telescreens, to distribute propaganda.

Nowadays, we can argue that this is still a reality. Although people have more access to information, not always that information is reliable. Mass media like TV or radio can be controlled by governments or political groups that can have an influence in the contents and information that are presented. The wider reach that technology achieves makes it easier to target big groups of people with propaganda. Even though it is hard to erase the past, it can still be presented from a perspective that achieves the desired effect. We also know that technology is being used to watch people’s movements or listen to conversations; there are cameras everywhere. Even what you do or search on the internet is being registered. In fact, things like Facebook make people give information willingly and without realizing it. Even today it is hard to notice that you are being manipulated thanks of the nature of language. People trying to impose an ideology can get away with it by sticking to the literal meaning of what they say. This is related to what Larraín states about the double meaning of language. According to him, there is a denotative and connotative side and “denotative language presents a permanent ambivalence between its natural meaning and its latent hidden meaning that constitutes a sort of rhetoric level” (Larraín). 

Nineteen Eighty-Four has been described as a novel that “projects a negative utopia, or dystopia, of a future totalitarian society which uses terror, surveillance, and a repressive bureaucracy to exert total power over the individual.” (Kellner)

What do you think of the statement made by Kellner? Do you really think that the ideological discourse in Nineteen Eighty-Four is used to oppress lower social classes?

  

 

 

 

References

Kellner, Douglas. From 1984 to One-Dimensional Man: Critical Reflections on Orwell and Marcuse. August 1984. 04 November 2014.

Larraín, Jorge. El Concepto de Ideología. Santiago: Lom, 2007.

Orwell, George. 1984. London: Harvill Secker, 1949.

van Dijk, Teun A. "Ideological Discourse Structures." Ideology: A Multidisciplinary Approach. London: SAGE Publications Ltd., 2000. 263-277.