语言与文风2016mtholyoke.edu编辑精选
乔治·奥威尔《政治与英语》（1946）
George Orwell, “Politics and the English Language” (1946)
导读
这篇是奥威尔1946年的经典文章，讨论政治语言如何用委婉语、模糊措辞和陈腐隐喻来掩盖暴力与不可辩护之事。对写作者来说，它提供了一套诊断坏文风的工具：语言不清往往不是技巧问题，而是不愿或不敢直面现实。读它可以帮助我们有意识地选择具体、诚实、有画面的表达。
可以直接用的写作要点
- 01
写公共议题时，先检查措辞是否在回避画面：把“pacification”这类词还原成谁被轰炸、谁被驱离，读者才能看见事实。
- 02
警惕陈腐隐喻和流行文化套话；它们看似顺口，却让读者滑过意义，而且比经典隐喻老化得更快。
- 03
少堆抽象名词和冗长、被动的“现代英语”，多写具体名词、动词和可感知的细节；把《传道书》改写成术语堆砌就是反例。
- 04
把用词当作伦理选择：命名方式决定读者是否看见现实，诚实具体的语言本身就是一种抵抗。
HN 评论精选
政治语言用委婉语和模糊措辞掩盖暴力，使读者看不见具体画面。
我很喜欢这篇文章。整篇都好，尤其喜欢这一段：政治演讲和写作在很大程度上是在为不可辩护之事辩护；政治语言因此大量由委婉语、乞题和模糊含混构成。村庄被轰炸、居民被驱赶到乡间、牲畜被机枪扫射、茅屋被燃烧弹点燃，这叫“平定”；农民被夺走农场、只能带着随身物品上路，这叫“人口转移”或“边界修正”；人们未经审判被关多年、被从后颈枪杀或在北极伐木营死于坏血病，这叫“清除不可靠分子”。这种措辞能让人给事物命名，却不唤起任何画面。
Houshalter查看英文原文
I love this essay. The whole essay is good, but I really like this paragraph: >In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of the political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenseless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers. People are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is called elimination of unreliable elements. Such phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them.
陈腐隐喻仍普遍，流行文化隐喻老化更快，写作者应慎用套话。
奥威尔二战期间大量把新闻译成“基础英语”供英国殖民地传播；政治话语的回避和夸张必须用朴素实用的词表达，这本身是政治行为，《1984》的“新话”就来自这段经验。他列出的陈腐隐喻至今仍适用，比如“ring the changes”在今天的《南华早报》里就被误用；我自己最常注意的是“free rein”（放松缰绳），这是马术词，今天常被写成“free reign”。当代隐喻多来自流行文化而非经典，老化更快，这未必是进步。
Animats查看英文原文
Ah, Orwell. This was one of his pet peeves. He spent much of WWII translating news into Basic English for transmission to British colonies. The evasions and hyperbole of political speech had to be expressed in the plain and practical words of Basic English. That's a political act. Newspeak in "1984" came from that experience. His list of worn-out metaphors understood by few, "ring the changes on, take up the cudgel for, toe the line, ride roughshod over, stand shoulder to shoulder with, play into the hands of, no axe to grind, grist to the mill, fishing in troubled waters, on the order of the day, Achilles' heel, swan song, hotbed" is still apt. "Ring the changes" is misused in today's South China Morning Post.[1] My own favorite is "free rein", which is a horse term. (One not used by riders today; riders say "loose rein".) It often appears today as "free reign". Today's metaphors come from popular culture rather than the classics, and age faster. This may not be an improvement. [1] http://www.scmp.com/sport/rugby/article/2002459/mark-coebergh-rewarded-form-hong-kong-ring-changes-asia-rugby-u20-sevens
可延伸阅读 DFW 的文章，继续思考语言用法与权威。
我认为 David Foster Wallace 的《Authority and the English Language》是这篇文章的精神续作。喜欢奥威尔这篇的人，我推荐读它。
ajkjk查看英文原文
I consider David Foster Wallace's "Authority and the English Language" to be a spiritual successor to this piece (http://wilson.med.harvard.edu/nb204/AuthorityAndAmericanUsage.pdf). I'd recommend it to anyone who likes Orwell's essay.
抽象术语堆砌会把有力具体的表达变得臃肿空洞。
下面这个例子很震撼。我发现自己尤其在学术写作中会写出第二段那种话，感到不适；同时也为第一段还能存在而松一口气。奥威尔举《传道书》为例：“我又转念，见日光之下，快跑的未必能赢，力战的未必得胜，智慧的未必得粮食，明哲的未必得资财，灵巧的未必得喜悦，所临到众人的，是在乎当时的机会。”改成“现代英语”后变成：对当代现象作客观考量后可得出结论，竞争活动中的成败与先天能力并无相称趋势，但不可预测因素总须作为重要成分纳入考虑。
chrisdone查看英文原文
The below example is stunning. I feel sick to recognize the second paragraph (especially in academic writing), and I feel strong relief that the first paragraph can exist. > Here is a well-known verse from Ecclesiastes: > I returned and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all. > Here it is in modern English: > Objective considerations of contemporary phenomena compel the conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity, but that a considerable element of the unpredictable must invariably be taken into account.
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