语言与文风2017orwell.ru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
奥威尔 1946 年的经典随笔，主张英语写作被官样文章、陈词滥调和空洞修辞败坏，并给出几条具体的写作戒律。它值得写作者读，不是因为结论一定对，而是因为它把"语言如何遮蔽思想"这件事说得极其锋利，同时也提供了一个可以被反驳、被检验的写作立场。
可以直接用的写作要点
- 01
先想清楚再落笔：奥威尔认为模糊的语言往往源于你不愿或不敢想清楚的东西，删掉套话往往就是逼自己面对真实意思。
- 02
警惕现成的比喻和口号式短语，它们会替你把句子自动补完，让你以为自己说了什么。
- 03
能用短词就不用长词，能删的字就删，被动语态和名词化堆砌常常是逃避责任的语言痕迹。
- 04
把"规则"当检查清单而不是信条：奥威尔自己也没完全遵守，规则的价值在于让你回头审视句子，而不是保证句子正确。
HN 评论精选
基本英语的翻译经历让奥威尔亲身体会到：逼出明确表达是一种政治行为，含糊其辞经不起这种逼迫。
奥威尔二战期间在英国新闻部工作，任务之一是把新闻稿翻译成 850 词的"基本英语"，用于向殖民地（主要是印度）广播。知道这一点后，这篇随笔和《1984》都更好理解了：他发现翻译成基本英语本身就是政治行为——官方声明里的含糊和推诿根本翻不过去，必须先逼出明确意思才能塞进这种被强制的平实文体，这就是"新话"的来源。他列的滥用短语清单已经过时了，今天该避开的有："very unique"（unique 意为唯一，不止一个就用错了）、"a lot"（滥用但无害）、"literally"（除非字面为真，否则别用来加强语气）。
Animats查看英文原文
Orwell had a job with the British Ministry of Information during WWII. Part of his job was translating news reports into 850-word Basic English [1] for radio broadcasts to the Colonies. (India, mostly.) Once you know that, this essay, and "1984", make more sense. Orwell discovered that translating into Basic English is a political act. The evasions and prevarications of official statements do not translate. Ambiguity has to be hammered out first to fit into the forced plain style of Basic English. Hence, Newspeak. His list of overused phrases is dated. A few to avoid today: - "very unique". "Unique" means there's only one. If there's more than one, "unique" is the wrong word. - "a lot". Overused, but harmless. - "literally". Avoid unless "literally" is true; do not use for emphasis. [1] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:Basic_English_word_list
媒介会塑造思维的形状：平台规定的长度久而久之就成了思想的长度。
高中初读时我很喜欢，主要因为它嘲讽学术英语用装腔作势的行话来遮掩自身。多年后重读，却觉得这篇文章本身就很装腔作势，甚至有点威权色彩——奥威尔开头承认自己的观点可能像"多愁善感的复古主义"，但一旦被强制执行，复古就不只是感伤，而是压迫：希望事物保持不变或退回从前，本身就是对当时所有争取进步者的严厉否定。今天第三次读，作为技术从业者，我被"结果可以成为原因，反过来强化原初的原因，并以更强的形式产生同样的结果"这句吸引：媒介技术也是如此。Twitter 把 140 字符定为一条推文的长度，也就把它定为一种思想的长度，久而久之发推成了传播思想的最佳方式。我不想说得太阴谋论——不认为某种媒介本身是坏的；也不想太浅薄——不想说唯一的重点就是麦克卢汉的"媒介即讯息"。但把媒介主导权的争夺看作讯息主导权的争夺是有用的，并且要承认：胜利既会自我延续，也会自我正常化。
kyleschiller查看英文原文
I loved this when I first read it in high school, mostly because it mocked academic english for relying on pretentious jargon to obfuscate itself. My second reading years later, the whole thing felt very pretentious itself, if not downright authoritarian. Orwell acknowledges at the beginning that his view might seem like "sentimental archaism", but properly enforced, archaism isn't just sentimental, it's oppressive. Wanting things to remain the same, or revert to the way they were before is, after all, a serious condemnation of everyone fighting for progress along the way. Reading it a third time today, and reading it as a tech worker, I'm drawn to his note that "effect can become a cause, reinforcing the original cause and producing the same effect in an intensified form" as it relates to technologies as new mediums for communication. For Twitter to establish 140 characters as the length of a tweet is also to establish it as the length of a though, which in time makes tweeting the perfect way to broadcast thoughts. I don't want to sound too conspiratorial here, I don't think any given medium is bad. I also don't want to sound too inane and suggest that the only important take way is the basic idea of McLuhan's Medium-as-Message. I do think it's useful to think of the battle of dominance in medium as a battle for dominance in message, and accept that victory may be as self-perpetuating as it is self-normalizing. EDIT: You might also enjoy DFW's related essay: http://wilson.med.harvard.edu/nb204/AuthorityAndAmericanUsage.pdf
规则无法保证诚实：奥威尔的戒律他自己都没遵守，遵守戒律也照样能写出空洞的官样文章。
这篇随笔很有诱惑力，但仔细推敲，它除了感伤诉求和修辞花招之外并没有真正论证自己的观点。它的核心主张似乎是语言"衰退"了，可除了引用一句圣经来对比官腔和新闻体之外，没有举出任何更早的语言用例；它隐约暗示语言能影响甚至决定思想，却不说明机制，只有修辞（"但如果思想败坏语言，语言也能败坏思想"——此处缺引用）；它坚持几条让语言保持锋利的规则，可这些规则宽泛得离谱，连他自己在开头两段里就违反了大部分。"只要遵守简单规则就能写出不易被欺骗和灌水的表达"这个想法很诱人，但语言不是这么运作的：你完全可以比他更严格地遵守规则，照样塞进同样多的欺骗性废话；也可以完全无视规则，写出有力有趣的文字（奥威尔本人就是）。编程领域有个类似的例子：以为仅靠强制执行代码风格规范就能"保证"好代码。
andolanra查看英文原文
Politics and the English Language is a pretty seductive essay, but on deep examination, it doesn't really make its own case beyond some sentimental appeals and rhetorical flourishes. In particular, its thesis seems to be language has "declined", but never cites any older uses of language save a line of the Bible, which he contrasts with bureaucrat-ese and journalistic writing; he makes rough insinuations that the language can somehow affect (or even effect) thought but doesn't bother justifying how or why beyond simple rhetorical devices ("But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought [citation needed]"); he insists on a few rules to keep your language sharp, but these rules are ridiculously broad and, indeed, so hard to follow while producing clear writing that he breaks most of them himself within the first two paragraphs: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=992 The idea that you can adopt simple rules and somehow come up with speech that's not amenable to deception or fluffery is appealing for obvious reasons, but that's just not how language works: you can follow Orwell's rules to the letter, better than he does, and include just as much deceptive fluff; or you can ignore his rules and write forceful, interesting prose. (Orwell himself does!) A rough analogue in the programming field would be the idea that you can "enforce" good code by nothing more than enforcing style guidelines. The idea that you can prevent lies in politics by banning the passive voice is roughly as silly as the idea that you can prevent bugs in code by banning tab characters.
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