Publication details
Exploring the Potential of Integrating George Orwell’s Language Theories into English Courses Designed for Students of Political Science
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| Year of publication | 2014 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
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| Description | The paper aims to explore the possibilities of incorporating the linguistic work of George Orwell and his followers into a university-level English course intended for students of Political Science. It is based on an attempt to merge two separate and mutually independent disciplines – English for Specific Purposes (ESP) and Orwellian Linguistics. ESP, together with its subfields English for Academic Purposes and English for Occupational Purposes, has developed since the 1960s as an independent field within English Language Teaching (ELT), and research in ESP makes an integral part of applied linguistic research. Independently, theories on the relationship between language and politics and, in particular, language that is used in order to manipulate people’s thoughts and influence their perception of reality, were elaborated throughout the second half of the 20th century. The notion that there is some relation between language and political thought and that the language politicians use can - up to a certain degree - influence people’s political thoughts goes back to George Orwell. Orwell himself developed his ideas about the relation between language and politics first in his essay, Politics and the English Language (first published in 1946), and later in his novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four (first published in 1949), in particular in the appendix to this novel, where he describes the principles of newspeak. His theories were further elaborated mainly by linguists of the Committee on Public Doublespeak of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) in the last few decades of the 20th century. This paper focuses on the potential of breaking away from traditional approaches to teaching ESP. Instead, the integration of a rudimentary linguistic analysis of political discourse, based on the above-described Orwellian approach, into the syllabus of a specialised English course designed for students of political science is suggested and discussed. |