Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-hc48f Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T15:21:33.541Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Language, Nineteen eighty-four, and 1989

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 February 2009

Michał Buchowski ,
David B. Kronenfeld ,
William Peterman  and
Lynn Thomas
Michał Buchowski
Affiliation:
Ethnology & Cultural Anthropology, Adam Mickiewicz University, ul. sw. Marcin 78, 61-874 poznań, Poland
David B. Kronenfeld
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, University of California, Riverside, Riverside, CA 92521-0418
William Peterman
Affiliation:
Department of Cognitive Science, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093-0101
Lynn Thomas
Affiliation:
Department of Sociology/Anthropology, Pomona College, 425 N. College Avenue, Claremont, CA 91711-6361
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The article examines the fact that the push for democracy and the end of Communist rule in Central Europe was phrased in terms of traditional European notions of freedom and democracy, in spite of longlived Communist attempts to redefine these and related terms in order to make them a Communist reality. Communist language usage was forcefully brought home to the West by George Orwell in Nineteen Eighty-Four, especially in his notion of “doublethink”. We use the semantic theory of David Kronenfeld, along with Leon Festinger's theory of cognitive dissonance and Jean Piaget's views of how children's cognitive systems develop (including natural language), to derive a theoretical explanation for the failure of the Orwellian prediction and of the Communist linguistic efforts on which it was predicated. The explanation involves Ferdinand de Saussure's central idea that language is an interlinked system which is crucially social, and points to the critical role of childre's early language learning (in mundane, everyday contexts) on the development and structuring of their adult system. (Extensionist semantics, politics and language, cognitive dissonance, Central Europe, Poland, George Orwell, propaganda, language change)

Type
Articles
Information
Language in Society , Volume 23 , Issue 4 , September 1994 , pp. 555 - 578
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1994

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Aronson, Elliot (1992). The return of the repressed: Dissonance theory makes a comeback. Psychological Inquiry 3:303–11.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ascherson, Neal (1982). The Polish August. New York: Viking.Google Scholar
Ash, Timothy Garten (1990). The revolution of the magic lantern. The New York Review, Jan. 18, pp. 42–51.Google Scholar
Berlin, Isaiah (1969). Two concepts of liberty. In his Four essays on liberty, 118–72. Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press. (Reprinted in Stewart 1986, 92–99.)Google Scholar
Biskupski, Mieczyslaw B., & Pula, J. S. (1990). Polish democratic thought from the Renaissance to the Great Emigration: Essays and documents. Boulder, CO: East European Monographs (distributed by Columbia University Press).Google Scholar
Bromke, Adam (1987). The meaning and uses of Polish history. Boulder, CO: East European Monographs (distributed by Columbia University Press).Google Scholar
Brzezinski, Zbigniew (1989). The grand failure: The birth and death of communism in the twentieth century. New York: Scribner.Google Scholar
Buchowski, Michal (1991). The magic of the king-priests of communism. East European Quarterly 25:425–36.Google Scholar
Campeanu, Pavel (1990). The revolt of the Romanians. The New York Review, Feb. 1, pp. 30–31.Google Scholar
Clark, John, & Wildavsky, Aaron (1990). The moral collapse of Communism: Poland as a cautionary tale. San Francisco: Institute for Contemporary Studies.Google Scholar
Cohen, Gerald Allan (1989). History, labour, and freedom: Themes from Marx. Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Crick, Bernard R. (1980). George Orwell: A life. New York: Penguin.Google Scholar
Elster, Jon (1986). An introduction to Karl Marx. Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Festinger, Leon (1957). A theory of cognitive dissonance. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Festinger, Leon (1962). Cognitive dissonance. Scientific American, October, pp. 3–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Festinger, Leon; Riecken, Henry W.; & Schachter, Stanley (1956). When prophecy fails: A social and psychological study of a modern group that predicted the destruction of the world. New York: Harper & Row.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Festinger, Leon; with the collaboration of Vernon Allen and others (1967). Conflict, decision and dissonance. (Stanford studies in psychology, 3) Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Flavell, John H. (1963). The developmental psychology of Jean Piaget. New York: Van Nos-trand Reinhold.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Furth, Hans G. (1981). Piaget and knowledge: Theoretical foundations. 2nd ed.Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Grice, H. P. (1975). Logic and conversation. In Cole, Peter & Morgan, Jerry L. (eds.), Syntax and semantics, vol. 3, 41–58. New York: Academic.Google Scholar
Halliday, Michael A. K. (1975). Learning how to mean: Explorations in the development of language. London: Arnold.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Halliday, Michael A. K. (1978). Language as a social semiotic: The social interpretation of language and meaning. Baltimore: University Park Press.Google Scholar
Hirschman, Albert O. (1990). Good news is not bad news. The New York Review, Oct. 11, pp. 20–22.Google Scholar
Kronenfeld, David B. (1974). Sibling typology: Beyond Nerlove and Romney. American Ethnologist 1:489–506.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kronenfeld, David B. (1976). Computer analysis of skewed kinship terminologies. Language 53:891–917.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kronenfeld, David B. (1980). Particularistic or universalistic analyses of Fanti kin-terminology: The alternative goals of terminological analysis. Man 15:151–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kronenfeld, David B.; Armstrong, J. D.; & Wilmoth, S. (1985). Exploring the internal structure of linguistic categories: An extensionist semantic view. In Dougherty, Janet W. D. (ed.), Directions in cognitive anthropology, 91–110. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
Laber, Jeri (1990). Bulgaria. The New York Review, May 17, pp. 34–37.Google Scholar
Orwell, George (1949). Nineteen eighty-four. London: Seeker & Warburg. (Reprinted, New York: New American Library, 1981.)Google Scholar
Piaget, Jean (1970). Genetic epistemology. Trans, by Duckworth, Eleanor. (Woodbridge lectures, 8.) New York: Columbia University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Raina, Peter K. (1982). Political opposition in Poland, 1954–1977. London: Poets and Painters.Google Scholar
Rodden, John (1989). The politics of literary reputation: The making and claiming of “St. George” Orwell. Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Rorty, Richard (1989). Contingency, irony, and solidarity. Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Saussure, Ferdinand de (1966). Course in general linguistics. Trans, by Baskin, W.New York: McGraw-Hill.Google Scholar
Scammell, Michael (1990). Yugoslavia: The awakening. The New York Review, June 28, pp. 42–47.Google Scholar
Scott, James C. (1990). Domination and the arts of resistance: Hidden transcripts. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Sperber, Dan, & Wilson, Deirdre (1986a). Loose talk. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 86:153–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sperber, Dan, & Wilson, Deirdre (1986b). Relevance: Communication and cognition. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Stewart, Robert (1986), ed. Readings in social and political philosophy. Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Taras, Ray (1986). Poland: Socialist state, rebellious nation. Boulder, CO: Westview.Google Scholar
Taylor, Charles (1979). What's wrong with negative liberty. In Ryan, Alan (ed.), The idea of freedom, 175–93. Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press. (Reprinted in Stewart 1986, 100–12.)Google Scholar
Tischner, Jozef (1984). The spirit of solidarity. Trans, by Zaleski, M. B. & Fiore, B.SJ. San Francisco: Harper & Row.Google Scholar
Volgyes, Ivan (1975), ed. Political socialization in Eastern Europe: A comparative framework. New York: Praeger.Google Scholar
Walicki, Andrzej (1991). From Stalinism to post-communist pluralism: The case of Poland. New Left Review 185:93–121.Google Scholar
Wierzbicka, Anna (1990a). Antitotalitarian language in Poland: Some mechanisms of linguistic self-defense. Language in Society 19:1–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wierzbicka, Anna (1990b). “Prototypes save”: On the uses and abuses of the notion of “prototype” in linguistics and related fields. In Tsohatzidis, Savas (ed.), Meanings and prototypes: Studies in linguistic categorization, 347–67. London & New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Wierzbicka, Anna (1992). Semantics, culture, and cognition: Universal human concepts in culture-specific configurations. Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Williams, Raymond (1971). George Orwell. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Williams, Raymond (1985). Keywords. 2nd ed.Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar