Talk:Newspeak/Archive 2

Archive 1

Archive 2

Removal of right wing examples

I do not have access to the source being used to support the section so please can somebody who does have access check that this diff is correct in removing the right wing examples? Is it correct that only left wing examples are given in the source used and that no other valid sources support the inclusion of right wing examples here? --DanielRigal (talk) 13:34, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

A reply

Dear Colleague Daniel Rigal

The novel Nineteen Eighty-four (1949), by George Orwell, has the "Appendix", which is the source that you require to confirm the fidelity, veracity, and accuracy of my editorial correction. If the Appendix included Nazi examples, I would have included them when I wrote that section of the text. Please, read the source, don't fight Jensen's ded-end quarrels. Know the facts; just read the Appendix, written by Orwell, all the data are contained therein.

I shall follow up with you, so that WE can do right. Let me know.

Regards,

Chas. Caltrop (talk) 17:28, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

I am sorry, but what are you talking about?

Even in the early decades of the twentieth century, telescoped words and phrases had been one of the characteristic features of political language; and it had been noticed that the tendency to use abbreviations of this kind was most marked in totalitarian countries and totalitarian organizations. Examples were such words as Nazi, Gestapo, Comintern, Inprecorr, Agitprop.

This quote is from the appendix. Clearly, the appendix does include Nazi examples. Please stop edit-warring over something so easily verifiable. --Mvbaron (talk) 17:40, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

A reply

Dear Colleague Mvbaron

I speak of the fact that the German language examples are not examples of Newspeak, the subject of this article, which is about the contractions of Newspeak, and not German contractions. Orwell's examples are from the German, as examples of telescoped language, but not as examples of Newspeak. Again, not the same thing; Gestapo and Nazi are not Newspeak words, therefore do not count as Newspeak.

Moreover, of what edit war are you speaking? All of these communications are entirely within the Wikipedia remit.

Regards,

Chas. Caltrop (talk) 18:07, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

Chas. Caltrop, thank you for the reply, this makes it a bit clearer what you mean. (may I ask you to indent your replies? It makes it way easier to follow the conversation.) Let's look at the sentence in question:

Linguistically, the political contractions of Newspeak--Ingsoc (English Socialism), Minitrue (Ministry of Truth), etc.--derive from those of German and Russian, which identify the government and social institutions of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, such as Nazi itself (Nationalsozialismus), Gestapo (Geheime Staatspolizei), politburo (Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union)...

Is the problem the meaning of "derive"? As in, linguistically, the (Newspeak) contraction "Ingsoc" doesn't derive from any German contraction? If that is the problem, we could simply exchange "derive from" with "are modeled after"? To quote the appendix again, the interesting part about the contractions is exactly their structure (as in the German, Russian case):

But in addition there were great numbers of words which at first sight appeared to be mere abbreviations and which derived their ideological colour not from their meaning, but from their structure.

--Mvbaron (talk) 18:24, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

New Proposal

Dear Chas. Caltrop, I BOLDly rephrased the paragraph for the following reasons: 1) in this paragraph we are (i) summarizing the article below, and (ii) explicitly referring to the source: Orwell's appendix. In the appendix, Orwell doesn't say what the contractions refer to, but outlines a theory of why the *structure* of these contractions is important, indeed caries ideological weight. compare: (Orwell 1984, p. 317-8) 2) simply listing the different meanings of the contractions is not a benefit to the reader and also misrepresents the source (see below for quotes)

I have added "Linguistically, the political contractions of Newspeak (...) are described as similar to real examples of German and Russian contractions in the 20th century (...) in that they receive idelogical content in virtue of their abbreviated structure itself. " This is in line with what Orwell expresses in the appendix to 1984 (which is the source of the paragraph in question). Compare in addition to the quote above:

But in addition there were great numbers of words which at first sight appeared to be mere abbreviations and which derived their ideological colour not from their meaning, but from their structure. (...) In the beginning the practice had been adopted as it were instinctively, but in Newspeak it was used with a conscious purpose. (...) It was perceived that in thus abbreviating a name one narrowed and subtly altered its meaning, by cutting out most of the associations that would otherwise cling to it. (...) The word Comintern, on the other hand, suggests merely a tightly-knit organization and a well-defined body of doctrine. (...) Comintern is a word that can be uttered almost without taking thought, whereas Communist International is a phrase over which one is obliged to linger at least momentarily. In the same way, the associations called up by a word like Minitrue are fewer and more controllable than those called up by Ministry of Truth.

(Orwell 1984, p. 317-9)

Please discuss here before reverting. --Mvbaron (talk) 19:26, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

Your Edit war with Chas. Caltrop at Newspeak.

Bickering about user behavior, and unsupported accusations not related to improving this article

inserted content copied from User_talk:Mvbaron by User:Chas. Caltrop Thanks, for the edit-war set up with yourself as fake vivtim, acting in behalf of Robert J. Jensen, Owner of Wikipedia. You need a copy of his chicanery, for your A.N.I. lawsuit Hello Chas. Caltrop, I invite you to discuss your reverts at the talk page of Newspeak. I have twice given reasons for my additions at the talk page, you keep reverting with blanket edit summaries. Please also do not mark reverts/substantial contributions as minor edits as you did at Newspeak. --Mvbaron (talk) 07:04, 5 August 2020 (UTC) Reply Later, I shall find time to fight Jensen's edit-war with you. Meantime . . . you dumb-down the article to your heart's contempt. I've concluded an eight-month hiatus, and the first thing is Jensen's troll dogging my steps. Do you think you'll be a credible victim at the A.N.I.? I ... have not the slightest idea what you are talking about. I have no intention to fight any edit-war, but would please invite you to discuss changes to the article Newspeak at the talk page. Best --Mvbaron (talk) 11:23, 5 August 2020 (UTC) -- Preceding unsigned comment added by Chas. Caltrop (talk o contribs) I hatted this very confusing addition that was copied from my talk page here... --Mvbaron (talk) 11:39, 5 August 2020 (UTC) Why pretend that you are not here to start an edit war in behalf of Jensen? Until yesterday, you, Mvbaron, never edited the Newspeak article, yet, in keeping with the gaming-the-system style of The Puppetmaster Jensen, you now are an authority on the subject of Newspeak and the Rules of Wikipedia. Don't forget to pretend innocence. I shall await boredom to overtake you, and restore the objective text. Chas. Caltrop (talk) 11:51, 5 August 2020 (UTC) ??? I have seriously no idea what you are talking about. If you want, please discuss the many reasons I gave for my additions and do not threaten to edit war in the future. I would like to collaborate editing this article. Best Mvbaron (talk) 12:02, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

Chas. Caltrop (talk · contribs) I see you are reverting again. Can you please answer why you are 1) reinstating an incorrect source (Orwell 1980 is not a valid citation) and 2) not discussing my reasons above for the lede sentence (a. not representing the source the appendix, grammatically incorrect, no benefit to the reader)? Mvbaron (talk) 17:54, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

• Note: Collapsed irrelevant behavioral commentary per WP:NOTFORUM and WP:TALK.
  User:Chas. Caltrop, if you have comments about how to improve this article, please make them here. If you suspect violations of User editing guidelines, please make them at the User's talk page, and do not copy such discussions here. Any further comments here that are not specifically about improving this article will be collapsed or removed. Thank you. Mathglot (talk) 01:33, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

Primary sources

Currently, the majority of the too-few references in the article cite Orwell; this is way too much. Two of the remaining three are dictionaries; the article currently has only one, fully WP:INDEPENDENT, WP:SECONDARY source. This is an unquestionably notable topic, and there is material out there on it.

Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL

Please help to improve the referencing in this article, by adding more, non-primary sources. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 02:00, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

Mathglot, thank you! I added two more sources, but maybe you can help me here: is it permitted to use a German-language source in en.wikipedia? I found one which I found really good, but it is in German. Happy to re-write the paragraph if it is not permitted. --Mvbaron (talk) 09:09, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

@Mvbaron:, German, or any language, is permitted for establishing WP:Verifiability, per WP:NONENG. If an "equivalent" (i.e, "just as good", not "same-thing-translated") source is available in English, then prefer the latter; but if not, the foreign source is just fine. You can always start with that one, and if someone finds a better one in English later, so much the better. I'm decent in German, if you need help with it. P.S., if you have a source, but don't know what to do with it, just stick it in the "Further reading" section (create one, if needed) and then pick it up as a reference later, when you figure out what to do with it. Mathglot (talk) 09:30, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

Future Dialect

Hi Error, I saw you reverted your Category:Future Dialect back in, and removed Category:Fictional languages again. That directly contradicts this article ("Newspeak is the fictional language of Oceania"). At the very least, please Category:Fictional languages back in. --Mvbaron (talk) 18:53, 22 February 2021 (UTC)

Done. I am not sure if Newspeak qualifies as a language or a dialect of English. Are controlled languages "languages" or "varieties of languages"? --Error (talk) 19:02, 22 February 2021 (UTC)

Modern use

This article needs mentioning of modern use of the term newspeak for talk that is deliberately confusing or deceiving about issues unrelated to Orwell [1] . Agnerf (talk) 10:33, 10 March 2021 (UTC)

Why is there a "reliant on primary sources" tag on this page?

Orwell created newspeak for his novel, the only dead set things about newspeak are from 1984 - being the primary source. Examples of modern usage don't use the primary source, and that's not a problem. They aren't related to what newspeak actually is though.

Clamless, There is secondary scholarship *on* Orwell's newspeak though - and it is missing from this article. The tag states that the article relies too much on 1984, which is correct imo. Mvbaron (talk) 19:49, 15 March 2021 (UTC)

Mvbaron, where might this secondary scholarship be? I'd love to cite it in the page so I can get that awful tag removed. There might be a poor high schooler who can't cite this page because of that tag, I won't stand for it. Clamless (talk)

here for example: [2] :) --Mvbaron (talk) 20:26, 15 March 2021 (UTC)