Language as the ‘Ultimate Weapon’ in Nineteen Eighty-Four

 This essay analyze the George Orwell’s novel, nineteen eighty-four. Specially, Jem Berkes emphasizes the importance and the influence of the language.  The language is used very often by the politicians in order to mask the truth and mislead the population. That’s what we see in Orwell’s novel, how the government and media abuse of the repeated language and how it is used to manipulate people. Also, he criticizes that the people in the society unquestioningly obey the government without being capable to think and analyze the situations. Moreover, Jem said that the goal of the government, in Orwell’s novel, is to facilitate deception and manipulation that causes that people restrict their vision of the real world. Also, when people try to amplify their lexicon, the government prohibits and tries to turn back to the lexicon that government wants.

As we see, the language has an important influence even in the way of thinking of the people. There is no something new here in Mexico, where every 6 years on the presidential election the media and the politic parties use the power of the language to deceive to people in order to get a vote. Regarding programming languages, I will highlight what I said before “people try to amplify their lexicon and the government don’t want to”. Therefore, I compare this situation with traditional programming languages, in which the lexicon is restricted and you are limited to use what is already written. In the other hand, clojure gives you the tools to use what is already written or to extend the language using macros. So, you can customize and create your own version of the language. Moreover, it allows you to be creative and to improve your analytic skills. I think that is a reading that complements the main goal of the course that is to understand the power of the languages.