Amit Hanadari-Levy
Period 2
2/27/18
Political Language Synthesis Essay
Turn in hard copy and submit on turnitin.com Language is found everywhere, with the aim of communicating and expressing ideas. It can both unite and divide society, depending on how it is used. And with the current movement towards more politically correct speech, there is great discussion over its purpose and how it should be regulated. While most language is meant to facilitate communication, some language is meant to deceive or harm and should be regulated to a certain extent in order to protect those affected by this overly confusing or offensive speech. In his essay “Politics and the English Language”, Orwell focuses on corruption in language, specifically in the realm of political language. Orwell claims that “political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible”. Rather than clearly expressing their ideas, politicians use
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However, the power of language can be corrupted and used for harm through misleading and offensive speech. It is important that harmful language be regulated, at least to a certain extent, because while speech regulation will not make problems disappear, it will facilitate the communication necessary to work on fixing those problems. Fully regulating speech will impede on the freedoms of members of society, but some regulation is necessary to ensure that people are aware of what is going on and to increase respect for others. Completely banning certain speech is an unnecessary assault on free speech, but some requirement for political speeches to pass some sort of clarity test or outlawing offensive speech within official documents in order to discourage their use might be applicable. However it is done, limited speech regulation will reduce harmful speech while still preserving the freedoms of