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Doublethink

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This article is about the concept in Nineteen Eighty-Four. For the distortion of language inspired by this concept, see Doublespeak. For the Akala album, see DoubleThink. For the London production company, see Doublethink Theatre.

Doublethink is a process of indoctrination in which subjects are expected to simultaneously accept two conflicting beliefs as truth, often at odds with their own memory or sense of reality.[1] Doublethink is related to, but differs from, hypocrisy.

George Orwell coined the term doublethink as part of the fictional language of Newspeak in his 1949 dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four.[2] In the novel, its origins within the citizenry is unclear; while it could be partly a product of Big Brother's formal brainwashing programmes,[i] the novel explicitly shows people learning doublethink and Newspeak due to peer pressure and a desire to "fit in", or gain status within the Party—to be seen as a loyal Party Member. In the novel, for someone to even recognize—let alone mention—any contradiction within the context of the Party line is akin to blasphemy, and could subject that person to disciplinary action and the instant social disapproval of fellow Party Members.[2]

In Nineteen Eighty-Four

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According to Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell, doublethink is:

To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again, and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself—that was the ultimate subtlety: consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the word—doublethink—involved the use of doublethink.[2][3]: 32, 220 

Usage after Nineteen Eighty-Four

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Orwell's doublethink is also credited with having inspired the commonly used term doublespeak, which itself does not appear in the book. Comparisons have been made between doublespeak and Orwell's descriptions on political speech from his essay "Politics and the English Language", in which "unscrupulous politicians, advertisers, religionists, and other 'doublespeakers' of whatever stripe, continue to abuse language for manipulative purposes."[4]

See also

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Other concepts derived from Nineteen Eighty Four:

Complementary pages

Notes

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  1. ^ Such as, for example, the seemingly formal brainwashing programme that broke Winston Smith.

References

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  1. ^ McArthur, Tom, ed. (1992). The Oxford Companion to the English Language. Oxford University Press. p. 321. ISBN 0-19-214183-X. The paradox is expressed most succinctly in the novel in the three Party slogans: War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, and Ignorance is Strength. The term is widely used to describe a capacity to engage in one line of thought in one situation (at work, in a certain group, in business, etc.) and another line in another situation (at home, in another group, in private life), without necessarily sensing any conflict between the two.
  2. ^ a b c Orwell, George. 1949. Nineteen Eighty-Four. London: Martin Secker & Warburg Ltd.
  3. ^ Orwell, George (1949). Nineteen Eighty-Four. Martin Secker & Warburg Ltd, London, part 1, chapter 3, pp 32
  4. ^ Kehl, D. G.; Livingston (July 1999). "Doublespeak Detection for the English Classroom". English Journal. 88 (6): 78. doi:10.2307/822191. JSTOR 822191.
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