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Jordan Ryan
Rhetorical Analysis
I am sharing my own rhetorical analysis with you all to help you all do well on Draft 1.1. If
any of you use my ideas or arguments from this rhetorical analysis, you will receive a 0 on
this assignment and I will report you to the Director of First-Year Composition. The other
graders have a copy of this essay and will be looking out for plagiarism. If you have any
questions, please let me know!
George Orwell’s seminal essay “Politics and the English Language” criticizes and
satirizes ugly and inaccurate English. According to Orwell, most of these inaccuracies in English
stem from vagueness and incoherencies; and, throughout his satirical essay, Orwell provides his
audience, who is anyone that uses English on a daily basis, with numerous examples of bad
writing, imploring his readers to join “the fight against bad English” (205). In his essay, Orwell
establishes his credibility as an expert on effective writing, appeals to his audiences’ fear, and
parodies and satirizes bad writing in order to expose his definition of bad English. By using these
rhetorical choices, Orwell effectively argues that when we join fight against bad English, we can
purge our own writing of vagueness and incoherencies, which, in turn, will help our Englishspeaking society become more sophisticated.
Rhetorically, it is important for Orwell to establish his credibility early and throughout
the rest of essay because, if he is going to criticize bad English, he needs to prove to his reader
that he is an authority on how to write effectively or else the reader will be able to dismiss easily
Orwell’s argument altogether. Writers usually might state their own credentials to establish their
credibility to the reader. Orwell, however, does not state his credentials anywhere in the essay.
Instead, Orwell maintains his credibility throughout the entire essay by writing in a clear,
coherent style, which works against the vague, incoherent writing that he wishes to purge from
English writing altogether. One example of Orwell’s clear writing is this opening sentence from
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his section on meaningless words: “In certain kinds of writing, particularly in art criticism and
literary criticism, it is normal to come across long passages which are almost completely lacking
in meaning” (208). Here, Orwell frankly informs the reader that he will talk about meaningless
words. Additionally, he uses no unnecessary words, phrases, or out-of-date metaphors, which are
grave errors in bad writing that Orwell discusses throughout the entire essay. The result of
Orwell’s clear diction and style is an even clearer message that tells the reader what he plans to
discuss in this section. Again, the important idea here is that by writing in this clear style, Orwell
is proving to the reader that he is an expert on effective communication. After all, few people
will take Orwell’s essay seriously if he does not write his essay in such a way that it is cogent
and easily readable.
Perhaps the best example of Orwell’s clear, effective prose is the list of his constituents
of good writing, which serve as an antithesis for the bad writing that he attacks throughout his
entire essay:
(i) Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in
print. (ii) Never use a long word where a short one will do. (iii) If it is possible to cut a
word out, always cut it out. (iv) Never use the passive where you can use the active. (v)
Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an
everyday English equivalent. (vi) Break any of these rules sooner than say anything
outright barbarous (213).
This list allows Orwell to establish his credibility further because listing is a good way to
summarize one’s main points and to make it easier for the reader to identify those points.
Orwell’s ostensible message throughout this whole essay is that we writers should focus on clear,
effective communication. This organized list of ways to achieve effective communication is the
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embodiment of this message; and, by practicing what he is arguing against, Orwell proves that he
is not a hypocrite, which further proves his credibility as a cogent writer to his audience.
In addition to establishing his credibility, Orwell makes several appeals to his audience’s
fears in order to scare them into purging bad English from their own writing. Early in his essay,
Orwell appeals to the fear of his audience by comparing bad writing to drunken behavior: “A
man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more
completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English
language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness
of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts” (205). The implication of
Orwell’s analogy is that when we write poorly, we are setting ourselves up for failure, much like
a drunkard who drinks because he believes that he is a failure. The reason why we set ourselves
up for failure, according to Orwell, is because if our thoughts are foolish, then our writing will be
too. After all, writing is essentially the expression of one’s thoughts on paper. Orwell uses this
analogy between drunkenness and bad writing here to appeal to the audience’s fear: hardly any
sensible, sophisticated person wants to appear like a foolish drunkard to other people. Thus, if we
can change our writing for the better, then we can change the way perceive our intelligence and
sophistication for the better, too.
The final rhetorical choices that I will examine in the rest this essay are parody and satire,
which often accompany each other. First, I will discuss parody. A few times throughout his
essay, Orwell parodies what he considers to be bad modern English to provide the reader with an
absurd yet humorous imitation of bad writing. For instance, Orwell translates “a passage of good
English into modern English of the worst sort” using a verse from the book of Ecclesiastes:
“‘Objective consideration of contemporary phenomena completes the conclusion that success or
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failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity,
but that a considerable element of the unpredictable must invariably be taken into account”
(209). In order to be a successful parodist, one must completely understand the style and form of
whatever he or she is parodying. In Orwell’s case, this understanding allows him to establish his
credibility because he shows the reader that he is so familiar with the style of writing in bad
English that he can create a convincing imitation of it that might actually fool some people into
thinking that it is real. The parody also allows Orwell to further expose the absurdity of bad
English. This pardoic imitation of bad writing is verbose, vague, and convoluted, all of which are
negative qualities about modern English that Orwell wishes to purge from writing and,
ultimately, English-speaking society altogether.
Orwell also uses satire in the form of caustic attacks on bad writers to inspire reform in
our English-speaking society. Early in his essay, Orwell frankly argues that “this mixture of
vagueness and sheer incompetence is the most marked characteristic of modern English prose,
and especially of any kind of political writing.” Orwell’s quote here is an example of the author’s
caustic attacks towards bad writers. This quote comes after he lists several examples of what he
considers to be bad writing. It is important rhetorically for Orwell to give examples of this bad
prose early in his essay because it gives the reader a clear and real indication of what precisely
Orwell’s definition of bad writing is. After these examples, Orwell attacks the writing and
explains to the reader why the writing is bad, which in this specific example is bad because it is
vague. Another example of satire comes from the brief yet poignant remark about the lack of
concreteness in English prose: “The whole tendency of modern prose is away from
concreteness.” This sentence summarizes best what Orwell wishes to remove from the English
language: imprecise words and phrases. It is important to note that, in line with normal satirical
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conventions, Orwell does not just attack bad writing; rather, he provides the reader with a clear
understanding of how English can be changed for the better. For instance, Orwell argues that the
improvement of our language “is especially concerned with the scrapping of every word or idiom
which has outworn its usefulness” (207). He urges reader to invent new ways of expressing ideas
clearly instead of relying on old means of ineffective communication. Effective communication,
according to Orwell, contains proper and precise words in proper and precise places.
In “Politics and the English Language,” Orwell establishes his credibility as an expert on
effective writing, appeals to his audiences’ fear, and parodies and satirizes bad writing in order to
expose his definition of bad English. Orwell maintains that by joining this fight against bad
English, readers can purge their own writing of vagueness and incoherencies, which, in turn, will
help our English-speaking society become more sophisticated. Orwell establishes credibility
primarily by practicing all of the rules about effective writing that he puts forth in his essay. By
establishing his credibility, Orwell proves to the reader why he is an expert on effective writing
and why his audience should listen to him. Orwell also uses appeals to fear to scare his audience
into believing his argument. More specifically, Orwell compares bad writers to drunkards who
set themselves up for failure, the implication being that no sensible, sophisticated person would
want to fail or to look like a drunkard. Finally, Orwell also uses parody and satire, which often
accompany each other, to poke fun at bad writing and show people how absurd it really is.
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Work Cited
Orwell, George. "Politics and the English Language." First-Year Writing: Writing in the
Disciplines. 6th ed. Boston: Pearson, 2012. 204-14. Print.