Devin Kelley

George Orwell’s ‘Politics and the English Language” is centered on the argument that politicians have twisted modern English to manipulate public feeling. Politicians are using ‘dead metaphors’ (Orwell, 159) that have no real value to them anymore. The use of 'dead metaphors' and typical words does not create a vivid image for the reader; this creates a very vague and very meaningless sentence that does not afford the listener or reader a fair chance to understand. These vague statements bring entire paragraphs to meaningless because of our inability to actually make anything of them; so then people just take it for what the speaker wants them to. Orwell argues that this improper use of language in politics, the dishonest use of language, is leading to our public's’ ‘foolish thoughts’ (Orwell, 157)

This opening paragraph seems to be pretty straightforward. It seems like it is sort vindictive and assumptive; however that is part of the argument strategy Orwell uses. The orignal had a sentence or two that seemed redundant. Another sentence really had no place in the paper. So without those, this seems to be a little better.