Newspeak as a medium

How do Orwell's and McLuhan's essays relate to or describe the society presented in the novel 1984? 

     In all three texts studied, there are several common aspects the biggest relation being the use of media and language as a means of changing the means of human expression and communication.

     George Orwell, in his essay Politics and the English Language, talks about how the overuse of words or expressions causes them to lose their meaning. They become irrelevant or tired.  He specifically attacks communist propaganda as guilty of this; using the same language in the 1940's as was used in the original communist manifesto, published in 1848. 

     The reader notices in 1984 a lot of similar ideas being parroted about. The Party’s messages all consist of lauding Big Brother and attacking whatever current enemy Oceania is fighting. Several times, Winston remarks just how similar are all the Party newsflashes.

Winston’s wife, briefly discussed, is perceived by Winston to be vapid, thoughtless, accepting all of the Party’s sayings as truth. She is seen as a victim of Party belief, the perfect member. She has no original thought; all in the same overused Party terminology.

     McLuhan specifically says that media affects how one thinks, that it is impossible to be unaffected by the environment and the messages one is bombarded with every day. The primary media is the language of Newspeak, its message being one of limiting creative thought. The purpose of Newspeak, one could say, in inherently bad, as it has been created to destroy individuality and free thought, the medium is the language and its forced use in society. No one is immune to it: as McLuhan says, the things in which you are immersed become part of your society, culture, and way of thinking.

In 1984's society, one can see the effects of Orwell's nightmare come to pass: beauty and expression in language has been all but eradicated, the "Newspeak" has destroyed poetic creativity. The medium of language as a tool for thought has been eradicated and replaced by language as a tool for limiting any free and original thought.