"The poster with the enormous face gazed from the wall. It was
one of those pictures which are so contrived, that the eyes
follow you about when you move. 'Big Brother is watching you.'
the caption beneath it ran."
It's so good. Love this book. You know, if you were to ask me:
"Alex, what are your top five books of all time?" this would
be on the list every time you ask me, regardless of the decade
that we're in. So, it's an excellent one. And what is it?
Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell. And that's exactly what
we're going to talk about today. So, let me put this down.
Hey, everyone. I'm Alex. Thanks for clicking, and welcome to
this lesson on: Learning English with Nineteen Eighty-Four by
George Orwell. Now, as I said, this is one of my personal
favorite books of all time. I read it in my early twenties. It
had a large impact on my political consciousness, my
political awareness, as it explores issues of authoritarian
governments, surveillance states, the control of thought,
and a lot of very different aspects that were really
appealing to me. And which opened my eyes, or like, Neo in
the Matrix, just made me say: "Whoa." Okay? So, maybe it can
do the same for you, if you have never read it.
If you do want to read the book, there is an audiobook that you
can pick up. And if you want: Right now, you can get it for
free from www.audible.com by clicking the link which is
attached to this video. So, the beautiful thing about
audiobooks, especially for English learners, is that you
can control the speed of speech. So, if it's too fast for you,
you can slow it down and listen a little bit better. It's an
excellent book; highly recommend it. Also, probably only get it
if you are an upper-intermediate student. If you are not, browse
the library in Audible. They have a massive catalogue, a
massive collection. And I'm sure you'll find something that you
like.
So, once again: Click the link that is attached to this video
and get your free audiobook today. It is a 30-day trial. If
you don't want to continue after 30 days, you can cancel it and
you get to keep your free audiobook. You can't lose; it's
a great deal.
All right. So, Nineteen Eighty-Four. Today, what I'm
going to do is look at some of the most popular concepts from
the book, which have bled into our society. Now, what I say,
you know... When I say: "Things have bled into our society", it
means: Some of this language is used within society, within our
culture today.
So, you might or probably are already familiar with the term:
"Big Brother". So, in the book, "Big Brother" is an
authoritarian dictator, an authoritarian figure, and an
authoritarian leader of a single-minded surveillance
state. So, a "surveillance state" is a state that is always
watching you, judging you, making sure that you are not
doing anything that is improper or against the state, or saying
or even thinking something that is opposite to the party's
ideals. So, Big Brother is the face of the party.
When George Orwell wrote the book in 1948, he had the idea of
a mix of, like, Stalin and Hitler in his mind as, like,
this authoritarian figure in his head. So, it's a... It's a
wonderful book.
And the common... Not the common. The most popular line
from the book, which you will see, you know, online, in memes
many places is: "Big Brother is watching you." Now, today, as
I'm making this video, it can be argued that Big Brother is
watching us; and that Big Brother, depending who you ask,
it could be Facebook, it could be Google. I mean, this GPS on
my phone -- somebody knows where I am right now. If they wanted
to find me, they could find me. All right? If they know my IP
address, and all that stuff. So, we kind of live in a Big Brother
society in some ways already. All right? I'm not a conspiracy
theorist in any way, shape, or form, but it's interesting to
think about.
Next, the thought police. So, in Nineteen Eighty-Four, the
"thought police" are a government taskforce or a
government agency, which monitors the public to ensure
ideological purity. Now, "ideological purity" means,
like, pure thoughts or 100% thinking like the party or
thinking how the political party, how Big Brother's party
wants you to think. Okay? So, to ensure ideological purity and
loyalty to the party. The party is Big Brother, it's the thought
police, it's everyone who is in power.
Now, today, you could use thought police, you might see
thought police in a lot of blogs. You might hear someone
say, like: "Hey. You can't tell me what to say. Are you the
thought police?" So, there are, you know... You can talk about
issues of political correctness, whether we should be allowed to
say certain things, whether we shouldn't be allowed to say
certain things. How much freedom of speech is too much? Is there
such a thing as too much freedom of speech? Should some speech be
restricted? This book kind of opens the door to that
discussion, and the thought police are a big part of that.
Next. So, one of the concepts that George Orwell invented in
the book -- this is a word he created -- is "doublethink".
Now, "doublethink" means that you can "simultaneously" --
which means at the same time -- you can hold two contradictory
beliefs, and you can accept both as correct. Okay?
So: "War is peace.", "Freedom is slavery.", "Ignorance is
strength." This is the motto of the party in Nineteen
Eighty-Four. All right? So, the party, Oceania, is always at war
with one nation or another. Either Eurasia or East Asia in
the book. And, like, war is peace, Right? They're constantly
in a state of war, and they think that: "Yeah. We need war
for peace. We need to be in war to have peace."
Freedom is slavery. Don't have too much freedom. Freedom is
bad. Freedom makes you a slave. Slavery and freedom are
opposites. You cannot say: "Freedom is slavery." That's
"doublethink" in Orwell's world. Okay? Ignorance is strength.
"Ignorance" is not knowing something. How can you have more
power when, you know, if you're ignorant of something? Really,
the correct thing to say here is: "Knowledge is power." Right?
That's not doublethink; that's a... That's a truth.
Finally, we have "newspeak". So, "newspeak" in Nineteen
Eighty-Four is a type of language that is used in the
newspapers, but also is supposed to be used by the citizens of
Oceania. So, it is using ambiguous and confusing language
with restricted grammar and vocabulary -- "vocab" is short f
r "vocabulary" -- to diminish the range of thought. "To dimin
sh" means to make smaller the r nge of thought. So, you ca
no longer say words, like: "Gre t", or "beautiful", or "wonderf
l". Things are really restricted so that your range of thou
ht, instead of being like this is only like t
Language is very important in Nineteen Eighty-Four. In the
world, language helps us shape our reality. So, if you can no
longer use a word like, "wonderful", and everything is a
variation of "good" or "plus good", or "double-plus good",
which are words that are used in Nineteen Eighty-Four, and which
are written in the newspapers. Like: "It was a double-plus good
day", or whatever it was that they said in the newspaper.
So, imagine that you lose words that have texture, that have an
extra spice to them, like "beauty", like "sensational".
Okay? So, there are words that, you know... Language is
wonderful; it helps shape everything. And if you use
newspeak, you are restricting the amount of language you can
use, which in turn restricts your thought.
This stuff is all cool. This... Like, doing this lesson has
really brought me back to what a wonderful, amazing book Nineteen
Eighty-Four was, and still is. So, once again, I'm going to
highly recommend that you click on that Audible link right now.
Get your free audiobook from them, whether it's Nineteen
Eighty-Four or another book that you're interested in. And let me
know what you pick up, or if you pick up anything.
As always, if you want to test your understanding of Big
Brother, the thought police, newspeak, doublethink, etcetera,
you can check out the quiz on www.engvid.com. And if you're on
YouTube and this is your first video that you've ever seen from
me -- or maybe it's not your first but you have haven't
subscribed yet -- do that now. Click that "Subscribe" button,
turn on notifications, like the video, share the video, comment
on the video. And I usually respond. So, if you comment,
I'll probably give you a heart to let you know: "Thank you. I
saw your comment", or I might even respond. And, you know,
you'll see lots of comments from me in most of my videos anyway.
So, till next time, thanks for clicking. Big Brother is
watching you.