The above examples show that the significance of Orwell reaches well beyond the confines of literature or literary studies. A number of his expressions have become part of standard vocabulary, and the framework they provide is so important that political scientists and historians recognize the existence of an “Orwellian narrative” that shapes our understanding of political events. As Daryna Koryagina argues, “Orwellian narra-tive can be studied as a framing device.”13 In communication studies the examination of framing means the scrutiny of how the ways and manners information is presented
11. Dávidházi, pp. – .
12. Margaret Thatcher, “New Year Message,” Dec. . http://www.margaretthatcher .org/document/ (accessed June , ).
13. Daryna Koryagina, Orwellian Narrative in American Media in the Aftermath of / . MA Thesis (Budapest: Central European University, ), p. . The following analysis was inspired by my former MA student Daryna Koryagina at Central European University Department of Political Science when I supervised her thesis in .
affects the way it will be understood. The study of figurative framing—the way meta-phors or narratives shape the way information is presented—is relatively new in political science. These devices are traditionally analysed in literary studies, but they are relevant to political discourse as well, as political ideology and the understanding of political phenomena is often shaped by concepts, symbols and metaphors that appear first in fictional literature. As Christian Burgers et al. argue in a paper on how metaphors and hyperboles shape public discourse, “figurative language contains both important linguis-tic and conceptual context” for the information presented in polilinguis-tical communication.14 Orwell’s name and some of the concepts or characters he created have become meta-phors used for framing political phenomena, which means that his oeuvre has been shaping political discourse in significant ways. In the case of Shakespeare, a similar framing pattern may be observed, for instance, when the phenomenon of love is pre-sented in terms of the romantic relationship between Romeo and Juliet in instances where no resemblance is observable in the situation of the families, the couples, or any other feature of Shakespeare’s play. Just as Nineteen Eighty-Four has become the stand-ard framing device for talking about political authoritarianism irrespective of the fact whether the political phenomena in question resemble the fictional situation in the novel or not, Romeo and Juliet is widely used for similar purposes whenever a romantic relationship is referred to.
Orwell achieved perhaps the greatest success of a writer: his pen-name has become a commonly used adjective in everyday language. The term “Orwellian,” besides the di-rect literary reference, has come to signify what we may call the “Orwellian narrative,” a narrative of authoritarian political practices that suppress the freedom of the individual.
Gregory Claeys summarises the components of the Orwellian narrative as follows:
The first is the totalitarian demand for complete loyalty, which requires slav-ish submission by the intellectuals, the debasement of logic and language (‘doublethink’ and ‘newspeak’), the evocation of the worst popular passion (‘Hate Week’), and hostility to individualism […] Secondly, there is the om-nipresence of state power: the telescreen, the posters of Big Brother […] the continuous rewriting of the past.15
Most of these aspects are present when the so-called Orwellian narrative is evoked, but not in equal measure: the surveillance (“Big Brother”) and linguistic manipulation (“newspeak” or “doublespeak”) aspects of the narrative are the most relevant in
con-14. Christian Burgers, Elly A. Konijn, and Gerard J. Steen, “Figurative Framing: Shaping Public Discourse through Metaphor, Hyperbole, and Irony,” Communication Theory / ,
– , p. .
15. Gregory Claeys, “The Origins of Dystopia: Wells, Huxley and Orwell,” in The Cambridge Companion to Utopian Literature, ed. Gregory Claeys (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
), – ; – .
temporary political discourse. With the help of Google Search, one may chart the im-portance (at least online) of various terms related to the Orwellian narrative. My search in June gave the results shown in the graph below (hits in millions):
Figure . Number of hits on www.google.com, June (hits in millions) By far the most prevalent term is “Big Brother”; in fact, the full search showed more than million hits, yet most of these refer to the reality TV show which has the ex-pression in its title. The existence of the TV show serves as evidence of Orwell’s influence on popular culture, but even if one eliminates the TV-related hits, fifteen million websites remain. The term “Orwellian,” meanwhile, is second with two million hits, whereas “newspeak” and “telescreen” produce one million hits apiece. The term
“doublespeak” ( . hits) deserves separate treatment. It is not Orwell’s term, but was coined later, probably in during the Watergate scandal, combining the terms
“doublethink” and “newspeak.” Regardless of its origins, the term has entered the Or-wellian narrative. In the National Council of Teachers in English (NCTE) in the United States established the Doublespeak Award, which is given every year to a public spokesperson for the use of deceptive language.16
In th-century Western discourse the Orwellian narrative appeared most frequently in relation to the Soviet Union; after often with triumphant references to the collapse of a
16. The list of the award winners in the past forty years is prestigious; it includes several US presidents from Ronald Reagan to Donald Trump, but also institutions such as the Pentagon, the CIA or the Exxon Corporation. For more details see http://www.ncte.org/volunteer/groups/
publiclangcom/doublespeakaward.
totalitarian system. American or Western European matters appeared in the Orwellian con-text less frequently: besides the Doublespeak Award for political demagoguery, Big Brother was often mentioned in debates about the possible introduction of the national identity card in the US in the s. In the st century, however, there have been significant changes in how the Orwellian narrative is used, the result primarily of three important events:17
( ) The terrorist attacks on / in and the US government responses, particularly the War on Terror and Patriot Act (in the same year).
( ) Edward Snowden leaking important documents of the National Securi-ty Agency (NSA) in , which revealed how far the US government has gone in data collection and analysis.
( ) The election and particularly the inauguration of Donald Trump, with the appearance of the term “alternative facts” in January , first used by a senior counsellor to the president.
An analysis of US media has shown that after the application of the Orwellian narrative has shifted away from non-Western authoritarian states and societies to criticism of the growth of political influence within essentially democratic societies. With the devel-opment of technology, the structures of multinational companies—especially those related to IT—have become more and more important as they now have the potential to threaten individual liberty. Between and ( / and the Snowden affair) criticism within the US was generally mild, as popular opinion tended to accept the need for greater secu-rity. This attitude changed significantly when Edward Snowden revealed the real scope of government intrusion into the public sphere. Before , the issue of surveillance domi-nated the Orwellian narrative, together with notable mentions of “doublespeak.” Since the appearance of Donald Trump in the political sphere, there has been a sharp shift to a focus on linguistic manipulation (“alternative facts”). This is demonstrated in the follow-ing charts generated by Google Trends that offers data on the number of Google searches on a given day (this service shows information collected since ).18
Figure . Google Trends results for the categories “Orwell” (light) and “Surveillance” (dark)19
17. Here I mostly follow Koryagina’s argument (Koryagina, pp. – ).
18. Cf. Koryagina, p. .
19. Data source: Google Trends, available at: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=
all_ &gprop=news&q=% Fm% F bs,% Fm% F lzdp (accessed June , ).
We can observe three spikes; the first in , at the th anniversary of the publica-tion of Nineteen Eighty-Four. Markedly, this spike does not correlate with the searches for
“surveillance.” In June , at the height of the Snowden affair, searches for “Orwell”
and “surveillance” correlated, showing that Google users linked the two terms. Finally, in January , following the inauguration of President Donald Trump, there is also a smaller spike for “Orwell” correlating with a large spike for “surveillance.” Besides Google searches, book sales (observable through information provided by Amazon.com) also show how people seek explanations to real-life political events in literary fiction. In , after the Snowden scandal, sales of Nineteen Eighty-Four were “reported to have skyrocketed (according to the different sources either by % or %).”20 On January , (five days after Donald Trump’s inauguration) CNN reported that “ was # on Ama-zon’s computer-generated list of best-selling books.”21 The report continues in a careful manner claiming that “it is hard to say for sure how much of the interest is related to Donald Trump’s inauguration and the rise of ‘alternative facts’, a term coined by Trump senior advisor Kellyanne Conway.”22 A number of commentators called Conway’s com-ment “Orwellian,” drawing comparisons with Nineteen Eighty-Four, claiming that the term
“alternative facts” reminded them of the information provided by the “Ministry of Truth.”
Orwell’s oeuvre is crucial in discourses about political events, and the metaphor of Big Brother is a central framing device of the Orwellian narrative. On the one hand, the term “Big Brother” manifests the surveillance aspect of the narrative, but also simplifies complex political issues by often placing one individual or institution in the centre of criticism, rather than reflecting on systemic tensions. As Daryna Koryagina argues, the term “Big Brother” refers to “any authority figure or organization that attempts to ex-ceed the accepted levels of intrusion into privacy in the name of higher effectiveness in preventing wrongdoers from causing harm to society.”23 Unlike in Orwell’s book, in our everyday experiences such methods are not only applied by the central government, but also individual institutions, such as schools, or even private companies. In , for instance, The New York Times called the extended use of videocameras during demon-strations by the City of New York “Orwellian.”24
20. Dominique Mosbergen, “Sales of Skyrocket in Wake of NSA Scandal,” Huffington Post (June , ), http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ / / /orwell- -sales_n_
.html (accessed April ). Quoted in Koryagina, p. .
21. Brian Stelter and Frank Pallotta, “Publisher printing more copies of George Orwell’s
‘ ’ after spike in demand,” CNN Money ( Jan ), http://money.cnn.com/ / / / media/george-orwell- -best-seller/index.html (accessed June ).
22. The source of the scandal was a debate on the number of people attending Trump’s inau-guration; the presidential administration argued that Trump’s swearing-in drew the largest-ever audience for an inauguration, despite obvious photo and statistical evidence to the contrary.
23. Koryagina, p. .
24. Julia Preston, “City Defends Surveillance of Protesters,” The New York Times ( March ).
Quoted in Koryagina, p. .
Similarly, advances in technology keep raising the question whether such innovations are applied adequately or not. In a number of articles appeared about the tracking of criminals using GPS devices, framing the policy within the Orwellian narrative.25 One Federal judge referred to this method as one that would “make the system that George Orwell depicted in his famous novel, , seem clumsy,” while another ob-server declared that “ may have come a bit later than predicted, but it’s here at last.”26 At the same time, while the rapid development of technologies that can be used for surveillance purposes has led to a spike in the use of the Orwellian narrative by so-cial and political commentators, such practice has had at times the side effect of obscur-ing the focus of a political issue. In the above example, the actions of the government become the issue, with the government presented in a purely negative light, while the purpose of the measure, for instance the attempt to prevent criminals from committing further crimes, becomes marginal.27
Similar framing had been applied in the case of the Patriot Act, which came into effect in , a little more than a month after the / terrorist attacks. It was only after Edward Snowden revealed the magnitude and scope of governmental data collec-tion in that such metaphors as “Big Brother” became prominent. The metaphor was ready and widely used, predominantly in the media but also elsewhere, including by the American president Barack Obama who referenced directly as he comment-ed on the actions of the NSA. As he statcomment-ed: “In the abstract, you can complain about Big Brother […] but when you actually look at the details, then I think we’ve struck the right balance.”28 Similarly, despite drawing different conclusions, presidential candidate Bernie Sanders also directly referred to Orwell in commenting on the Snowden affair, replying to an interview question with the following words: “Kids will grow up know-ing that every damn thknow-ing that they do is goknow-ing to be recorded somewhere in a file, and I think that will have a very Orwellian and inhibiting impact on our lives.”29
25. Cf. David Cole, “The Supreme Court Has a Chance to Keep Big Brother at a Bay,” The Washington Post (November ), https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-supreme-court-has-a-chance-to-keep-big-brother-at-bay/ / / /gIQAQQOoDN_story .html?utm_term=.d b e (accessed June ).
26. Adam Liptak, “Court Case Asks if ‘Big Brother’ Is Spelled GPS,” The New York Times ( Sept ), http://www.nytimes.com/ / / /us/ gps.html (accessed June , ).
Quoted in Koryagina, p. . 27. Cf. Koryagina, p. .
28. Barack Obama, “Statement by the President,” June , . https://obamawhitehouse .archives.gov/the-press-office/ / / /statement-president (accessed June , ).
29. Stephen Moss, “George Orwell Back in Fashion as Prism Stokes Paranoia about Big Brother,” The Guardian ( June ), https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/ / jun/ /george-orwell-prism-big-brother- (accessed June , ).
Conclusion
Dávidházi analysed the Shakespeare cult in the context of a quasi-religion, quoting Michael Dobson’s view “that the author-cult of Shakespeare has functioned, and continues to function, as a kind of religion.”30 Shakespeare often appears in the dis-courses of the cult as a superhuman, transcendental creature (“God’s Second Born”).
Yet even with the greatest respect for the Bard it has to be acknowledged that he was human, and “one may be all the more impressed by his seemingly superhuman victo-ries if one sees that they were won in constant battle with the limitations of common mortality.”31 George Orwell, on the other hand, is usually referred to in less transcen-dental terms, not as God but as an all-knowing secular prophet, the author of a holy book, whose insight is highly relevant even sixty years after his death. It is not unusual for journalists and political commentators to reflect on how Orwell, were he alive, might react to a political problem, suggesting that one may not argue with the quasi-divine word of the prophet.32 Such references can be direct but more often appear in the form of indirect allusions to the Orwellian narrative.
Orwell cannot compete with Shakespeare either in terms of literary excellence or with regard to the latter’s quasi-divine cultural position. Nevertheless, the parallels and differences in the cults of the two writers reveal important insights about the way our culture uses fictional texts both in the interpretation of political phenomena and, in-deed, in the understanding of ourselves.
30. Michael Dobson, The Making of the National Poet: Shakespeare, Adaptation and Author-ship, – (Oxford: Clarendon Press, ), p. . Quoted in Dávidházi, p. x.
31. Kristian Smidt quoted in Péter Dávidházi, “Cult and Criticism: Ritual in the European Reception of Shakespeare,” in Literature and Its Cults: An Anthropological Approach, eds Péter Dávidházi and Judit Karafiáth (Budapest: Argumentum, ), – .
32. As Császár points out, the first author to devote an entire article to speculations about Orwell’s possible posthumous politics was Norman Podhoretz. Podhoretz, “If Orwell were Alive Today,” Harper (Jan ), – . Quoted in Császár, p. .