Talk:Orwellize
The examples indicate that to "orwellize" is to take an ordinary word and present it as an acronym. That conclusion would probably be both incomplete, and inaccurate.
Google.com search finds 5 uses of "orwellize".
Perhaps the article should be renamed along the lines of "the Orwellian connotations of the GWB regime" since the matter seems to be just that; or do "orwellizations" occur beyond the GWB regime?
Is "orwellization" an activity of the person presenting the context, or of the person receiving the context?
How do privatization and the war on drugs help me to understand "orwellization" or otherwise contribute to the article? Why should they be linked from here?
Ok .. ok ... took a closer look at the definition, M ... it goes!
As for the "war" on drugs .. it implies one thing, but is, in reality, another.
- I had a rather narrow meaning in mind when I pick the word "orwellize", and I didn't bother running a search to see if it was already being used.
- Sadly, we're all thoroughly accustomed to initiatives and laws whose titles say the exact opposite of their real intent, and jingoisic acronyms made from words like "victory" that carry that sort of baggage already. That's like "stealing the goose from off the common."
- What I had in mind for "orwellize" is more insidious: taking everyday, benign and even pleasant words like "visit" and making police-state acronyms from them until practically no part of even casual conversation is free from the associations of Big Brother. That's like "stealing the common from the goose", or worse, poisoning the common. It makes me angry in a way that hardly anything else does, and I think it needs a light shined on it. Mutternich 14:12, 2 Mar 2004 (EST)
Thanks for the explanations. I see it now ;-} As Carol M. Braun said in the DesMoines debate, "They use words to mean just the opposite of what it is they're doing."
