Learn English with George Orwell’s 1984

"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,

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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.