Re: Re : Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis

"Grandsire, C.A." wrote:
> And as for Newspeakers, I think they
> could think of freedom by simply negating their own condition (negation
> is completely regular in Newspeak if I remember correctly). For me
> "negative" concepts  (expressed by negating another concept) can have as
> much force as "positive" ones. But it is IMHO.
Well, Newspeakers were raised from childhood to consider everything
associated with freedom to be evil.  Privacy would be ownlife, which
includes notions of being anti-social, of being evil.  They could, I
suppose, say "ungoodthink", but that would be like saying "not good" or
"evil".

If Newspeak existed in OUR culture, you'd be correct about it, but since
it's wrapped up in a totally alien culture, I don't think you'd be
right.  From childhood, they're trained in "crimestop", the ability to
stop a train of thought, almost instinctively, before it becomes
crimethink (unorthodoxy), and "blackwhite", the ability to not
understand "crimethinkfull" arguments, "a kind of protective stupidity",
as it says in 1984.

Anyhoo, ObConlang: I've read that Newspeak was intended as a parody of
Basic English.

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