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Language, Thought and Nineteen Eighty-Four
Sailerová, Simona ; Beran, Zdeněk (advisor) ; Veselá, Pavla (referee)
By considering the differences between oral and literate cultures, the thesis explores how the very nature of writing and written records, alongside their advantages, has introduced a certain divergence in human perception, thinking and knowledge and their relation to the external and internal world. The potential liabilities this creates are exploited by the Party in George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four and used as a means of establishing and maintaining their dominance. Language is one of their main tools, as well as a major concern in the novel. The thesis focuses on the following aspects and their relation to language: memory and records, time and change, and meaning and consciousness. As opposed to the fleeting nature of spoken language, writing (and other kinds of records) allows words to exist as objects independent of their "speakers" and the context in which they were produced. The rapid advances in text production and literacy have enabled the creation of a vast body of records far greater and (ideally) more reliable than the capacity of individual memory. Apart from the obvious advantages, due to the permanence of texts and the prestige associated with literacy, there exists the notion that external records are superior to the memory of an individual. By encouraging this notion and...
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