1984 in 2009

I've been thinking about this concept a lot lately and after about a year of contemplation, I am finally going to discuss it.

One of my favorite books is 1984. I read it during High School when I was a young angry punk rocker and it spoke to me. As the years progressed I always referred to it as my favorite book. Following the tragic events in 2001, I thought the U.S. would slowly push it's way towards a more strictly controlled government as that seen in the novel. The Patriot Act would be the downfall of the republic!

While my fears have proved to based more on paranoia, I continue to see society moving closer to the beast that was referred to as Ingsoc.

What is driving us there? Text and IM speak.

As a teacher I have been able to see first hand the trouble with both spelling and grammar that text is creating. Often I see people use the 8 as is sk8 (although that has been the norm for some time). Use of C and U to represent see and you has also been common, among the "Lisa Frank" girls. However the line has always been drawn when it came time to write a formal piece for class. This is not always the case anymore. I've begun seeing students attemp to use terms like "lol" as part of everyday vocabulary, both in class and in writing assignments.

One of the foundations of Ingsoc (or English Socialism) was Newspeak. The goal of newspeak in the novel and in the society of 1984 was to create a new language. This language based on English has a greatly reduced and simplified vocabulary and grammar.

Newspeak commonly eliminated words and combined words to make the most efficient terms possible. For example in 1984 words like better and best and even bad were eliminated, and prefixes and suffix took control. Instead there was good, gooder, goodest and ungood. Words that could be combined were such as Dayorder taking place of a phrase like order of the day.

In the long run the goal was to destry freedom and independent thought. Works liek Shakespeare and Chaucer would be impossible to read for someone versed in newspeak.

Similar word combinations can be cited in texting and IM. BRB, WTF, LOL, THX, l8r, and many others have become common. In some langauges, numbers and words are even connected to create a shorter form of communication. For example 520 in Chinese ("wu er ling") sound like the words for "I love you" ("wo ai ni"). The sequence 748 ("qi si ba") sounds like the curse for "drop dead".

This Orwellian trend seems disturbing, but I am curious to see how the rapid increase in the number to phones with qwerty keypads will play into this trend. Seeing as Instant Messengers have been using these terms and phrases for over ten years, I doubt it will help.

Newspeak is creeping its way into communication and if it continues to creep its way into the education system, how far can AmSoc be? IDK!