Daniel Kies Department of English College of DuPage
Composition English 1102		Contact Form

The Uses of Passivity: Suppressing Agency in Nineteen Eighty-Four*

Daniel Kies
College of DuPage

NB: Originally published as "The Uses of Passivity: Suppressing Agency in Nineteen Eighty-Four," in Advances in Systemic Linguistics (Martin Davies and Louise Ravelli, eds.), London: Frances Pinter, 1992, pp. 229-250. Presented at the 17th International Systemic Congress, Sterling, Scotland, July 5, 1990. The paper is not in the MLA format, however, since the publisher, Pinter (a British publisher), uses an in-house format and style sheet.

Current work:   Days remaining this term: Notes: Add Note |  Log in? | Privacy | Change Name & Email Mail this page to a friend

1. Introduction

The linguistic criticism of Nineteen Eighty-Four has focused primarily on Newspeak as a language (Flammia 1987: 28-33, Harris 1987: 113-119) and on Orwell's ideas about the relationship between language and thought (Kress and Hodge 1979: 144-150). It has largely ignored, however, the literary language Orwell used in writing Nineteen Eighty-Four. Indeed, the few critical remarks about Orwell's use of language have generally been negative — sometimes attributing the dull, monotonous, dry writing style to Orwell's career as a journalist (Ringbom 1973: 11-12, Petro 1982: 95, Bloom 1987: 1-2) or to the phlegmatic topic of his novel. Irving Howe (1982: 321), for example, writes that

the style of 1984, which many readers take to be drab or uninspired or sweaty, would have been appreciated by someone like Defoe, since Defoe would have immediately understood how the pressures of Orwell's subject, like the pressures of his own, demand a gritty and hammering factuality. The style of 1984 is the style of a man whose commitment to a dreadful vision is at war with the nausea to which that vision reduces him. So acute is this conflict that delicacies of phrasing or displays of rhetoric come to seem frivolous — he has no time, he must get it all down. Those who fail to see this, I am convinced, have succumbed to the pleasant tyrannies of estheticism; they have allowed their fondness for a cultivated style to blind them to the urgencies of prophetic expression. The last thing Orwell cared about when he wrote 1984, the last thing he should have cared about, was literature.

Those critical responses to Orwell — including Howe's defense of his style — are wrong. Orwell asserted that one of his primary motives for writing was Aesthetic enthusiasm.

Perception of beauty in the external world, or, on the other hand, in words and their right arrangement. Pleasure in the impact of one sound on another, in the firmness of good prose or the rhythm of a good story. Desire to share an experience which one feels is valuable and ought not to be missed. The aesthetic motive is very feeble in a lot of writers, but even a pamphleteer or a writer of textbooks will have pet words and phrases which appeal to him for non-utilitarian reasons; or he may feel strongly about typography, width of margins, etc. Above the level of a railway guide, no book is quite free from aesthetic considerations. (CEJL 1: 3-4)

The Orwell who wrote that

What I have most wanted to do throughout the past ten years is to make political writing into an art. ... I could not do the work of writing a book, or even a long magazine article, if it were not also an aesthetic experience (CEJL 1: 6)

could not have been indifferent to literary artistry, including literary style. In fact, Orwell's writing style is a carefully constructed complex of various linguistic devices that contribute importantly to the central themes of Nineteen Eighty-Four.

One of those themes is the powerlessness of the individual under a totalitarian government. Orwell illustrated that futility through the fate of Winston Smith; however, it is not at the level of plot that the reader can best appreciate that powerlessness. Rather, it is through the language that Orwell used to describe Winston, to narrate his actions, and to develop his character that the reader perceives not only the futility of struggle but also Orwell's sensitivity to both the use and meaning of language. Specifically, Orwell manipulated the expression of AGENCY so that Winston Smith is never seen as active or in control of any situation.

AGENCY is one of the most widely used techniques to control a literary theme in a text (Cluysenaar 1975: 63-65, Dillon 1978: 9-21, Empson 1963: 1-47, Enkvist 1973: 115-118, Halliday 1971: 330-365, Leech and Short 1981: 189-191). It can be expressed (or suppressed) by a number of syntactic constructions, and Orwell employed them all to establish the complete abolition of human freedom. Many of the examples below come from one scene in the novel, the end of Part Two, Section III, in which Winston and Julia feel some satisfaction in their lives, in their physical relationship, and in their loving protection of each other. It is interesting to note that just at the one point in the novel when the reader might expect these characters to be active and in control, Orwell used language that continually undercuts any sense of Winston or Julia as an agent, a conscious initiator of an action. Central among the linguistic features that undercut agency is passive voice.

Orwell was keenly aware of the potential that passive voice held for manipulating a hearer/reader: it allows the speaker/writer to hide the agent by neglecting to mention the agentive by-phrase. Orwell's fourth rule for clear writing was Never use the passive where you can use the active (CEJL 4: 139). Yet just two years after writing that rule, Orwell seemed to revise his thinking. In Politics and the English Language he was acutely aware of the subtleties of meaning afforded by changes in syntax; but in Nineteen Eighty-Four he seemed to incorporate the thematic, informational flexibility afforded by passive voice syntax into his writing. (This was not the only reversal in Orwell's thinking about language. Orwell came to realize that the Anglo-Saxon word stock that he had championed in Politics and the English Language might supply the vocabulary for Newspeak whereas Latinate English allowed greater scope for linguistic [and thereby human] freedom.)

2. Analysis

In total, Orwell exploited fourteen syntactic devices to undercut agency throughout the novel:

2.1. PASSIVES

a. Bill hit John. [active voice, grammatical subject clearly expressing the agent]

b. John was hit (by Bill). [passive voice, grammatical subject does not express agency; the agent is expressed through a prepositional phrase with by, if it is expressed at all]

Passives are among the most common grammatical devices to undercut agency in English, allowing the agentive noun phrase to occur out of thematic, sentence initial position in an optional agentive by-phrase at the end of the sentence (Curme 1931: 443-447, Quirk et al. 1985: 159-171). By writing in the passive voice, eliminating the agentive by-phrase, Orwell was able to suggest that his characters are not conscious initiators of action:

She described to him, almost as if she had seen or felt it, the stiffening of Katharine's body as soon as he touched her, the way in which she still seemed to be pushing him from her with all her strength, even when her arms were clasped tightly around him. (NEF 110)

The instrument (the telescreen it was called) could be dimmed, but there was no way of shutting it off completely. (NEF 6)

Orwell does not use the active voice here as in these paraphrases of the examples above: Katharine clasped her arms tightly around him, or People called it the telescreen, or Smith could dim the instrument. The characters would appear far too agentive, too active, too much in control.

2.2. NOMINALIZATIONS

a. Free radicals oxidize cell membranes quickly.

b. The oxidation of cell membranes (by free radicals) was quick. [nominalization of the verb oxidize]

Nominalized verbs undercut agency in that they can occur without any overt mention of agency (again supplied through the optional presence of an agentive by-phrase); see for example Kies (1985: 300-301). Orwell was able to describe Katharine's reaction to Winston's touch almost as if her stiffening were a physical process beyond Katharine's conscious control:

She described to him, almost as if she had seen or felt it, the stiffening of Katharine's body as soon as he touched her .... (NEF 110)

To write that Katharine stiffened her body would make Katharine conscious and agentive. The nominalized verb stiffening robs Katharine of consciousness and thus agency. Notice also how Winston has a sensation (rather than senses) in this description of drinking Victory Gin: The stuff was like nitric acid, and moreover, in swallowing it, one had the sensation of being hit on the back of the head with a rubber club. (NEF 8)

For Orwell to write Winston sensed being hit on the back of the head would make Winston too active, too conscious, too much the agent.

2.3. INTRANSITIVES

a. John opened the door. [transitive pattern, agent clearly identified in the clause]

b. The door opened. [intransitive pattern, agent uncertain and thus suspense builds]

Intransitive uses of verbs allow a writer to suggest that events arise or occur in the story beyond the control of characters by suppressing any explicit mention of human agents, as is usually required by the transitive uses of verbs. (See Austin (1986) for an interesting discussion of the syntactic and thematic tension that can arise through the manipulation of transitivity patterns in the language of literature.) Orwell seems to strip Winston of control over his own thoughts and perceptions by using an intransitive verb in the main clause:

Actually the idea had first floated into his head in the form of a vision of a glass paperweight mirrored by the surface of the gateleg. (NEF 114)

The hallway smelt of boiled cabbage and old rag mats. (NEF 5)

The possible transitive paraphrases, for example, Winston floated the idea in the form of a vision of a glass paperweight, present an agentive Winston.

2.4. PATIENTS AS SUBJECTS

a. John sent a package. [grammatical subject is agent, consciously initiates the action described in the predication]

b. John got a package. [grammatical subject is patient, the goal of the predication]

Verbs like get, see, and hear (as opposed to send, look, and listen) undercut agency in that they imply that the grammatical subject of the sentence is not the initiator of the activity described by the verb, but is rather a patient affected by that activity. Notice Orwell's undercutting of Winston's agency in the following sentence, which also demonstrates the use of an atypical passive construction:

... the rule was not strictly kept, because there were various things such as shoelaces and razor blades which it was impossible to get hold of .... (NEF 9)

The old man had grown noticeably more cheerful after receiving the four dollars. Winston realized that he would have accepted three or even two. (NEF 81)

... look, I got a little packet of tea as well. (NEF 117)

You will receive orders, and you will obey them .... (NEF 144)

If you're happy inside yourself, why should you get excited about Big Brother and the Three-Year Plans and the Two Minute Hate and all the rest of their bloody rot? (NEF 111)

Paraphrases like why should you become excited about or take excitement in Big Brother all present an agentive you as subject, where excitement builds from within the individual. However, the more passive you of the original passage must get excitement from outside him- or herself.

2.5. DEPERSONALIZATION

a. John spoke.

b. John's voice spoke.
    A voice spoke.

[Both sentences in (b) represent a depersonalizing/dehumanizing metonymy]

Depersonalization depends on metonymy, where a part of a person (often a voice or a thought — the least physical and hence least agentive features of a person) is used to represent, figuratively, the whole person:

His thin dark face had become animated, his eyes had lost their mocking expression and grown almost dreamy. (NEF 45)

... and it was possible that his features had not been perfectly under control. (NEF 54)

A hand fell lightly on his shoulder. (NEF 99)

The youthful body was strained against his own, the mass of dark hair was against his face ... her youth and prettiness had frightened him ... The girl picked herself up and pulled a bluebell out of her hair. (NEF 100)

And the thought struck him .... (NEF 112)

His mothers anxious eyes were fixed on his face. (NEF 135)

The telescreen barked at him to keep still. (NEF 191)

... a yell from the telescreen bade them be silent. (NEF 191)

His froglike face grew calmer, .... [where the face is metonymical for the whole person] (NEF 192)

Smith! yelled the voice from the telescreen. (NEF 193)

2.6. PERFECT ASPECT

a. John wants to go.
    [present tense expression of agent's desire]
    John wanted to go.
    [past tense, but still agent's desire is relevant]

b. John had wanted to go.
    [perfect aspect, agent's desire no longer relevant to the present]

The perfect aspect of the verb suggests completed activity, that all action was finished in the remote past, undercutting any sense of action — even past action — that might have any relevance to the activity of the present. Orwell shifted to the perfect aspect to underscore the characters sense of powerlessness and impotence:

... and it was possible that his features had not been perfectly under control. (NEF 54)

Katharine, in any case, had long ceased to be a painful memory and become merely a distasteful one. (NEF 110)

Unlike Winston, she had grasped the inner meaning of the Partys sexual puritanism. (NEF 110)

She had clasped her arms around his neck, she was calling him darling, precious one, loved one. He had pulled her down onto the ground, she was utterly unresisting .... (NEF 100)

2.7. NEGATION

a. John hit Bill. [positive assertion of agency]

b. John didnt hit Bill. [negated assertion undercuts agency]

Negation undercuts agency most directly, highlighting the agent's limited abilities:

... so long as he stayed in his present position he could not be seen. (NEF 9)

Unfortunately, he could not remember whether she had already been at that table when he arrived .... (NEF 54)

... and it was possible that his features had not been perfectly under control. (NEF 54)

He still had not the courage to approach her. (NEF 99)

In this game were playing, we cant win. (NEF 112)

He stopped, but he did not come back. (NEF 135)

2.8. STATIVE VERBS/RESULTIVE VERBS

a. John stopped. [ordinary intransitive verb]

b. John was stopped. [statal passives or resultive verbs suggests an outside agency]

Verbs that suggest the existence of a state or a result of some other agent can also undercut any sense of immediate agency on the part of its associated grammatical subject. Notice in the following example that even cognitive activities such as remembering (in themselves suggesting less agency than physical activities) seem static rather than dynamic processes for Winston:

Katharine, in any case, had long ceased to be a painful memory and become merely a distasteful one. (NEF 110)

There had been times when consciousness ... had stopped dead .... (NEF 198)

2.9. PRESENTATIONAL THERE STRUCTURES

a. A man with a briefcase sat down. [agentive subject]

b. There sat down a man with a briefcase. [agentive subject is de-emphasized in sentence medial position]

Michael Halliday (1985: 38-67) illustrates the significance of the sentence initial position in organizing the clause as message. The sentence initial position is significant, he reminds us, because it serves to introduce the theme of discourse. Similarly, Quirk et al. (1985: 1356-1357) highlight the significance of sentence final position in organizing the information structure of a clause. The sentence final position becomes important in English since it serves as the locus of new information in the clause (and discourse). Hence, if one wished to use sentence position alone to downplay the agency of a particular noun phrase, sentence medial position would seem ideal since it keeps that particular noun phrase out of thematic or informationally prominent positions within the sentence. Sentences with presentational there subjects allow speakers and writers to de-emphasize agentive grammatical subjects by burying them in sentence medial position as Orwell did:

There was nobody of whom they could ask the way. (NEF 111) Also notice Orwell's use of negation in the grammatical subject above to further undercut any sense of agency. There was no evidence, only fleeting glimpses that might means anything or nothing .... (NEF 18)

In a place like this, the danger that there was a hidden microphone was very small, and even if there was a microphone it would only pick up sounds. (NEF 112)

Presentational there undercuts agency above since the agents, presumably Winston and the Thought Police, go unmentioned; compare Winston found not evidence or the danger that the Thought Police hid microphones was small.

2.10. SUBJUNCTIVE MOOD

a. I became a millionaire. [indicative mood = real world activity with real world consequences]

b. If I became a millionaire, ... [subjunctive mood = possible world only with no necessary suggestion of action in the real world]

The subjunctive mood allows us to discuss possible worlds, and any sense of agency is understood as only hypothetical. Consider Winston's musing over the possible actions that he would have taken if his world had turned out differently. Orwell understood how the subjunctive mood would make Winston's bold assertions ring hollow, suggesting that Winston would likely fail in his struggle to gain some degree of empowerment:

And it was exactly at this moment that the significant thing happened — if, indeed, it did happen. (NEF 18)

Some nosing zealot ... might start wondering why he had been writing .... (NEF 27)

... and it was possible that his features had not been perfectly under control. (NEF 54)

I would have [given Katharine a good shove over the cliff], if Id been the same person then as I am now. Or perhaps I would — I'm not certain. (NEF 112)

To this day he did not know with any certainty that his mother was dead. It was perfectly possible that she had merely been sent to a forced-labor camp. As for his sister, she might have been removed, like Winston himself, to one of the colonies for homeless children ... or she might have been sent to the labor camp along with his mother. (NEF 135)

2.11. LINKING VERBS like seem

a. John has broken the window. [transitive verb with agentive subject]

b. John seems to have broken the window. [linking verb, casting doubt on the agency of the grammatical subject]

Linking verbs like seem and appear add a hedge, a sense of doubt, to any assertion into which they are incorporated. Just when Orwell could have described the physical encounter between Winston and Julia as the dynamic, life affirming act it was, he chose instead to undercut the assertion by using a linking verb:

All this he seemed to see in the large eyes of his mother and his sister .... (NEF 29)

There was a roar that seemed to make the pavement heave .... (NEF 72)

Her body seemed to be pouring some of its youth and vigor into his. (NEF 113)

Compare, for example, the difference in agency between the example passage immediately above and this paraphrase without the linking verb, Her body poured some of its youth and vigor into his.

2.12. IMPERSONAL ONE and POINT-OF-VIEW SHIFTS

a. I now can conclude that .... [first-person personal pronoun clearly indicates agency and responsibility]

b. One now can conclude that .... [impersonal third-person pronoun undercuts a clear sense of agency and responsibility for any conclusions]

Orwell employed the third-person singular personal pronouns he/she and the impersonal pronoun you throughout most of the novel. The occasional point-of-view shift to the impersonal one allowed Orwell another grammatical device with which to downplay any sense of his characters agency, as in this passage describing Winston's reaction to drinking Victory Gin. Note how this device generalizes and dilutes the readers sense of any direct personal reaction on Winston's part:

Instantly his face turned scarlet and water ran out of his eyes. The stuff was like nitric acid, and moreover, in swallowing it one had the sensation of being hit on the back of the head with a rubber club. (NEF 8)

The smell was already filling the room, a rich hot smell which seemed like an emanation from his early childhood, but which one did occasionally meet with even now .... (NEF 117)

Given this background, one could infer, if one did not know it already, the general structure of Oceanic society. (NEF 171)

Note the same shift, with the same effect, in these passages describing the torture of Winston. (These passages also exploit many of the stylistic features discussed earlier: passive voice, nominalization, depersonalization, perfect aspect, negation, subjunctive mood, and the linking verb seem.)

Style features		Passage
DEPERSONALIZATION		Winston's heart sank. ... He had
NOMINALIZATION		a feeling of deadly helplessness.
SUBJUNCTIVE MOOD		If he could
PERFECT ASPECT		have been certain that O'Brien
NEGATION		was lying, it would not
PERFECT ASPECT, SEEM		have seemed to matter. But it was perfectly
PERFECT ASPECT		possible that O'Brien had forgotten the
SUBJUNCTIVE MOOD		photograph. And if so, then already he
PERFECT ASPECT		would have forgotten
NOMINALIZATION		his denial of
NOMINALIZATION		remembering it, and forgotten the act
NOMINALIZATION		of forgetting
IMPERSONAL ONE		How could one be sure that it was simply trickery?
		(NEF 204)

Style features		Passage
		A needle slid into Winston's arm. Almost in the same instant
NOMINALIZATION		a blissful, healing warmth spread all
PASSIVE VOICE		through his body. The pain was already half-forgotten. He opened his eyes and looked up gratefully at O'Brien. At the sight of the heavy, lined face,
DEPERSONALIZATION		so ugly and so intelligent, his heart
SEEM		seemed to turn over.
SUBJUNCTIVE MOOD		If he could
PERFECT ASPECT		have moved he would
PERFECT ASPECT		have stretched out a hand and
PERFECT ASPECT		laid it on O'Brien's arm. He had
NEGATION		never
PERFECT ASPECT		loved him so deeply as at this moment, and
NEGATION		not merely because
PERFECT ASPECT		he had stopped the pain.
NOMINALIZATION		The old feeling, that at bottom
NEGATION		it did not matter whether O'Brien was a friend or an enemy
PERFECT ASPECT		had come back. O'Brien was a person who
PASSIVE		could be talked to.
SUBJUNCTIVE, ONE		Perhaps one did
NEGATION		not want to
PASSIVE VOICE		be loved so much as
PASSIVE VOICE .		be understood
		(NEF 208)

By shifting to the impersonal one in the last sentence of each passage above, Orwell avoids the proper nouns (like Winston or Smith) and the personal pronouns (like he or him). The impersonal one distances Winston from his desires for certainty or understanding. Such desires are too agentive, as can be seen in these paraphrases: How could Winston be sure that it was simply trickery? and Perhaps he did not want to be loved so much as be understood.

2.13. MODALITY SHIFTS

a. John slapped the table.   [ordinary, agentive transitive]

b. John

-

would should could ought to needs to might tried to

-

slap the table.

[the modal or quasi-modal auxiliary undercuts the agency of the transitive verb]

As with the judicious use of impersonal one, Orwell carefully used the modal auxiliary. Modals allowed him to hedge on the assertions made by transitive verbs; modals suggest obligation, necessity, willingness, or attempts (etc.) to act, but they do not necessarily imply successfully completed action:

He [Winston] tried to squeeze out some childhood memory .... But it was no use, he could not remember. (NEF 7)

If he could have been certain that O'Brien was lying, it would not have seemed to matter. But it was perfectly possible that O'Brien had forgotten the photograph. And if so, then already he would have forgotten his denial of remembering it, and forgotten the act of forgetting. How could one be sure that it was simply trickery? (NEF 204)

The hedge provided by the modality shift provides Orwell an excellent means of downplaying agency. Compare the first example with this paraphrase, he squeezed out some childhood memory. Or consider Orwell's use of could in the first and last clauses of the second example passage. The paraphrases without modals would read If he had been certain that O'Brien was lying and How is one sure that it was simply trickery? Those two paraphrases seem to suggest that Winston had the means to ascertain O'Brien's lies and trickery. However, the original passage with the modals promotes the hopelessness of Winston's ever acquiring such knowledge.

2.14. EXISTENTIAL IT and other CLEFT SENTENCES

a.	John mailed the letter yesterday.	[ordinary, agentive transitive]
b.	It was yesterday that John mailed the letter. It was the letter that John mailed yesterday.	[cleft sentences, using for example the existential it as grammatical subject in the main clause, allow for information focus on one constituent, effectively undercutting the agency of the grammatical subject in the more usual, unmarked sentence pattern as in 14 (a)]

Orwell could, in essence, lessen the suggested agency of certain concord subjects by using a clefted sentence pattern. A cleft sentence focuses on some peripheral part of a clause, such as an adverbial or adjective, and thereby demotes the agentive element to a subordinate clause:

When one knew that any document was due for destruction, or even when one saw a scrap of waste paper lying about, it was an automatic action to lift the flap of the nearest memory hole and drop it in .... (NEF 35)

What was even worse than having to focus his mind on a series of niggling jobs was the need to conceal his agitation from the telescreen. (NEF 90)

... it struck him for the first time that she was beautiful. (NEF 180)

The funny thing is I made sure it was full. (NEF 180)

It was true that he had no memories of anything different. (NEF 52)

The example immediately above is a classic form of wordiness, according to a host of composition handbooks. The handbooks would advise Orwell to rewrite the sentence as Truly, he had no memories of anything different. But by comparing the two briefly, one can see that the more concise revision presents an agent who is more definite, more assured. There is a sense of uncertainty in the original that can not be captured without the cleft sentence focusing on some peripheral part of the proposition.

3. Discussion

In concert, those fourteen stylistic features allowed Orwell to establish a limited third person narrator whose mind style is restricted to Winston's point of view and Winston's perceptions. (See Leech and Short (1981: 187-208) for an extensive discussion of mind style.) Such limited narration takes the reader into Winston's mind without creating a first person narrative. A first person narrative would not effectively promote the theme of passivity, since first person narrators are (by nature) too agentive; they are always doing, saying, and thinking. Conversely, an omniscient third person narrator could not adequately convey the terrifying uncertainty of living in a totalitarian society. With a limited third person narrator, Orwell effectively confines the readers knowledge: the reader can know only what Winston knows. Therefore, Orwell's limited third person narrative style allows readers to experience how truly passive Winston is.

In his personal relationships, Winston is rarely, if ever, the initiator of action. The sexual aggressors in Nineteen Eighty-Four are Katharine (the frigid little ceremony that Katharine had forced him to go through on the same night every week [NEF 110]) and Julia. Although Winston is endlessly curious about the Brotherhood, he does little to learn about it on his own; rather O'Brien has to initiate him: He knew that sooner or later he would obey O'Brien's summons. Perhaps tomorrow, perhaps after a long delay — he was not certain (NEF 132).

His passivity extends even into his relationships with minor characters. It is Parsons who approaches and converses with Winston; it is Mrs. Parsons who must ask for neighborly help (Winston does not offer it). Syme approaches Winston in the canteen seeking a lunch companion.

Finally, Winston does not take much initiative or imagination to his work. He does not give the fictitious Ogilvy the Order of Conspicuous Merit because of the necessary cross-referencing that it would entail. In other words, he has ideas, but he will not act on them unless invited or ordered to do so.

The novel does present at least two moments in which Winston seems strongly agentive: in his memories of his childhood and in his opening a diary. Nevertheless, those moments also are suffused with language that undercuts Winston's agency. Significantly, those two moments of agency are also moments at which Winston feels profoundly guilty, and the horrible guilt that Winston associates with those two moments of agency reveals perhaps the psychological source of his passivity. For example, Winston remembers such aggressive acts as fighting for more food or stealing chocolate as a youth. Orwell's narration, however, downplays Winston's agency through the use of subjunctive mood, depersonalization, modality shifts, passive voice, presentational there, nominalizations, patient subjects, negations, and the perfect aspect all in one passage.

Style features	Passage
SUBJUNCTIVE MOOD	Suddenly, as though he were listening to someone else,
PATIENT SUBJECT	Winston heard himself demanding
DEPERSONALIZATION	in a loud booming voice that
MODAL	he should
PASSIVE VOICE	be given the whole piece.
NEGATION	His mother told him not
PRESENTATIONAL THERE	to be greedy. There was a long, nagging
NOMINALIZATION	argument that went round and round, with
NOMINALIZATIONS	shouts, whines, tears, remonstrances, and
NOMINALIZATION	bargainings. His tiny sister,clinging to her mother with both hands, exactly like a baby monkey, sat looking over her shoulders at him with large mournful eyes. In the end his mother broke off three-quarters of the chocolate and gave it to Winston, giving the
PATIENT SUBJECT	other quarter to his sister. The little girl took hold of it
NEGATION	and looked at it dully, perhaps not knowing what it was. Winston stood watching her for a moment. Then with a sudden
PERFECT ASPECT	swift spring he had snatched the piece of
DEPERSONALIZATION	chocolate out of his sister's hand and was fleeing for the door.
	(NEF 134-135)

Likewise, when Winston commits himself to opening a diary, Orwell's narration erases Winston's agency:

Style features	Passage
CLEFT SENTENCE	The thing that he was about to do was to open a diary.
PRESENTATIONAL THERE	This was not illegal, (nothing was illegal, since there
NEGATION	were, no longer any laws), but
SUBJUNCTIVE MOOD	if detected
EXISTENTIAL IT	it, was reasonably certain that
MODAL	it would
PASSIVE VOICE	be punished by death, or at least by twenty-five years in a forced labor camp. Winston fitted a nib into a penholder and sucked it to get the grease off. The pen was an archaic instrument,
PASSIVE VOICE	seldom used even for signatures,
PERFECT ASPECT	and he had procured one, furtively and with
NOMINALIZATION   + DEPERSONALIZATION	some difficulty, simply because of a feeling that the
PASSIVE VOICE	beautiful creamy paper deserved to be written on
PASSIVE VOICE	with a real nib instead of being scratched with an ink pencil.
NEGATION	Actually he was not
PASSIVE VOICE	used to writing by hand.
	(NEF 9-10)

Indeed, the pivotal act that sets the whole plot in motion — Winston's purchasing of the blank book to use as a diary — seems involuntary:

Style features	Passage
PERFECT ASPECT	He ... had been
PASSIVE VOICE	stricken immediately by
NOMINALIZATION   + DEPERSONALIZATION	an overwhelming desire to possess it....
NEGATION	At the time he was not conscious of wanting it for any particular purpose.
	(NEF 9)

4. Analysis and discussion of manuscript revisions

The facsimile edition of the manuscript of Nineteen Eighty-Four reveals how Orwell frequently revised his prose to enhance the passivity of his language. For example, he extensively reworked the passages above describing Winston's opening of a diary to include cleft sentences, presentational there, subjunctive mood, negation, nominalizations, depersonalization, modality shifts, perfect aspect, and additional passive voice verbs. Compare the manuscript passage below to the same passage from the novel discussed in the section above; notice how each clause but one in his earlier draft contains agentive active voice verbs:

As soon as he set eyes on it he had known that in just such a book he could write the diary he dreamed of — a diary that should be simply a transcript of the interminable monologue that went on and on inside his skull .... He dipped his pen in the ink and began to write. No mark appeared on the paper: instead, next moment, a huge blob of ink flopped off the nib and ruined the front page. ... The pen was an archaic instrument, seldom used even for signatures. Normally one either used an ink-pencil or dictated into the speakwrite .... (Ms 23)

Likewise, note Orwell's revisions in two very different sections of the novel, each revision reaching for greater passivity in language. The manuscript clause Private ownership has given way to group ownership (Ms 211) in Goldsteins book is revised to employ a passive voice verb: Private property has been abolished (Ms 211). Orwell further enhanced the passive voice with nominalizations and depersonalization:

Style features	Passage
PASSIVE VOICE	Wealth and privilege are most easily defended
PASSIVE VOICE	when they are possessed jointly.
NOMINALIZATION	The so-called abolition of property which took place in the middle years of the century
NOMINALIZATION	meant, in effect, the concentration of private
DEPERSONALIZATION	property in far fewer hands than before ....
	(NEF 170)

Similarly, another passage describing Winston's experience in his cell at Miniluv originally read,

... whereas they [the Thought Police] ordered the political prisoners about like dogs (Ms 213). That passage was revised to eliminate the agency of they ordered: ... even when they were obliged to handle them roughly (NEF 187).

Indeed, the whole of Oceania becomes such a regimented society that even the police have no agency. They follow orders (are obliged to handle them roughly) and become as thoroughly passive as their victims.

5. Conclusion and some remarks on QUALITATIVE and QUANTITATIVE stylistics

In the introduction to this essay, I presented the thesis that the critics responses to Orwell's writing style undervalued the precision with which he constructed the literary language of Nineteen Eighty-Four. (The critics felt, remember, that its style was drab, uninspired, sweaty.) To support my thesis, I have outlined a host of syntactic structures that form a constellation of stylistic features, a lexicogrammatical motif in the language of the novel, promoting the theme of hopelessness and creating the sense of powerlessness within Winston's character. I hypothesized that Orwell developed his themes and characters through a narrative style that systematically undercuts AGENCY as a phenomenon of the novel's language.

Howe (1982: 324), more than other critics, is sensitive to the thematic import of the loss of agency: Oceanic society may evolve through certain stages of economic development, but the life of its members is static, a given and measured quantity that can neither rise to tragedy nor tumble to comedy. Human personality, as we have come to grasp for it in a class society and hope for it in a classless society, is obliterated; man becomes a function of a process he is never allowed to understand or control. I justified my claims about the critics responses and Orwell's narrative style in that novel by comparing the fourteen stylistic features discussed above with their possible paraphrases and their draft manuscript correspondences. That kind of stylistic analysis I take to be QUALITATIVE stylistics, examining through close reading the patterns of linguistic features in a text that together evoke particular, identifiable responses in the readers. Like all stylistic analyses, QUALITATIVE stylistics is comparative, to be sure, but its comparisons are made using the linguistic system as a whole as the background. QUALITATIVE stylistics takes a finite (and sometimes very small) text and compares the authors choices of sound, lexis, grammar (and so on) in that text against the linguistic system as a whole.

One goal of QUALITATIVE stylistics is illuminating the patterns of linguistic choices that make a literary experience: that is, readers often say that a story made me feel sad/happy/angry/etc. In other words, literature is experienced, not simply read; the literary experience occurs through language; and it is the goal of QUALITATIVE stylistics to highlight the linguistic features that evoke those literary (and emotional) experiences for the readers. This essay itself is essentially QUALITATIVE, as one can see in sections 2, 3, and 4 above, where I regularly invite the reader to compare Orwell's language in the novel to paraphrases available to him in the linguistic system that he could have used (and actually sometimes did use in drafts).

QUANTITATIVE stylistics, on the other hand, compares the frequency of linguistic features in a text against a norm. Those features that are significantly higher or lower in frequency from the norm become stylistic markers for that text. QUANTITATIVE stylistics is not in opposition to QUALITATIVE analyses, as is often assumed in some literary studies, which denigrate statistics (read here QUANTITATIVE stylistics) and elevate intuition (read here QUALITATIVE stylistics). QUANTITATIVE analyses can corroborate QUALITATIVE stylistics and can serve as an instrument with which to hone intuitive insights into a text.

For example, Table 1 presents quantitative data which in large part support the qualitative analyses of Orwell's style in the novel.¹ Looking at those style features for which there is an established norm,² one can see that Orwell relies heavily on PASSIVES, PERFECT ASPECT, PRESENTATIONAL THERE, SUBJUNCTIVE MOOD,³ LINKING VERB seem, IMPERSONAL ONE, and EXISTENTIAL IT just as the qualitative stylistic analyses earlier in this essay suggested.⁴

TABLE 1: Occurrence of style features per 1000 words of Nineteen Eighty-Four and normative text

Style feature	NEF	norm		citation for norm
FINITE PASSIVE	10.9	6.0		Francis and Kucera (1982: 554)
NONFINITE PASSIVE	5.4
all PASSIVE forms	16.3
PERFECT ASPECT	16.8	10/14		Francis and Kucera (1982: 555)/Ellegard (1978: 65)
not	9.8	10.0		Francis and Kucera (1982: 545), Ellegard (1978: 61)
not CONTRACTION	1.4	1.5		Francis and Kucera (1982: 546)
PRESENTATIONAL THERE	6.0	2.0		Ellegard (1978: 40)
SUBJUNCTIVE MOOD (total frequency of if, perhaps, possible, possibly, probably, as though, and whether)	5.2	3.8		Francis and Kucera (1982: 209, 304, 316, 322, 415, 450)
MODALS (appearing in overt subjunctive)	2.2	0.0		Ellegard (1978: 67)
be (appearing in overt subjunctive)	0.5	0.3		Ellegard (1978: 66)
LINKING VERB seem	2.2	0.8		Francis and Kucera (1982: 364)
IMPERSONAL ONE	0.9	0.6		Francis and Kucera (1982: 289)
all MODALS	16.0	15.0		Francis and Kucera (1982: 545), Ellegard (1978: 67)
EXISTENTIAL IT	5.4	2.0		Ellegard (1978: 36)

There are style features for which Orwell's usage does not appear significantly different from the established norm. The statistics for not, its contracted form, and all modals are nearly identical. However, Francis and Kucera (1982: 544-547) note that not, its contraction, and the modals occurred significantly more frequently in the Imaginative Groups of genres than it did in the Informative Group of genres, a fact which should draw those norms considerably closer to Orwell's usage. (Nor does the similarity of those statistics lessen the meaning of negation or modals, and part of their meaning in the linguistic system is their ability to deny or undercut agency by negating a proposition or attributing obligation or necessity without implying completed action.)⁵

Orwell's style then is not the dry language of a hurried work. Rather, it demonstrates the best in literary art, a merger of grammatical form with meaning and theme. Orwell was sensitive to this iconic merger of form with function in literature:

When I was sixteen I suddenly discovered the joy of mere words, i.e. the sounds and associations of words. ... I wanted to write enormous naturalistic novels with unhappy endings, full of detailed descriptions and arresting similes, and also full of purple passages in which words were used partly for the sake of their sound. (CEJL 1: 1-2)

Orwell's revisions reflect a conscious attempt to create a particular syntactic stance. That stance enabled Orwell to progress systematically through several levels of passivity:

theme > plot > character development > narration > style

Orwell conveyed the horrifying futility of life in a totalitarian regime not only through the overt passivity that readers can readily discover in plot and dialogue, but also through the covert passivity of Winston's mind style, as reflected in Orwell's narration and character development.

Notes

^*This chapter began as a paper presented at the Seventeenth International Systemic Congress, July 3-7, 1990, at the University of Stirling, Scotland. I wish to thank Jonathan Rose both for his helpful comments and for his patient reading of several drafts of this essay. I also wish to thank Louise Ravelli and Martin Davies for their helpful insights into several issues. All errors, of course, are solely my responsibility.

The following abbreviations are used throughout this chapter for textual references to George Orwell's work: NEF (for Nineteen Eighty-Four. New York: New American Library, 1961); CEJL (for The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell. Ed. Sonia Orwell and Ian Angus. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1968); and Ms (for Nineteen Eighty-Four: The Facsimile of the Extant Manuscript. Ed. Peter Davison. London: Secker & Warburg, 1984). Italics are often added to passages quoted from NEF and Ms in sections 2, 3, and 4 to highlight particular syntactic constructions under discussion.

¹ I have changed the expression of some of the statistics in the cited references so that all statistics are expressed as the frequency of occurrence per 1000 words of text. Francis and Kucera (1982), in particular, often present their statistics as totals for the whole Brown University corpus or as percentages. I have converted those statistics to reveal the number of occurrences per 1000 words of text for easier presentation and comparison.

² The statistics listed in the norm column are derived from two sources: Ellegard (1978) and Francis and Kucera (1982). From Ellegard (1978), I have chosen statistics from the Popular Fiction genre, selected from the Imaginative Group of genres in the Brown University corpus. From Francis and Kucera (1982), I have chosen statistics from the General Fiction genre or from the Imaginative Group of genres in the Brown University corpus whenever possible. The Popular and General Fiction genres specifically (and Imaginative Group of genres generally) provide a set of texts which most closely match the language of Nineteen Eighty-Four, establishing a reliable comparative norm.

³ The normative number for the SUBJUNCTIVE MOOD in TABLE 1 is inflated in several ways. First, I counted only clearly SUBJUNCTIVE occurrences of possible, possibly, probably, and as though in the novel. However, the frequency data in my normative reference (Francis and Kucera 1982) did not distinguish between SUBJUNCTIVE and nonSUBJUNCTIVE uses of those words; I simply counted all occurrences in the reference, knowing that would inflate the normative SUBJUNCTIVE MOOD statistic. Further, the cited reference has no data on as though as a conjunction; therefore I included all occurrences of though in the statistics, assuming that I would capture all occurrences of as though in the corpus (but many nonSUBJUNCTIVE occurrences of though as well).

⁴ The statistics for Nineteen Eighty-Four in TABLE 1 were collected from approximately 10,000 words of the novel chosen at random. Each page holds approximately 400 words, 400 words per page x 25 pages equals 10,000 words, and I chose the 25 pages randomly by counting the stylistic features of every nth page, where n = 9. The number 9 was drawn by lot. The pages in the statistics, therefore, were 9, 18, 27, 36, 45, 54, 63, 72, 81, 90, 99, 108, 117, 126, 135, 144, 153, 162, 171, 180, 189, 198, 207, 216, and 225.

⁵ See Ringbom (1973) for an interesting comparison between Orwell the novelist in Nineteen Eighty-Four and Orwell the essayist. Ringbom (1973: 28-36, 45-48) too finds frequent use of if, would, impersonal one, and negatives in the style of Orwell the essayist, attributing those features to Orwell's fondness for hypothetical cases and contrast in argumentation.

Bibliography

Austin, T. (1986), (In)transitives: Some Thoughts on Ambiguity in Poetic Texts, Journal of Literary Semantics, 16: 23-38.

Bloom, H. (1987), Introduction, in Bloom, H. (ed.) George Orwell: Modern Critical Views, New York, Chelsea House Publishers, 1-7.

Cluysenaar, A. (1975), Aspects of Literary Stylistics, New York, St. Martins Press.

Curme, G. (1931), A Grammar of the English Language, Vol. 2: Syntax, Essex, Connecticut, Verbatim.

Dillon, G. (1978), Language Processing and the Reading of Literature, Bloomington, Indiana, Indiana University Press.

Ellegard, A. (1978), The Syntactic Structure of English Texts: A Computer-based Study of Four Kinds of Text in the Brown University Corpus, Goteborg, Sweden, Acta Universitatis Gothoburgensis.

Empson, W. (1963), Seven Types of Ambiguity, 3rd. ed., London, Chatto and Windus.

Enkvist, N. (1973), Linguistic Stylistics, The Hague, Mouton.

Flammia, M. (1987), Beyond Orwell: Clarity and the English Language, in Wemyss, C. and Ugrinsky, A. (eds.) George Orwell, Westport, Connecticut, Greenwood Press, 27-33.

Francis, W. N. and Kucera, H. (1982), Frequency Analysis of English Usage: Lexicon and Grammar, Boston, Houghton Mifflin Company.

Halliday, M. A. K. (1971), Linguistic Function and Literary Style, in Chatman, S. (ed.) Literary Style: A Symposium, London, Oxford University Press, 330-365.

______________. (1985), An Introduction to Functional Grammar, London, Edward Arnold.

Harris, R. (1987), The Misunderstanding of Newspeak, in Bloom, H. (ed.) George Orwell: Modern Critical Views, New York, Chelsea House Publishers, 113-119.

Howe, I. (1982), 1984: History as Nightmare, in Howe, I. (ed.) Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four: Text, Sources, Criticism, 2nd ed., New York, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 320-332.

Kies, D. (1985), Some Stylistic Features of Business and Technical Writing: Nominalization, Passive Voice and Agency, Journal of Technical Writing and Communication, 25: 299-308.

Kress, G. and Hodge, R. (1979), Language as Ideology, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Leech, G. and Short, M. (1981), Style in Fiction: A Linguistic Introduction to English Fictional Prose, London, Longman.

Orwell, G. (1961), Nineteen Eighty-Four, New York, New American Library.

________. (1968), Collected Essays, Journalism, and Letters of George Orwell, Volumes 1-4, Orwell, S. and Angus, I. (eds.), New York, Harcourt, Brace, & World.

________. (1984), Nineteen Eighty-Four: The Facsimile of the Extant Manuscript, Davison, P. (ed.), London, Secker & Warburg.

Petro, P. (1982), Modern Satire: Four Studies, Berlin, Mouton.

Quirk, R., Greenbaum, S., Leech, G., and Svartvik, J. (1985), A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language, London, Longman.

Ringbom, H. (1973), George Orwell as Essayist: A Stylistic Study, Abo, Finland, Acta Akademia Aboensis, series A, Vol. 44, no. 2.

^Take Note! | Table of Contents | Syllabus | Course Calendar | eForum | Search

The HyperTextBooks | The English Main Page | The Composition Links