The Limits of Language

In Nicholas Lemann's "The Limits of Language" he writes "To Orwell the connection between the English language and politics was that the debasement of the latter requires the corruption of the former". In other words he is saying that once the English language has been corrupted,the use of it in politics will leave politics in a degrading form. When that happens then no one will give credibility to what a candidate or politician speaks about or the topics spoken about. He points out "Bad writing is,unfortunately,eternal; surely there is more of it today, by weight, than there was in 1946". I am in agreement with this, there is far more manipulating of the English language now than ever, and the worst language is what most people seem to remember which lives on forever. Finally he states "To my mind, an even more frightening political prospect than the corruption of language is the corruption of information". I strongly believe this is true more than ever. In the age of the Internet there are a lot of people who have easy access to communicating a lot of information,regardless if they are true or not, which has a great impact on people in society. Misinformation can be very harmful when it is believed and acted upon as the truth, which happens far to often and has become the new norm. Unfortunately, just as Lemann states "there is often no corrective mechanism at hand, as there is in cases of the intentional corruption of language.