Surveillance and Language Manipulation in "1984"

Abstract

This paper presents the importance of surveillance and language manipulation in George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984. In the first section, I provide a brief introduction about how the thesis is going to be arranged, including the aims, motivation and justification of work. In the second section, there is a review from a literary perspective in which different authors give general and useful information about the chosen topics. After that, in the third section, the development of the research is presented and the main topics the book deals with are analysed: firstly, I distinguish between the two forms of surveillance that we find in the novel, panoptic and surreptitious surveillance, and secondly, I explain the two ways in which the population is manipulated by the government of 1984, through a new dictionary called Newspeak and through the media. This section is very important because the parts of the book, which deal with surveillance and language manipulation, are analysed in depth and the explanation of both of them are exemplified with quotations directly taken from the book to provide a more accurate approach. To conclude, I offer some personal comments to express my opinion and feelings.