Big Brother is a character and symbol in George Orwell's dystopian 1949 novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. He is ostensibly the leader of Oceania, a totalitarian state wherein the ruling party, Ingsoc, wields total power "for its own sake" over the inhabitants. In the society that Orwell describes, every citizen is under constant surveillance by the authorities, mainly by telescreens. The people are constantly reminded of this by the slogan "Big Brother is watching you": a maxim that is ubiquitously on display throughout the novel.
Doublespeak is language that deliberately obscures, disguises, distorts, or reverses the meaning of words. Doublespeak may take the form of euphemisms, in which case it is primarily meant to make the truth sound more palatable. It may also refer to intentional ambiguity in language or to actual inversions of meaning. In such cases, doublespeak disguises the nature of the truth.
Eric Arthur Blair was an English novelist, poet, essayist, journalist, and critic who wrote under the pen name of George Orwell. His work is characterised by lucid prose, social criticism, opposition to totalitarianism, and support of democratic socialism.
Political fiction employs narrative to comment on political events, systems and theories. Works of political fiction, such as political novels, often "directly criticize an existing society or present an alternative, even fantastic, reality". The political novel overlaps with the social novel, proletarian novel, and social science fiction.
In the dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), by George Orwell, the word thoughtcrime describes a person's politically unorthodox thoughts, beliefs, and doubts that politically contradict the tenets of Ingsoc, the dominant ideology of Oceania. In the official language of Newspeak, the word crimethink describes the intellectual actions of a person who entertains and holds politically unacceptable thoughts; thus the government of The Party controls the speech, the actions, and the thoughts of the citizens of Oceania.
In political science, a reactionary or a reactionist is a person who holds political views that favor a return to the status quo ante—the previous political state of society—which the person believes possessed positive characteristics that are absent from contemporary society. As a descriptor term, reactionary derives from the ideological context of the left–right political spectrum. As an adjective, the word reactionary describes points of view and policies meant to restore a status quo ante.
Telescreens are devices that operate simultaneously as televisions, security cameras, and microphones. They are featured in George Orwell's dystopian 1949 novel Nineteen Eighty-Four as well as all film adaptations of the novel. In the novel and its adaptations, telescreens are used by the ruling Party in the totalitarian fictional state of Oceania to keep its subjects under constant surveillance, thus eliminating the chance of secret conspiracies against Oceania.
"Politics and the English Language" (1946) is an essay by George Orwell that criticised the "ugly and inaccurate" written English of his time and examined the connection between political orthodoxies and the debasement of language.
The NCTE George Orwell Award for Distinguished Contribution to Honesty and Clarity in Public Language is an award given since 1975 by the Public Language Award Committee of the National Council of Teachers of English. It is awarded annually to "writers who have made outstanding contributions to the critical analysis of public discourse."
References to George Orwell's 1949 dystopian political novel Nineteen Eighty-Four themes, concepts and plot elements are also frequent in other works, particularly popular music and video entertainment.
Why Orwell Matters, released in the UK as Orwell's Victory, is a book-length biographical essay by Christopher Hitchens. In it, the author relates George Orwell's thoughts on and actions in relation to: The British Empire, the Left, the Right, the United States of America, English conventions, feminism, and his controversial list for the British Foreign Office.
A police state describes a state whose government institutions exercise an extreme level of control over civil society and liberties. There is typically little or no distinction between the law and the exercise of political power by the executive, and the deployment of internal security and police forces play a heightened role in governance. A police state is a characteristic of authoritarian, totalitarian or illiberal regimes. Such governments are typically one-party states, but police-state-level control may emerge in multi-party systems as well.
In the dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, by George Orwell, Emmanuel Goldstein is the principal enemy of the state of Oceania. The political propaganda of The Party portrays Goldstein as the leader of The Brotherhood, a secret, counter-revolutionary organization who violently oppose the leadership of Big Brother and the Ingsoc régime of The Party.
Doublethink is a process of indoctrination in which subjects are expected to simultaneously accept two conflicting beliefs as truth, often at odds with their own memory or sense of reality. Doublethink is related to, but differs from, hypocrisy.
A dystopia, also called a cacotopia or anti-utopia, is a community or society that is extremely bad or frightening. It is often treated as an antonym of utopia, a term that was coined by Sir Thomas More and figures as the title of his best known work, published in 1516, which created a blueprint for an ideal society with minimal crime, violence, and poverty. The relationship between utopia and dystopia is in actuality, not one simple opposition, as many utopian elements and components are found in dystopias as well, and vice versa.
In the dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984), by George Orwell, Newspeak is the fictional language of Oceania, a totalitarian superstate. To meet the ideological requirements of Ingsoc in Oceania, the Party created Newspeak, which is a controlled language of simplified grammar and limited vocabulary designed to limit a person's ability for critical thinking. The Newspeak language thus limits the person's ability to articulate and communicate abstract concepts, such as personal identity, self-expression, and free will, which are thoughtcrimes, acts of personal independence that contradict the ideological orthodoxy of Ingsoc collectivism.
Nineteen Eighty-Four is a dystopian novel and cautionary tale by English writer George Orwell. It was published on 8 June 1949 by Secker & Warburg as Orwell's ninth and final book completed in his lifetime. Thematically, it centres on the consequences of totalitarianism, mass surveillance, and repressive regimentation of people and behaviours within society. Orwell, a democratic socialist, modelled the authoritarian state in the novel on the Soviet Union in the era of Stalinism and Nazi Germany. More broadly, the novel examines the role of truth and facts within societies and the ways in which they can be manipulated.
Vladimir Emmanuilovich Shlapentokh was a Soviet and American sociologist, historian, political scientist, and university professor, notable for his work on Soviet and Russian society and politics as well as theoretical work in sociology.
Glory is the second novel of Zimbabwean author NoViolet Bulawayo. Published on 8 March 2022, Glory is a political satire inspired by George Orwell's novel Animal Farm. It was shortlisted for the 2022 Booker Prize which was announced on September 6, 2022.
Masha Karp is a political journalist and a scholar on the work of George Orwell. She is the author of two books about Orwell: his biography, in Russian (2017) and "George Orwell and Russia", in English (2023). She is also a translator of English and German literature into Russian, a literary critic and a former BBC editor.
What "Orwellian" really means – Noah Tavlin (5:31), TED-Ed [1] 
