George Orwell 1984- Newspeak and Oldspeak

In chapter 5 of the novel 1984 by George Orwell, the totalitarian regime is cancelling the old word system of Oldspeak and imposing a new word system of Newspeak. This happens as the imposing regime removes words from the Oldspeak and makes the language more basic and less complex in nature. The regime wants to necessitate the use of Newspeak as over time it is believed that this will narrow the vocabulary of the nation thus limiting the range of thinking that can be carried out by an individual. As one of the character in the book states: 'Don't you see the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought?' This shows us that the totalitarian regime believes that the thought of a person is channeled by the language he or she speaks. The character further states: 'In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it.' Thoughtcrime is when an individual thought differently of the regime and had their own personal opinion and the abolition of thoughtcrime through the use of narrowing the vocabulary clearly shows a connection between language and thought. There is a general assumption in the book that our thoughts are formed and controled by our language, consequently meaning that the regimes main purpose of implementing Newspeak is an attempt of radical control over everyone's thoughts. This assumption can be found in real life in the form of 'Linguistic Determinism' which is sometimes called 'Sapir-Whorf hypothesis' which boldly states that our thoughts, indeed, are completely limited by our language.