UEL 2013

George Orwell was the pen name of British author Eric Arthur Blair (25 June 1903 – 21 January 1950). Noted as a political and cultural commentator, he is among the most widely admired English-language writers of the twentieth century. During most of his career Orwell was best known for his journalism; however, contemporary readers are more often introduced to Orwell as a novelist. His most successful books are Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four.

The writer is also known for his insights about the political implications of the use of language. His concern over the power of language to shape reality is also reflected in his invention of “Newspeak”, the official language of the imaginary country of Oceania in his novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. “Newspeak” is a variant of English in which vocabulary is strictly limited by government ordering. The goal is to make it increasingly difficult to express ideas that contradict the official line – with the final aim of making it impossible even to conceive such ideas. A number of words and phrases that Orwell invented in Nineteen Eighty-Four have entered the standard vocabulary, such as “memory hole”, “Big Brother”, “Room 101”, “doublethink”, “thought police” and “newspeak”.

(Adaptado de: George Orwell. Disponível em: . Acesso em: 12 ago. 2012.)

De acordo com o texto, George Orwell, pseudônimo adotado pelo escritor britânico Eric Arthur Blair,