Name: ジョージ・オーウェルの『1984年』第2部：クラッシュコース文学第402号 (George Orwell's 1984, Part 2: Crash Course Literature #402)
Uploaded: 2021-01-14T07:49:03.000Z
Duration: 12 min 42 s
Description: VoiceTubeの動画で発音を聞きながら英語表現を覚えよう！学べる英語：

Hi I'm John Green, this is Crash Course
literature, and today we're going back to

the future–that is now past–to George
Orwell's 1984, which imagines a terrifying

基礎受動態

world in which every human activity is recorded
and monitored.

How unpleasant would that be, he said staring
into a camera lens.

So, as mentioned in our previous episode,
the Newspeak language created in the book

was intended “to make speech [...] as nearly
as possible independent of consciousness”

In an episode of Crash Course Psychology,
my brother, Hank, defined “consciousness”

as “our awareness of ourselves and our environment.”

I would add that consciousness also explains
our ability to experience life and to feel

So can the structure of a language actually
be “independent of human consciousness.”?

Well, today, we'll explore whether language
is imposed on us from the outside or whether

I'm also gonna talk about how this novel
was perceived, when it was published, in the

actual 1984, and how people think about it
today.

And we'll go ahead and make some connections
between Orwell's novel and our current society's

really confusing relationship with truth and
surveillance.

Yeah, we can still criticize surveillance
society.

INTRO
In 1984, Orwell's protagonist, Winston Smith,

works in the Records Department of the Ministry
of Truth (in Newspeak, known as “Minitrue”).

He adjusts financial and weather forecasts
so that “Big Brother's” predictions

He also removes references to “unpersons,”
or “vaporised” political dissidents.

And he rewrites history so that Oceania appears
always to have been at war with EastAsia.

It changes, depending on shifting allegiances.

The “central tenet” of Ingsoc (the version
of English Socialism practiced in Oceania)

is that the past is “mutable,” that it
has “no objective existence,” and it exists

only in “written records and in human memories.”

Orwell writes:
The past is whatever the records and the memories

And since the Party is in full control of
all records and in equally full control of

the minds of its members, it follows that
the past is whatever the Party chooses to

So, Winston mainly writes in Newspeak--a version
of English with grammar and vocabulary designed

The idea is that, without the language to
express dissent, political crimes, in thought

But quickly, before we get to the chicken
and egg problem of language and thought, though,

I want to pause to ask you to think about
this novel's relationship to memory.

Now, we know from neuroscience that each time
a memory is accessed, you're remembering

it anew--there's no, like, spot in your
brain containing a memory; it is formed each

And that means that your memories are shaped
by your now--and that at least to some extent,

the Party is right when it says that telling
people what they remember does change their

So, the Party is manipulating a real, structural
feature of the human brain--as we learned

in our discussion of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's
One Hundred Years of Solitude, “What matters

in life is not what happens to you but what
you remember and how you remember it.”

OK, so with that noted, let's turn to thought:
Many experts have explored to what extent

our ability to think is dependent on language.

In the late 1920s, the ethno-linguist Edward
Sapir began talking in academic circles about

his theory that the structure of the language
a person uses determines how they perceive

When his student, Benjamin Whorf, published
his writings in the 1950s, this theory became

known as “the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis.”

Then, in the 1960s, Noam Chomsky questioned
the premise of this theory, arguing that humans

are born with an innate knowledge of grammar
that forms the basis for language acquisition.

And in 1994, Steven Pinker argued that language
is a basic instinct, and that the ability

to understand, manipulate, and add to it based
on one's own experiences is an expression

In fact, he wrote a book called The Language
Instinct.

But before any of these theories were published,
Orwell was also thinking about the relationship

The word “instinct” appears 31 times in
1984.

Winston is a creature of instinct, and his
strongest instinct is to survive: “To hang

on from day to day and from week to week,
spinning out a present that had no future,

seemed an unconquerable instinct, just as
one's lungs will always draw the next breath

so long as there is air available” (emphasis
added, 155).

Winston understands that his society is inhumane:
“It MIGHT be true that the average human

being was better off now than he had been
before the Revolution.

The only evidence to the contrary was the
mute protest in your own bones, the instinctive

feeling that the conditions you lived in were
intolerable and that at some other time they

must have been different” (emphasis added,
76).

So to Orwell there are human instincts toward
generosity and survival and liberty, but Orwell

is also aware how dangerous human instincts
can be, particularly when manipulated by a

For example, the Party transforms an innate
fear of death into mob violence:

“For how could the fear, the hatred, and
the lunatic credulity which the Party needed

in its members be kept at the right pitch,
except by bottling down some powerful instinct

It also transforms the survival instinct into
a form of self-repression: “Crimestop”

is the ability to cut off one's ideas, “...as
though by instinct, at the threshold of any

But of course, those thoughts are only dangerous
because the government might kill you for

But -- and I think this is critical -- writing
in Newspeak and participating in Party rallies

alone does not alter Winston's consciousness,
and it doesn't seem to change his instincts

-- he's still able to love Julia, and in
little ways to live his “ownlife” life.

But then, eventually, Winston does betray
his girlfriend, Julia, and he comes to believe

that he “should” repress his thoughts.

So ultimately, he loses his sense of self.

But not, I would argue, entirely because of
Newspeak.