The appen­dix “The Prin­ci­ples of Newspeak” details the ide­ol­o­gy behind Newspeak, the offi­cial lan­guage of Ocea­nia in 1984, designed to serve the needs of Ing­soc, or Eng­lish Social­ism. Although not yet a sole means of com­mu­ni­ca­tion, Newspeak was grad­u­al­ly being adopt­ed among Par­ty mem­bers, with the aim of replac­ing Old­speak by 2050. The lan­guage’s devel­op­ment focused on cre­at­ing a vocab­u­lary that not only expressed the thoughts per­mis­si­ble under Ing­soc but also elim­i­nat­ed any form of dis­sent­ing thought.

Newspeak sought to ren­der hereti­cal thoughts unthink­able by lim­it­ing vocab­u­lary and sim­pli­fy­ing gram­mar. For instance, the word “free” could only express phys­i­cal absence, negat­ing any con­cepts of polit­i­cal or intel­lec­tu­al free­dom, effec­tive­ly mak­ing such thoughts name­less. This reduc­tion of vocab­u­lary was cru­cial for dimin­ish­ing the range of thought and inten­tion behind lan­guage use.

The vocab­u­lary was cat­e­go­rized into three class­es: A, B, and C. The A vocab­u­lary includ­ed every­day words for basic activ­i­ties with rigid mean­ings devoid of nuance, dis­al­low­ing any lit­er­ary or com­plex dis­course. The gram­mar pro­mot­ed inter­change­abil­i­ty between parts of speech, cre­at­ing sim­pli­fied forms. Adjec­tives and adverbs were formed by adding spe­cif­ic suf­fix­es, fur­ther reduc­ing com­plex­i­ty.

The B vocab­u­lary was dis­tinct for its polit­i­cal impli­ca­tions. It con­sist­ed of com­pound words intend­ed to con­vey spe­cif­ic ide­o­log­i­cal atti­tudes, often obscur­ing broad­er mean­ings and requir­ing a deep under­stand­ing of Ing­soc to use them cor­rect­ly. These terms served as short­hand for com­plex ideas while dimin­ish­ing the com­plex­i­ty of thought.

Final­ly, the C vocab­u­lary addressed sci­en­tif­ic and tech­ni­cal terms, defined strict­ly to avoid unde­sir­able con­no­ta­tions. Over­all, Newspeak was con­struct­ed to sup­press oppos­ing ideas, mak­ing it near­ly impos­si­ble to artic­u­late unortho­dox opin­ions. By the time Newspeak was ful­ly adopt­ed, the dis­tinc­tions of Old­speak would be lost, sev­er­ing ties to pre­vi­ous con­cepts of free­dom, equal­i­ty, and objec­tive thought, ulti­mate­ly nar­row­ing per­spec­tives and main­tain­ing con­trol over the pop­u­lace’s minds through the lan­guage itself.