Hypocritical Language and the Empire’s Double Lies: Pragmatic Study of the Selected Novels of George Orwell

Subject Areas :

Mohammad Hadi Jahandideh ¹ , Jalal Rahimian ²

1 - Payame Noor University, Tehran, Iran
2 - Department of English, Faculty of Humanities, University of Shiraz, Shiraz, Iran

Received: 2021-02-15 Accepted : 2021-07-07 Published : 2021-01-01

Keywords: culture, pragmatics, society, Imperialism, Grice’s Theory of Implicature,

Abstract :

World literature is replete with many texts that depict the imperialists using hypocritical language as an oppressive device for intimidating their subjects. The oppressors pretended to be the civilizers by inculcating the idea of “Benevolent Colonization” into the minds of the oppressed. In this paper, the researchers investigate how situational and linguistic contexts affect the meanings of utterances in George Orwell’s selected novels. It is aimed to remove the gaps in the multicultural world by scrutinizing the power of language pragmatically. The methodology is qualitative based on Grice’s theory of implicature. The novels under investigation both violate and adhere to the four maxims of Grice’s theory of Conversational Implicature. The findings of the paper indicate that language can be used as a suppressive weapon for supporting imperialist objectives or hamper satisfactory human relations, and that positive gifts of imperialism come with the caveat that they are being achieved at the cost of exploiting the oppressed.