Politics and the English Language

The motion: “Plain language is a moral duty, and rhetorical ornament is a way of avoiding meaning.”

Your opponent: George Orwell · Course: Pearson Edexcel International GCSE English Language A (4EA1) · Assessment objectives: AO4, AO5

Orwell wrote the essay that made this argument famous. He will also tell you where it is wrong.

What you are asked to argue

Argue for or against, using your knowledge of how a speech is constructed for purpose and audience.

The conventions of a speech: direct address, structure, rhetorical patterning, the close
Purpose, audience and form as the drivers of every choice
Register and how it shifts within a single piece
The difference between ornament that carries meaning and ornament that replaces it

Disagreeing with the figure is not an error. Any of these can score full marks if argued well:

That plainness is a style choice with moral consequences rather than a duty
That the essay's own prose is highly patterned, which qualifies its argument — a genuinely strong move
That the duty applies to political writing specifically and not to writing as such

Wrong: Plain language means short words and simple sentences.
The correction: It means never using a longer word, a stale metaphor or a passive construction where a concrete alternative exists. A plain sentence can be long and complex.
Wrong: Listing rhetorical devices in a speech makes it persuasive.
The correction: A device persuades only when it carries the argument. A tricolon around an empty claim is three times nothing.

A judgement about plainness and ornament grounded in what a speech has to do, with the self-undermining objection confronted.

Read the life before you argue with it — the case you are about to meet was built by a real person, over a real career:

The life of George Orwell — Chronicler of the Total State · Writer & Journalist · 1903–1950

Prepare for this debate → — the motion, the rounds and the marking descriptors, then the debate itself. Free, no account needed.