> > Anyway, there is a word in 1984: duckspeak. Now, my impression of the word was that it meant to speak constantly without any actual thought behind it. My teacher says that the word means to say something which can be interpreted at either good or bad depending on who you are talking to. I still agree with my opinion, but of those who have read 1984 am I the only one?
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> I don't think I've read the book 1984 since the year 1984, so my memory may be wrong -- but I thought the term was "quacktalk", or possibly "quackspeak". And I agree with your interpretation of its meaning. What your teacher describes is "doubletalk" ("doublespeak"?).
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Sorry to make ANOTHER contradiction, but...oh, what the heck. As far as I can remember, the word *was* duckspeak, and, like many Newspeak words, it has more than one meaning. This may have been what your teacher meant, in fact...the book says (again, if my rather rusty memory serves me correctly) that "duckspeak" can either mean the enemy's incoherent babbling (definitely a negative word) or it can mean 'quacking' out what the Party says without thinking about it (in the context of that society, a positive word). I don't remember ever coming across the word "doubletalk", but there was the word "doublethink", meaning to accept two contradictory meanings of the same thing, like with the understanding of the word "duckspeak". I think it was a lot more complicated than that, but that was the general idea.

As regards the second thing said, I *don't* think that the book says the government *is* running our lives; rather, I take it as a warning that this could happen without anyone noticing. What is quite scary is that many of the "futuristic" things portayed in the book (the speakwrite, telescreens) have already been invented.

Phil-"Nasty horrid book - well worth reading, but terrifying"-bee