To better understand the relation between X and Y, one should explore what happens to Y in at least two cases: i) if X gets humongous and ii) if X gets minuscule.

If expanding one’s vocabulary is correlated with a better understanding of life (as an earlier entry suggests), does shrinking the acceptable dictionary reduce the appreciation of life? To demonstrate the value of language, George Orwell considered the consequences of words being systematically purged from existence.

In the dystopian world of 1984, George Orwell described an extreme totalitarian regime that sought to control not only actions but also thoughts of citizens. The government succeeded in doing so through different methods, including the creation of Newspeak, a much-simplified language with many words, clauses, and patterns continuously removed to limit the people’s ability to express themselves and, effectively, think. I’ll let George Orwell speak in his own words.

— Don’t you see the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end, we shall make thoughtcrime impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it. … Every year fewer and fewer words, and the range of consciousness always a little smaller.

— The word free still existed in Newspeak, but it could only be used in such statements as ‘This dog is free from lice’ or ‘This field is free from weeds.’ It could not be used in its old sense of ‘politically free’ or ‘intellectually free,’ since political and intellectual freedom no longer existed even as concepts, and were therefore of necessity nameless.

— Newspeak was designed not to extend but to diminish the range of thought, and this purpose was indirectly assisted by cutting the choice of words down to a minimum.