NEWSPEAK IN THE LITERARY AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF DORIS LESSING

Abstract

The article examines elements of Newspeak in the literary autobiography of British writer and Nobel Prize winner Doris Lessing – “Under my skin, Volume One of My Autobiography, to 1949”. It analyzes the writer’s use of the concept of linguistic manipulation, demonstrated by George Orwell in his novel “1984,” to describe colonial discourse in Southern Rhodesia (modern-day Zimbabwe) and the discourse of totalitarian political regimes of the 20th century. The linguistic instruments of resistance to Newspeak are analyzed. The paper demonstrates that the Newspeak elements in the autobiographical text are not only a literary device but also a critical tool serving to debunk the various ideological systems to which Doris Lessing belonged. The researchers conclude that the text of the autobiography shows the author’s strategy of criticism of Newspeak. Lessing demonstrates the similarities between colonial and communist discourse. Exposing almost identical linguistic ways of controlling and manipulating the minds of both the colonized inhabitants of Southern Rhodesia and fellow Communists, she reveals the deeper roots of totalitarianism, turning to world history and finding the origins of totalitarian language in the events of the French Revolution.