Written HCJ assessment - newspeak

‘Orwellian’ was identified as being destructive to welfare of a free society, a plan of propaganda, denial of truth, manipulation of the past and surveillance. It is something that is used in everyday life to control us as a society, many things use this. An example of this is the Government when they decide to erase information and memory from the public. The Government aren’t the only ones who would make George Orwell turn in his grave; advertising companies are also to blame. Most adverts in this day and age are considered to be newspeak, which is a term used to “control thought” within language. The people behind the adverts are merely telling us, the consumers, what we have to have even if we don’t need or want it. Advertisement is very crafty; they know how to sell their products through newspeak removing all negativity to show the product in a good light.

A good example is the well known advertisement for Dasani water often known as “bottled sperm”; the coca-cola company recollected 500,000 bottles in the UK due to having excess levels of bromate which is linked to cancer. I looked into slogans of water companies and I found many which are telling the consumer they must have this product, i.e. Infinity water, ‘the oldest way to stay young’. We all know water is good for you, but you can still drink as much water as you intend but at the end of the day we all get wrinkles and have grey hairs. When I looked for images of the advert, the majority of them had good looking ladies, or happy people holding the bottle of water. People are easily fooled in to thinking if they drink this water, they’ll soon become a young and attractive person. A slogan for Dasani water ‘Can’t live without it’. I know many people who don’t like water, yet they still go on living without it. I make these comments from a journalist’s point of view; most people wouldn’t give this a second thought. We are very passive when it comes to advertisement and the media, we believe what is said i.e. newspapers, news, television, radio etc but facts are easily twisted and end up bias.

Dasani water managed to cover up this scandal through the ‘Orwellian’ way, through newspeak the scandal was soon dismissed and somehow the public knew less and less about the subject matter. Not only was Coca-Cola accused of having selling poisonous water, but they were using everyday tap water. However I found a news story covering the scandal saying Coca-Cola were planning a £7 million re-launch on Dasani, to make the water popular again. This means more advertisement, and more covering up. I guess that’s how the world currently works; I don’t think George Orwell would be too pleased right now.