European Journal of English Language and Linguistics Research Vol.5, No.8, pp.25-31, September 2017 ___Published by European Centre for Research Training and Development UK (www.eajournals.org) 25 Print ISSN: ISSN 2053-406X, Online ISSN: ISSN 2053-4078 LANGUAGE AS THE DEVICE FOR PSYCHOLOGICAL MANIPULATION IN GEORGE ORWELL’S NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR: A PSYCHOLINGUISTIC ANALYSIS Md. Mozaffor Hossain Assistant Professor, Department of English, Northern University of Business and Technology Khulna, Bangladesh ABSTRACT: Language is the unique human talent that works amazingly in molding one’s thoughts and deeds. If grown unrestricted, it can help people widen their notions about things and issues in and around them. On the other hand, if shrunk and chained, it hinders the flourishing of ideas and information. The blossoming as well as the limiting power of language has been very perspicuously illustrated by George Orwell in his dystopian novel, 1984. How linguistic constituents hold the absolute ability to do and undo human thoughts has been portrayed in the novel in the most striking manner. Orwell has shown how language can manipulate psychological functions supreme-handedly. To lead popular thought to a certain target, language has to be engineered in the required mechanism. It does so, and attains complete control over people’s mind. This paper examines how language sets a demarcation line for human psychological processes. It attempts to dig deep into the linguistic treatment in 1984 and comes up with a vivid description of the dominance of language on people’s mental procedure. It investigates the manipulations of the ‘Newspeak’ and strives to grasp a psycholinguistic analysis of the novel. KEYWORDS: Language, Psychology, manipulation, Nineteen Eighty Four, psycholinguistic INTRODUCTION In Ocenea, the totalitarian state in the novel, there prevails the invented language, Newspeak that determines what people are to speak there. In the way what a language basically does, it defines what people think in reality. The ‘Big Brother’-tailored language constrains people’s thinking and lets them speak in accordance with the likings of the party in power. For dictating what people would talk and feel, they put into use a certain prescribed lexicon that shrinks the domain of popular thought. To retain people’s thoughts and expressions under absolute control, the incumbent government in the novel gives a threatening shape to the language. In fact, language in George Orwell’s 1984 is more for intimidation than for regular communication. Spoken, read, written and listened, all the versions of the language are mechanized in such a manner so as to coerce the users to be in an unconscious apprehension day in and day out. Wherever one goes, there is the ‘enormous face gazing from the wall’ (Orwell, 1954, p. 7) that has its caption beneath it “BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU” (Orwell, 1954, p. 7). It’s quite decipherable how this constantly awe-inspiring phenomenon holds people frightened. There is the omnipresent ‘telescreen’ (Orwell, 1954, p. 8) that ‘receives and transmits simultaneously’ (Orwell, 1954, p. 8). Any sound of talking or whispering above a certain low level is picked up by the telescreen and instantly transmitted to the headquarter. There remains the ubiquitous ‘Thought Police’ (Orwell, 1954, p. 8) that plugs a wire or something into anybody to monitor and read his/her physical as well as mental movement. One is ‘overheard and scrutinized’ (Orwell, 1954, p. 8) incessantly. One living in this State must earn these habits