Politics and The English Language - Critical Reception

Critical Reception

In his biography of Orwell, Michael Shelden called the article "his most important essay on style", while Bernard Crick made no reference to the work at all in his original biography, reserving his praise for Orwell's essays in Polemic, which cover a similar political theme. Terry Eagleton praised its demystification of political language but later became disenchanted with Orwell.

With regard to his admonition to avoid using the passive voice, Orwell has been blamed for not practising what he preached. Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage (page 720) refers to three statistical studies of passive versus active sentences in various periodicals: "the highest incidence of passive constructions was 13 percent. Orwell runs to a little over 20 percent in 'Politics and the English Language.' Clearly he found the construction useful in spite of his advice to avoid it as much as possible."

Introductory writing courses frequently cite this essay. A 1999 study found that the essay was reprinted 118 times in 325 editions of 58 readers published between 1946 and 1996 that were intended for use in college-level composition courses.