Newspeak, the engineered language of George Orwell's novel "Nineteen Eighty-Four," is discussed in the context of Orwell's wider views on language and politics and the need for linguistic intervention as part of the struggle against tyranny, and the related or opposed ideas of some of Orwell's contemporaries and Saussure. Orwell worried that English in the mid-20th century was in a perilous state, because those who speak and write it do so following the model of Saussure, treating words as though they were unconnected to reality and therefore producing meanings that are arbitrary and internal to the language rather than engaging with the world. (KFT)