Orwell's preoccupation with language as a theme can be seen in his protagonist's dislike of advertising slogans in Keep the Aspidistra Flying, an early work. This preoccupation is also visible in Homage to Catalonia, and continues as an underlying theme of Orwell's work in the years after World War II.[22]
The themes in "Politics and the English Language" anticipate Orwell's development of Newspeak in Nineteen Eighty-Four.[8] Michael Shelden calls Newspeak "the perfect language for a society of bad writers...because it reduces the number of choices available to them".[10] Shelden says that Newspeak first corrupts writers morally, then politically, "since it allows writers to cheat themselves and their readers with ready-made prose".[10]
