[Peter Chant]

way, the
party member knew what constituted right conduct, and in exceedingly
vague, generalized terms he knew what kinds of departure from it were
possible. His sexual life, for example, was entirely regulated by the
two Newspeak words sexcrime (sexual immorality) and goodsex (chastity).
Sexcrime covered all sexual misdeeds whatever. It covered fornication,
adultery, homosexuality, and other perversions, and, in addition, normal
intercourse practised for its own sake. There was no need to enumerate
them separately, since they were all equally culpable, and, in
principle, all punishable by death. In the C vocabulary, which consisted
of scientific and technical words, it might be necessary to give
specialized names to certain sexual aberrations, but the ordinary
citizen had no need of them. He knew what was meant by goodsex -- that is
to say, normal intercourse between man and wife, for the sole purpose of
begetting children, and without physical pleasure on the part of the
woman: all else was sexcrime. In Newspeak it was seldom possible to
follow a heretical thought further than the perception that it was
heretical: beyond that point the necessary words were nonexistent.

No word in the B vocabulary was ideologically neutral. A great many were
euphemisms. Such words, for instance, as joycamp (forced-labour camp) or
Minipax (Ministry of Peace, i.e. Ministry of War) meant almost the exact
opposite of what they appeared to mean. Some words, on the other hand,
displayed a frank and contemptuous understanding of the real nature of
Oceanic society. An example was prolefeed, meaning the rubbishy
entertainment and spurious news which the Party handed out to the
masses. Other words, again, were ambivalent, having the connotation
?good? when applied to the Party and ?bad? when applied to its enemies.
But in addition there were great numbers of words which at first sight
appeared to be mere abbreviations and which derived their ideological
colour not from their