George Orwell on free speech

Derek Ball

doi:10.1093/monist/onaf030

George Orwell on free speech

Derek Ball^*

^*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

Abstract

This paper draws two themes from Orwell’s writing on free speech. The first is that free speech is valuable because speech has the power to motivate political action. I develop an argument, building on resources drawn from Orwell, that allowing free speech is likely to produce good political action. The second (which I develop by connecting Orwell’s view with contemporary writing on hermeneutical injustice) is that free speech requires adequate conceptual and linguistic resources, and hence that free speech can be significantly limited by depriving people of conceptual and linguistic resources.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	44-60
Number of pages	17
Journal	The Monist
Volume	109
Issue number	1
Early online date	29 Jan 2026
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1093/monist/onaf030
Publication status	E-pub ahead of print - 29 Jan 2026

Keywords

George Orwell
Free speech

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10.1093/monist/onaf030Licence: CC BY-NC

Ball_2026_Monist_George-Orwell-free-speech_CC
© The Author(s) 2026. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Final published version, 476 KBLicence: CC BY-NC

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George Orwell on free speech

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