Professor Lancelot Hogben Character Analysis

A zoologist and linguist, Hogben is the author of one of the five passages that Orwell uses to illustrate bad writing. While the point of his passage is difficult (if not impossible) to parse out, clues give the readers an idea of the biological subject matter. For one, there’s mention of ducks. The second clue is that the passage is from the book Interglossa. Orwell doesn’t describe the book, but readers may know that Interglossa is Hogben’s attempt to construct an international lexicon of science and technology. That context—which, again, is lacking in Orwell’s essay—gives readers a better idea of what’s going on in Hogben’s passage. Specifically, Hogben appears to be describing the use of different phrases as a part of his lexicon. Orwell derides Hogben’s passage as an example of a writer too lazy to look words up in the “dictionary and see what it means.” Like Laski, Hogben was likely well-known to his audience as a political activist. While Orwell makes no note of Hogben’s activism, readers of the time were likely familiar with Hogben as a biologist who advocated against eugenics. It’s also possible that, still like Laski, by attaching a political activist to a seemingly apolitical passage, Orwell is subtly reinforcing the claim that all discourse is political discourse, and that politics and language are tightly intertwined.