Logophobia

Mr. Harris, in an article about Orwell's Newspeak which appeared in the Times Literary Supplement on the sixth of January 1984, informs us that "logophobia is not an exclusively twentieth-century phenomenon. It goes back to the Greek philosopher Cratylus, whose logophobia was so acute that eventually, we are told, he renounced the use of words as a mode of expression altogether. Orwell was by no means so desperate a case. What makes him such a typical representative of twentieth-century logophobia - as distinct from the more esoteric logophobia of the early Wittgenstein - is his ultimate faith in the doctrine of plain representation."