What ar Orwell's 3 main points of argument?

The essay is about the connection between politics and poor uses of language. It presents an argument for clear, simple, unpretentious language that attempts to represent its meaning—hence the unambiguous title.

Orwell feels that old, dead words should be abandoned, as he argues for original and independent thinking that comes from asserting agency in language—specifically in political speech. One of his main arguments is that repetitions derive from unoriginal thinking and unoriginal thinking leads to repetitions. He describes a form of indoctrination that happens when people use familiar turns of phrase in political speech. Rather than thinking independently, people pantomime a party line.

"Pretentious diction." This is an important target in Orwell’s broader critique. Use of pretentious diction (of which he gives a long list of examples) has specific political functions. Certain pretentious words aim to stand in for scientific objectivity. Pretentious adjectives are used to turn ugly international political processes into something sophisticated or to glorify war. Foreign words replace familiar English words as a way of giving an air of sophistication. He argues that one reason that political writers resort to the use of foreign words is because it’s easier than finding an accurate English word. Pretentious diction, he suggest, is mostly caused by laziness and its effect ultimately muddies the writer’s meaning.

Orwell also claims that political writing is bad writing. The cause of this has to do with writers being a mouthpiece for a general party line and not expressing their autonomous “opinion.” He claims that to do this in political writing is a rebellious act. Political pamphlets, speeches etc. have a commonality between different parties: this is that they never have a “fresh, vivid, homespun turn of speech” (255).