I keep reading in science magazines, like Discover, how closely linked the physical brain is to our language. If a person has the left hemisphere of his brain damaged, he cannot say certain parts of his language. I show him a cup and ask him for the name and he can't say it. He knows what I'm asking him, and he knows it's a cup, but he just can't say it. So this patient goes through surgery and the doctor wakes him up during the procedure to test if he's fixing the right part; to do so, he delivers light shocks, and these shocks make him babble. What a wonderful puppetry.
Or, if instead of thinking of this as puppetry, how about if you think of it in terms of music. The patient is like a harpsichord, and the doctor plucks certain strings that make him say a word; that is, produce a sound. If he brings in another doctor and some nurses, each armed with the electroshock device, they can maybe make a melody out of the sounds; or in this case, produce whole phrases out of the individual words. Then, Orwell would chime in and say that this individual already has ready-made phrases in his brain that just need a very small push to come out. So a nurse's assistant comes and joins the surgery, delivering electroshocks to the back part of his brain, making the patient spew all kinds of tired phrases and cliches. All medical staff combined, the doctors and nurses in charge of the melody, the main phrase, and the nurse's assistant in charge of the harmony, the cliches, make out of this patient an eloquent person.
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