The problem with language
Here we go again; Looking for a reasonable textbook or two on the topic of the next chapter I’m working on, I came across this description on Amazon:
This is an extraordinarily academic book…[the author] writes in a very academic style, peppering his heavily footnoted prose with mathematical expressions and words like relevar and tuple. The academic style and highbrow language isn’t a bad thing, since this book deals with complicated, largely abstract phenomena in depth.
This is the kind of thing that drives me crazy about academic writing – and, in fact, writing in general. There is a widely-held absurd view that making language more complex is a good thing.
The reality of it is that it’s harder to write simply – to distill complex concepts to words that can be easily and clearly understood.
The goal of communication is the transmission of information – from my brain to your brain. What we should strive for is to take a piece of information in our minds, and craft a piece of language that, when heard, constructs an identical piece of information in the hearer’s mind. This is, of course, what networked computers do – they wrap information up, send it over, and unwrap it on the other end, with perfect accuracy.
For us, it’s hard, though – our thoughts are not ordered streams of 1s and 0s, and need to be carefully packaged in order to be shared. A piece of writing that reads simply is a thing to be celebrated! And yet, I have heard of parliamentary submissions, carefully crafted pieces of writing that effectively communicate complex issues, being immediately dismissed as simplistic or dumb (if I can understand it, it’s obviously not worthy). I’ve also heard of high-school English teachers criticising students’ writing – “the language isn’t impressive enough – put some more long words in“.
Language is generally subverted away from that central goal of communication. Often, it’s used as a means to intimidate or impress others, or to express self-importance.
If one looks at politics, in particular, it can be argued that language is being used for the exact opposite of communication – to make concepts less comprehensible, to disguise facts. The most obvious examples are ‘enhanced interrogation‘ and ‘information extraction’, ‘surgical strikes’ and ‘collateral damage’, ‘extraordinary rendition’, and ‘final solution’ – we love our euphemisms. Orwell had it right in 1945: “In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible.“
Aside from any political frustrations, it’s just plain ridiculous.
I can’t say I’m necessarily any better than anyone else at writing simply – this thesis may yet turn out to be mostly gibberish, but I object to any celebration of its unintelligibility.
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Came looking for a photoblog theme and found someone who has logical thought processes and expresses the thoughts extremely well :)