Vocabulary

The New York Times had an interesting piece on how people put some much value and attention into having a large vocabulary.

In the years since, we English speakers have become only more concerned with the size and quality of our own personal word hoards. We seem to be under the impression that a small vocabulary is one of those things, like bad teeth or poor manners, that can hold us back in life... Yet before you set aside that copy of "Goodnight Moon" in favor of reading to your progeny from Merriam-Webster in the evening, consider that it is not simply the number of words but also how they are used that is important. Most famous quotations, for instance, are not full of polysyllabic Latinisms. Brandishing 25-cent words unnecessarily will mark you as a blowhard, not an effective communicator. Winston Churchill's oft-repeated statement about how he had nothing to offer but "blood, toil, tears and sweat" would have elicited nothing but puzzlement had he replaced that quartet of short nouns with the synonyms "vermeil", "moiling", "delacrimation", and "sudorification."

This made me think of the sociologist Howard S. Becker and his 'plain style' of writing. He urges social scientists (and other academics) to write with clarity and make their work accessible. Too often academic writers fall into the trap of academic elitism, where they believe using big words and overly-technical language will show how smart and knowledgeable they are. It's believed that the more difficult the writing style, the more intellectual one sounds. Becker stated that these writers like to emphasize their "esoteric expertise". They write as if their audience knows almost as much about the subject as they do, and they do not explain things or make things clear.

Readers and students often fall into this trap as well -- where they're socialized to believe that people that use big words or a difficult writing style are smart (and, thus, this should be the method of choice). In his book, Writing for Social Scientists, Becker relayed what a grad student had told him. The student said, "Somewhere along the line, probably in college, I picked up on the fact that articulate people used big words, which impressed me. I remember taking two classes from a philosophy professor simply because I figured he must be really smart since I didn't know the meaning of the words he used in class. My notes from these classes are almost non-existent. I spent class time writing down the words he used that I didn't know, going home and looking them up. He sounded so smart to me simply because I didn't understand him." Not understanding what the teacher was saying was being mistaken for as a sign of intelligence (and no doubt, the teacher was probably intelligent; but, a great teacher makes their knowledge accessible, and actually teaches a student and gets through to them. This professor's teaching style doesn't sound all that effective if what this grad student mostly took from the class was new Scrabble words...). As a result of this importance put on big words and complicated writing styles, readers or students believe that if they don't understand the writing or what is being said, it's because it is above their head; they're not smart enough to understand it. When in actuality, the fault lies with the writer/teacher. A smart writer knows how to explain their work and make it accessible.

Howard Becker said, "Authors try to give substance and weight to what they wrote by sounding academic, even at the expense of their real meaning." He said that sociologists "habitually use twenty words where two will do" and that scholars often use unnecessary words because they think that if they "say it plainly it will sound like something anybody could say rather than the profound statement only a social scientist could make." He advised that you can write clear -- without having to replace any technical sociological language -- by replacing redundancies, "fancy writing", and "pompous phrases" (which, Becker says, you can substitute for more straight-forward language, "without losing anything but pretentiousness." Oh snap). Becker advocates replacing anything that can be simplified without damage to the thought.

And he's a jazz pianist. How dreamy.