a cure for the incurable

I don’t really know how to begin this entry without feeling like stopping as soon as I start typing, so instead of dawdling with preliminaries, I’ll cut straight to the point. I’ve been thinking – and I’ve been thinking along these lines for quite some time – that if one wants one’s language to be defined by its complexity, then one should not be deterred from working toward this end. But there’s a problem here, and it’s that there’s the danger of the person becoming so possessed by a desire to appear precocious that he loses track of himself completely and beings to appear artificial to everyone. Big and esoteric words are pleasant to read and listen to if they come naturally from the person who writes or speaks them, and don’t sound like the result of a failed attempt at appearing precocious. This display of pseudo-virtuosity is not only far from pleasant to witness, but also damaging to the person in question, in the sense that there’s a possibility that what used to be great language skills becomes obscure behind this falsehood. Some people, possibly with the intent of making their writing absolutely inscrutable to the common man, tend to substitute every common word with an esoteric synonym, and in addition, throw in other words at random – words that probably don’t even make any kind of sense in the desired context. Moreover, the abovementioned synonyms probably don’t fit the context themselves, but only bear a loose resemblance to the original word. I wouldn’t call such language flowery, or even pretentious: I wouldn’t call it language it all. It’s an abomination.

You may find examples that illustrate my point anywhere on the Internet: but they are rare, because people choose either to rely on the common, simple words that they know, or, if they have a wide vocabulary as a result of their exposure to books or to people with a wide vocabulary, to rely on more complex words. Vocabulary can also be widened in other ways: for example, in preparation for certain tests like the SAT, students are required or advised to memorize the words in a wordlist. That’s all well and good, but what happens if you harbor a deliberate desire to mislead people with the obscurity of your language, and at the same time you don’t pay close attention to the definitions of the words you spend the greater part of your day memorizing from the dictionary or from wordlists? The result is a disaster. Which is why I always advocate books as a means to learn new words: that way you know the context in which you came across a particular word and can reproduce it whenever you wish to use it, and subsequently make your own contexts when you’re experienced enough, instead of not knowing the context from the start and messing everything up by, like I’ve already mentioned, substituting it for a synonym with which it’s not interchangeable in whatever context you want to use it in.

On a happy note, the damage is not irreversible. There’s still hope. You could lock away all the esoteric words you know in a safe place at the back of your head and start paying more attention to an author’s usage of words whenever you read a book. In course of time, you’re more than likely to come across the words that you’ve previously used indiscriminately and incongruously in all sorts of contexts. And in such a case, noticing the sharp contrast between the author’s usage of the words and your own, you’re more than likely not to repeat your mistake in the future. At least that’s how I see things. However, there is only ever hope for improvement if the party in need of improvement acknowledges that there’s room for improvement. Some people are blinded by their arrogance and self-righteousness to a degree that would incline them to argue unrelentingly with anyone who tries to correct their mistakes, and if such people are unhappily gifted with the ability to debate, they almost invariably win the argument. But they’re still the losing party, of course, and all you can do is hope that you never come across anything written by them again, since, if you tend to think like I do, you’re likely to feel nauseous.

On a final note, I didn’t write this with a specific purpose in mind. This stuff was more like general advice, which I know is strange coming from someone like me. My hopeless English teacher, about whom I’ve written yet another story recently, is a fine example of someone who routinely fails at being grandiloquent because the words he chooses to use are not nearly in the right context. (That plus the fact that his grammar is impossibly bad, but that’s a different story.) I actually wrote this thing with a certain someone I know in mind who perfectly fits the description of the pseudo-virtuoso I have described. If you’re not either of the two people mentioned in this paragraph but still see yourself in the above sentences, I urge you to take my advice. It will help, and preclude many a debacle in the future, like for example, what would inevitably happen at a board meeting if you were to present an account of things in your own words to the people present, or something of the sort.