Letting Meanings Choose Words -- Nyuk! Nyuk! Nyuk!

Eric Arthur Blair's palliative measure that masks symptoms but does not actually cure underlying conditions does not suit The University of Puget Clowns [ ® Susan Resneck PieRce]

In his classic essay "Politics and the English Language," Eric Arthur Blair informed me that

######What is above all needed is to let the meaning choose the word,
######and not the other way around. In prose, the worst thing one can

######do with words is surrender to them. When you think of a
######concrete object, you think wordlessly, and then, if you want
######to describe the thing you have been visualizing you probably
######hunt about until you find the exact words that seem to fit it.
######When you think of something abstract you are more
######inclined to use words from the start, and unless you make a
######conscious effort to prevent it, the existing dialect
######will come rushing in and do the job for you, at the expense
######of blurring or even changing your meaning. Probably
######it is better to put off using words as long as possible
######and get one's meaning as clear as one can through pictures and
######sensations. Afterward one can choose -- not simply accept -- the
######phrases that will best cover the meaning, and then switch round
######and decide what impressions one's words are likely to make
######on another person.
##########
##########
Kindly overlook the many aspects of that passage that are patent blather and focus please on the blather that may be latent:

If you let your meaning choose your words and if your meaning is at all nuanced or complicated, almost no reader will be able to understand you amid post-literacy, and you will run afoul of Mr. Blair’s own rules.

That is my contention and my meaning in this entry. Let me now choose my words.

I know not when literacy gave way to post-literacy. The first person whom I heard call ours the Post-Literate Era was Jerry Collins. I'll have to ask him to fix a threshold or period.

I know that academics live unabashedly in post-literacy because colleagues have taught me as much over the years. I have often relied on a colleague to proofread my drafts intended for academic audiences. My Proofreader has counseled me to keep things simple even at severe costs in oversimplification. In other words, let simplicity and facility of wording and phrasing shape or bound my meaning. When I have protested that I have chosen exactly the words that should convey my meaning and my case, My Proofreader has patronized me and my audience by the reminder that I must dumb down even prose intended for faculty.

Mr. Proofreader must regard his colleagues as clowns!

In this counsel My Proofreader has often reiterated the tactical advice of another Puget Clown, who claims that one always prevails in campus forensics if one says something like: "I am clear; my opponents are confused." If one's opponents are confusing a meeting of faculty by admitting realities or sorting through tradeoffs or thinking carefully, precisely, and honestly aloud, the opponents have delivered themselves into the clutches of a gibe. What the faculty cannot understand they will not vote for, so assure colleagues that they do not understand the novel, the logical, or the seldom uttered because the originator of an argument is himself or herself confused. In effect, The Tactician advises that one deploy this "syllogism:"

##########
##########The speaker has said something unexpected.

##########The unexpected is harder to understand than the predictable.

##########The difficulty of understanding lies either with the speaker
####################or the audience.

##########The lack of understanding cannot be yours.

##########Thus, whenever you are not speaking, the absence of
####################understanding is due to shortcomings
####################of the speaker, not of you.

##########Hence, what confuses you is not your fault but the speaker's.

##########Hence, you should adhere to the familiar, the clichéd,
####################and the reassuring and reject the
####################speaker's confusion.
##########
##########

The Tactician revels in his own superiority to stooges who, like recently unthawed cave people or a recently assembled monster, fear what they have never heard and do not want to trouble themselves to think about, let alone to understand. My Proofreader at least has the grace to lament post-literacy, but The Tactician spies an opportunity to get his way and to have his way with colleagues.

The Tactician assuredly regards faculty as jokers ... at best.

The Tactician and My Proofreader have taught me that the sort of writing that Mr. Blair was on about is overly optimistic for governance of and politicking at Puget Clowns. If, following Mr. Blair, I determine my meaning precisely and select just the right words or phrases to convey that meaning, I will make myself obscure to colleagues.

Clowns to the left of me / Jokers to the right / Here I am

Perhaps worse, I have been advised by colleagues who do not acknowledge an implication that My Proofreader and The Tactician accept:

We are so deeply into Post-Literacy that an academic who uses vocabulary beyond common usage or the SAT [whichever bound comes first] insults his or her colleagues.

More than once a sensitive fussbudget has warned me not to phrase matters as I have lest most colleagues be unfamiliar with a key term. When I have found ways to elaborate, in notes or in the main text, precisely why the unfamiliar word or phrase or concept conveys my meaning, Dr. Fussy Wuzzy has protested explicitly that colleagues would be put off and put out that I should teach faculty arcane vocabulary – say, words once found on the GRE.

How presumptuous! How insulting! How didactic! What kind of fool am I? What must Dr. Wuzzy think of the Puget Clowns?

Please do not misunderstand me. I accept the notion that one parades learning or teaches readers at great peril to readers’ understanding or patience. I do not accept, however, the contention that a self-proclaimed "community of lifelong learners" get(s) to protest that thinking in novel terms or viewing matters from a different perspective or altering one's language to get matters exactly right is so challenging that the writer may fairly be said to insult readers who have PhDs but too little facility with what was, until recently, academic or intellectual English. I am not defending argot, jargon, or jactitation for the sake of showing off.

I know what you're thinking! "Jactitation?" I learned the word in the fifth grade from Stanley Kramer's movie of "Inherit the Wind" (1960). Doctor, do you know less than a fifth grader? ... a fifth grader watching a movie in Ballard? Sheeesh!

I am saying that stating matters as clearly as one can and informing hearers or readers why one has used a complicated concept or a rare word once was a norm for intellectual discourse.

Indeed, need I note that My Proofreader, The Tactician, and Fussy Wuzzy have each and all lamented the laziness of students who will not learn vocabulary and concepts and ideas?

I should be so fortunate that I might write what I mean and let my meanings choose my words, Mr. Blair [writing as "George Orwell," a name that there is no reason for me to suppose is familiar to a PhD on the roster of Puget Clowns]. After I figure out what I think and should like to convey, I then must settle for 11th-grade words and phrases [My Proofreader] that do not in any way challenge or inform or awaken or alarm fellow faculty [The Tactician] lest sensitive faculty feel hurt that I should use English in way that demands close reading, an active mind, and a willingness to learn [Fussy Wuzzy].

Do I insult post-literate readers if I alert them to a transition ["segue" is shorter, no?] in my entry as I move from letting the meaning select the words to the inconsistencies between letting the meanings select the words and Mr. Orwell's rules? How about if I call him "Orwell" below for contrast with "Blair" above?

What's more, Mr. Orwell in the very same essay enumerated rules that contradict his advice to let my meanings select my words:

##########(i) Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print. So I let meanings choose my words, then eliminate familiar idioms and tropes even if those tropes and idioms articulate exactly what I meant?

##########(ii) Never use a long word where a short one will do. So I let my meanings choose my words, then let the inability of my audience to handle longer words -- more syllables? more letters? -- drive out the longer even if it is clearer and more familiar than the shorter word? If I mean "understand" or "perceive," I use "ken?"

##########(iii) If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out. [I'll try not to take your order literally, Mr. Orwell, since word-processors make cutting words out always possible.] So I select the words that most perfectly convey my meaning, then I see how many of them I can eliminate? After I exclude some words because I may/can, do I re-evaluate their ability to convey my meaning exactly and clearly?

##########(iv) Never use the passive where you can use the active. [Again, the literal reader concludes that one always should use the active voice.] So I should eliminate any meanings that might select for passive constructions? So words should not select my meanings but grammatical voice should?

##########(v) Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent. How will I know if the everyday English equivalent will convey the meaning by which I selected the foreign word -- schadenfreude -- before I applied your fifth rule?

##########(vi) Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous. So I should avoid thinking or averring meanings, visualizations, or ideas that might lead to expressions that could be seen as alien, different, or issuing from some linguistic or cultural others?

I sum up Orwell's advice: Avoid communication with humans. If you must communicate with humans, do not use "palliative." Instead, say "measure that masks symptoms but does not actually cure underlying conditions." Always use "assay" rather than "assess" or "evaluate" because "assay" is shorter. Never use "professoriate" or "professoriat" but know that either spelling is accepted and that you might save an "e" by going with "professoriat" when writing in your diary.