Post Number 64 : Why Do We Complicate Language So Much?

I was on LinkedIn this morning, clearing my notifications, scrolling with no aim in mind, reading (questionable) stories of inspiration, success, failure, life-lessons, ‘expert’ commentary, and everything in between. What struck me was not how disingenuous some of the posts seemed but how people had taken an entirely different language to express themselves there – ‘business talk’, full of legalese, buzzwords, and thesaurus-esque contraptions which complicated basic ideas. It seemed almost dystopian, this way of talking, turning nouns to verbs and verbs to nouns & making sure the only words in a sentence having less than 2 syllables were articles. Why do we think complicated language is a signal of intelligence? Rather, why do we disregard clear expression as oversimplified?

The other day I sat in front of an Indian news channel after ages. The discussion, in between all the screaming and shouting, was dismal at best but my family felt the anchor was doing a great job because she could turn a clever phrase. In that moment they were so impressed with her vocabulary that the fact that it lacked substance was beside the point. They are not alone. Think back to your school, college, and work years and see how we have been taught collectively to reward the smart talker, the juggler of jargon. My point is not to disregard flourish of language but to question the correlation we assume between breadth of vocabulary and depth of ideas.

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Before I sat for my Class XII CBSE exams, my English teacher told us to write in the simplest way possible. Though her reasoning had less to do with a fondness for clear expression and more with the vagaries of the examination system, it was a point to consider. In her approach, she joins Richard Feynman who was vocal in his belief that if you can’t convey something in a manner that a 5 year old can get it, you haven’t really understood it. Is that why we complicate our language so much? Are we hiding that we have only half a clue of what we’re doing?

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In E.F. Schumacher’s book Small is Beautiful, he mentioned how we see education as a ‘passport to privilege’ so that we may go ahead and join a ‘mutual admiration society’, a way of securing our position among contemporaries. I couldn’t agree more in that we use language as a knowledge gatekeeping mechanism. The Ministry of Earth Sciences, India released the first assessment of climate change in India last month. It’s a 240 page report. I sat down to read it, excited to be able to understand this problem in my country. I couldn’t move past 50 pages – it was so complicated, so many acronyms and mumbo jumbo. Sentences stretched so long as though they are scared of a full stop. What is the point of putting it in a public domain if you’re effectively reducing the reach to a handful of coats who can speak in tongues with you? Here’s a sample from it –

“The dynamical downscaling derives regional climate information using physical–dynamical relationships by embedding a high-resolution regional climate model (RCM) within a coarse-resolution AOGCM. The WCRP regional activity Coordinated Regional climate Downscaling Experiment has generated an ensemble of regional climate change projections for South Asia with a high spatial resolution (50 km) by dynamically downscaling several CMIP5 AOGCM outputs using multiple RCMs.”

Assessment of Climate Change in India, Ministry of Earth Sciences, India

I think back to all the times in engineering when I had no idea of what to write and ended up serving a platter of words, terms, concepts and long-winded sentences in exams. And you know what? It mostly worked. The examiner couldn’t be bothered to judge the merit of my writing as long as he spotted some terminology and while I fooled him, I also fooled myself in believing I knew things.

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What do we gain from putting knowledge in silos? We may joke how we don’t get what lawyers talk, lawyers don’t get what doctors talk, doctors don’t get what corporate folks talk ad infinitum but outside of basic terminology which is unique to that subject, why is conveying ideas from it so tough? Is it to convince ourselves that the money we spent in acquiring it makes it dear to us? Is it to discourage those who haven’t the resources to get that knowledge from understanding it without making that financial investment? Is it the fear of exposing that what we do in our professions may not be as special? Is it to participate in a system that rewards heavy words without questioning their heft? I leave it to you to mull it over.

If you peruse tips for better writing, they will suggest that you do away with ‘very + adjective’ and substitute with an impressive sounding synonym. Will it polish your idea though? Some of my favourite books – The Perks of Being a Wallflower, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time, and The Color Purple have the simplest language. I’m currently reading A Man Called Ove and I’ve noticed it’s able to strike a chord in me without going over 4 syllables.

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Language is also used as a tool of emotional detachment. In Peter Singer’s Animal Liberation, he mentions,

“The work on animal behaviour is always expressed in scientific, hygienic-sounding terminology, which enables the indoctrination of the normal, non-sadistic young psychology student to proceed without his anxiety being aroused. Thus techniques of ‘extinction’ are used for what is in fact torturing by thirst or near starvation or electric-shocking; ‘partial reinforcement’ is the term for frustrating an animal by only occasionally fulfilling the expectations which the experimenter has aroused in the animal by previous training; ‘negative stimulus’ is the term used for subjecting an animal to a stimulus which he avoids, if possible. The term ‘avoidance’ is OK because it is an observable activity. The term ‘painful’ or ‘frightening’ stimulus are less OK since they are anthropomorphic, they imply that the animal has feelings – and these may be similar to human feelings.”

Animal Liberation(40th Edition), Peter Singer

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What’s ironic is that complicated language, while superficially impressive, is historically not destined to stick for long. In all languages there are proverbs that have endured the test of time. None of them are longer than a few words. That’s what makes them catchy. That’s why they’re passed on in a sing-song tone through generations as wisdom. The second you’re adding predicate clauses and complicating the sentence (much like most of my blogs), you’re dooming it to oblivion.

It’s hard to detach ideas from words because we use the latter to express the former. But we can make an effort to simplify ourselves. I can’t send this article to everyone on LinkedIn and expect an overnight simplification revolution but I can hope someone reads it and takes the message. The next time you feel compelled to dress up your words in a social gathering or a formal document, take a minute to think what matters to you more – that people remember how you talk/write and not what you say or vice versa. And if you wish to take this discussion further with me, let me know. I may not have the ‘bandwidth to connect’ but I’ll be free to talk.