On “flowery language” and being a dickwad…
In the past I have been accused of many things following my writing; failure to be impartial, playing devils advocate, being too conservative, appearing sympathetic to the state, causing purposeful offence, writing too irregularly to maintain an influential opinion and of course, swearing too fucking much. All of these, for the most part, have been either true, or at least reasonably arguable in their levy. However, recently following a comment or two on a piece about Airbnb’s alleged failings when it comes to safeguarding their guests using the service, I have been accused of using “flowery language” in order to appear intelligent.
I will not link to the thread, for I do not wish to engage in any further debate there, and preferably no more than this. Obviously, comments are inevitable, and requesting no interaction on the basis of assuredness and what ‘I reckon’, is hardly useful to anybody, but regardless, I do reckon, that accusations of flowery language, especially in cases of specifics, is bullshit.
These long, apparently pseudo-intellectual words we could do without exist for a reason. Synonyms are exceedingly useful, but even they exist out of pure necessity for accuracy when attempting to communicate a point specifically as you understand it in your mind, especially if you believe it to be complicated and nuanced. A truly, exact synonym would have no use in language whatsoever, as it wouldn’t evoke any other meaning in our minds at all, and frankly, you may believe that I could have phrased my points toward monosyllabically inclined, but I do not think I could, nor do I believe such an effort would have had any merit in doing so. I have enough faith in my own semantic understanding of the little vocabulary I possess, that given the time to think and phrase, as written comment allows for, that the risk of misunderstanding is minimal.
It is not elitist. It is simply the wish to convey your own understanding without the risk of decontextualisation of widespread misunderstanding of what the fuck you ACTUALLY MEAN.
Rhetoric for rhetoric’s sake is for dickwads, but rhetoric used for accurate communication should not be lampooned. Whether the content of the communication is perceivably correct or not is moot, as long as you understand what it meant, and that, in my opinion, is nigh-on impossible without at least some use, of “flowery language”.
Side-note: Here is a good video which both shits all over (it makes sense dude!) And provides merit to my point. (Imagine this with no visual context)
Yours,
