How many words?

[Magical Realist]

FYI:

"The average adult vocabulary has 60,000 words, but 98 percent of human conversation is made up of only 4,000 of them. That leaves 56,000 words we don’t really need. Humans use the extra words to display their intelligence to potential mates. Peacocks have feathers; we have words, like” ANTIDISESTABLISHMENTENTERIANISM which is another way to say you’re opposed to the withdrawal of state support from an established church."---Source: Men’s Health, 9/8/22

I find words I don't use in conversations popping up when I write. Writing is like opening the cage door to a whole other vocabulary we seldom use. It expresses things that we normally wouldn't be able to express.

 

[C C]

It's amusing how people (i.e., "we") complain about various disciplines and enterprises -- ranging from STEM to philosophy to business/finance to industries and trades -- sporting all sorts of "in-house" nomenclature that they don't understand, when their very own occupation may potentially feature a technical argot that seems like gobbledegook to those outside it.

Of course, there are occasions when it's not due to identifying special items unique to a work area, or ensuring precise meaning, or summarizing complexity under a simple (but commonly unfamiliar) concept label.

When it really is tactical obscurantism that opportunistically ensures external parties have great difficulty in fathoming "what's going on". Legalese often held up as such a classic example. Certain regions of continental philosophy and political, humanities & arts discourse might be other suspects. (As well as all sorts of esoteric traditions motivated by "cult security".)
_

 

[Seattle]

You have to understand the "terms of art" of the disciplines that you are interested in or you're just not going to understand that discipline. They don't exist to obscure anything, they are just short-hand so that you don't have to repeat a known concept over and over and they have specific meanings.

That's why people look like idiots when they protest that a term of art makes no sense when they don't even know the definition of that term of art and are just using the general meaning.

These are the people who have a "theory" at odds with everyone else when they haven't even read and understood the accepted theory in the first place.

Most people do use a broader vocabulary when writing. Some forget the "rules" of concise writing (for almost any discipline) and just make what they write unnecessarily hard to read due to their vocabulary choice.

This is an example of using an expanded vocabulary to bad effect rather than to enlighten.

Legalize, in the law, isn't there to obscure. The law is very precise and the wording has to be as well. It's meant to be read by attorneys and therefore it doesn't obscure in that intended case.

 

[C C]

[...] Most people do use a broader vocabulary when writing. Some forget the "rules" of concise writing (for almost any discipline) and just make what they write unnecessarily hard to read due to their vocabulary choice.

This is an example of using an expanded vocabulary to bad effect rather than to enlighten.

Or (with respect to general literary territory) like Shakespeare or Jack Vance, the ornamental language and underlying wit between the lines is just part of the artistic style, akin to a piece of architecture laden with intricate details. Some get that and savor or delight in it, but for others it is an overhead whoosh.

Legalize, in the law, isn't there to obscure. The law is very precise and the wording has to be as well. It's meant to be read by attorneys and therefore it doesn't obscure in that intended case.

Absolutes would be unrealistic either way, though. The nomenclature of legal systems themselves is arguably as justifiable as those in any other discipline. But that doesn't globally eliminate contexts and occasions of careless ostentation and deliberate exploitation, which Def#2 applies to :

Legalese: 2. A style of writing or speaking heavily emphasizing the abstruse technical vocabulary of the law, to the point where a speech or document may be incomprehensible to non-specialists.

French thinkers themselves, like Michel Foucault, have outed continental philosophy movements (other authors, anyway) -- which have influenced much of the humanities and arts -- as dabbling in some amount of calculated gibberish because their public expects that. And esoteric societies (of old and perhaps even today) have at times swaddled their views in obfuscatory language due to fears that their putative "truths" would be too detrimental to the masses if gotten out of the inner circles.
_

 

[Sarkus]

FYI:

"The average adult vocabulary has 60,000 words, but 98 percent of human conversation is made up of only 4,000 of them. That leaves 56,000 words we don’t really need. Humans use the extra words to display their intelligence to potential mates. Peacocks have feathers; we have words, like...”.

Taking this to the extreme, we really only need two words, 1 and 0. From this we can create most of our understanding. Or, conversely, since we can "write" all our language and knowledge as a series of 1s and 0s, then this is the limit of the language we "need". Everything from there is just a matter of translation.
One could argue that the 1s and 0s are analogous to letters, not words, but a computer has little idea where a "word" starts and ends. All it does is react to those individual instructions.

There's also the matter of efficiency and not peacockerry. Why use 10 words when you can use one? Either we can say "the one after the one after the first' or we can say "the third", for example. Efficiency.

But, sure, sometimes people use a certain word for reasons other than just conveying meaning. Pretentiousness, or peacockerry, or whatever you want to call it. It's usually obvious, and usually as embarrassing as it should be.
Then there are areas that need the precision of language, such as in the legal realm, or even science and engineering. Words can have specific meaning in those contexts that you don't want to get wrong.

As to the difference between writing and talking, I'm the same as most, such as MR, in that I use words I wouldn't normally use in spoken conversation. I think this is simply that I am generally not as "temporally constrained" (i.e. I have more time ), so can think more about it than just meaning, and consider such as flow, elegance, the artistic side of language.

So, yeah, what he said.

 

[Pinball1970]

Just tech stuff, I have to speak to colleagues, suppliers and third parties so my vocabulary will be large.

Not something I would put in a post card though.

Scientists think deeply but express concisely.

Techs do the same

 

[parmalee]

When it really is tactical obscurantism that opportunistically ensures external parties have great difficulty in fathoming "what's going on". Legalese often held up as such a classic example. Certain regions of continental philosophy and political, humanities & arts discourse might be other suspects. (As well as all sorts of esoteric traditions motivated by "cult security".)
_

French thinkers themselves, like Michel Foucault, have outed continental philosophy movements (other authors, anyway) -- which have influenced much of the humanities and arts -- as dabbling in some amount of calculated gibberish because their public expects that. And esoteric societies (of old and perhaps even today) have at times swaddled their views in obfuscatory language due to fears that their putative "truths" would be too detrimental to the masses if gotten out of the inner circles.
_

There is something to this, but I am generally inclined to agree with Seattle here. Obscurantism isn't the aim (except in isolated instances--think Lacan, sometimes Baudrillard, even Zen koans in a sense), it's more about precision and convenient shorthand.

In philosophy, for instance, Germans are historically the undisputed champions of the neologism--and it's typically some crazy-ass portmanteau that's like 9 or 10 syllables long. And, somehow, the nature of German grammar makes it even more clunky seeming. But personally, I have found that a lot of these terms really do serve a useful--and meaningful--purpose. If anything, I don't have to fill out the page with a whole bunch of extra words that my lazy disposition predisposes me to balk at.

 

[parmalee]

Taking this to the extreme, we really only need two words, 1 and 0. From this we can create most of our understanding. Or, conversely, since we can "write" all our language and knowledge as a series of 1s and 0s, then this is the limit of the language we "need". Everything from there is just a matter of translation.

I always get a chuckle when people remark that they sometimes program in Assembly. I'm thinking: well, couldn't you take that even further...

 

[C C]

FYI: "The average adult vocabulary has 60,000 words, but 98 percent of human conversation is made up of only 4,000 of them. That leaves 56,000 words we don’t really need. [...]

If there's truly a widespread collapse in reading comprehension transpiring during the Gen-Z to Gen Alpha era (below), then the supposed 56,000 otiose words may indeed have to be excised eventually. Perhaps a step on the road to the simple-minded Eloi, via smart machines doing the heavy lifting rather than the Morlocks.

Ten years into my college teaching career, students stopped being able to read effectively.
https://slate.com/human-interest/2024/02/literacy-crisis-reading-comprehension-college.html
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[Seattle]

One area where I agree that the wording is typically and purposely overly verbose is in certain academic "published" papers, especially in the social sciences. That's often because they have a grant, have to publish (or perish) and they don't really have that much to say so they over embellish everything to make it sound as if they are saying more than they are.

It's the grown-up version of a kid's book report..."I really, really, like this book and I think that you will really, really, like it too"

 

[parmalee]

One area where I agree that the wording is typically and purposely overly verbose is in certain academic "published" papers, especially in the social sciences. That's often because they have a grant, have to publish (or perish) and they don't really have that much to say so they over embellish everything to make it sound as if they are saying more than they are.

I think another factor here is that social sciences inhabit this uncomfortable space between so-called "hard sciences" and the humanities. Go too far in one direction and you sound fascistic, or even like a monster of sorts; go too far in the other direction and you just sound flakey.

When I was a grad student, I found myself reviewing a lot of theses in anthropology--not my area, but it's adjacent and I was looking at stuff somewhat related to what I was working on. I remember thinking for a time something like, "man, these people can't write for shit." And it slowly dawned upon me that it wasn't necessarily that they couldn't write well, but rather that the constraints of the discipline obliged them to write badly. Or maybe just weirdly. Either way, even if you were versed in the jargon, they just weren't very satisfying reads.

Of course, there's also just a lot of crap--but that's just Sturgeon's Law and holds true for everything and always shall.

 

[Seattle]

Yeah, you can write a paper that says very little and still get it published and still deliver it at a conference.

Take any subject. The darter snail for instance. Give the history of the darter snail, the wetlands act from the 70's, footnote the legal cases, introduce the "methodology" that will will used in your study, introduce and define some terms, introduce a table, make some vague proposal like "the darter snails numbers may be increasing in some wetlands in the SE US, show some statistical significance and what environment changes may have contributed to this.

End with a summary and conclusion, the dart snails numbers may have increased since the 70's due to improvements in air pollution and mandated wetlands in the SE US. Point out that more studies will be required to show real statistical significance and admit that the darter snail population has historically gone up and down even before the wetlands legislation and end the study having actually said and proven very little.

You could use this format and approach on virtually any subject matter.

 

[C C]

There is something to this, but I am generally inclined to agree with Seattle here. Obscurantism isn't the aim (except in isolated instances--think Lacan, sometimes Baudrillard, even Zen koans in a sense), it's more about precision and convenient shorthand.

In philosophy, for instance, Germans are historically the undisputed champions of the neologism--and it's typically some crazy-ass portmanteau that's like 9 or 10 syllables long. And, somehow, the nature of German grammar makes it even more clunky seeming. But personally, I have found that a lot of these terms really do serve a useful--and meaningful--purpose. If anything, I don't have to fill out the page with a whole bunch of extra words that my lazy disposition predisposes me to balk at.

Yah. The intensely technical turn of the German camp arguably started with Kant (as Leibniz wasn't that difficult to decipher), though he's an intellectual ancestor of analytic philosophy as much as the putative continental lineage.

While the "Anglophone sphere" of philosophers probably started asserting a heavy distinction between themselves and some of their French, Germans, etc colleagues well before the precursors of postmodernism... The friction certainly came to a head with respect to the various ripples subsumed under the PoMo label. That's also when the charges of obscurantism and other pejoratives started flying.[1]

Even the old-style Marxists and their various rebel offshoots still take aim at postmodernism years later, despite some obvious influences of the former on the latter:

https://www.marxist.com/marxism-versus-postmodernism.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marxi...itique_of_identity_politics_and_postmodernism

Going back to the analytic school, it's actually more laden in abstract jargon and dense dialogue -- with interest thereby confined to scholarly circles. In contrast, the more amenable continental literature (both old and "new"), along with "American" neopragmatism (Rorty, etc) has been far more consumed by the public and social movements.

- - - FOOTNOTE - - -

[1] Ted Honderich: One thinks of French philosophy that it aspires to the condition of literature or the condition of art, and that English and American philosophy aspires to the condition of science. French philosophy, one thinks of as picking up an idea and running with it, possibly into a nearby brick wall or over a local cliff, or something like that. --Today; BBC Radio 4; 1990s

John Searle: With [Jacques] Derrida, you can hardly misread him, because he's so obscure. Every time you say, "He says so and so," he always says, "You misunderstood me."

But if you try to figure out the correct interpretation, then that's not so easy. I once said this to Michel Foucault, who was more hostile to Derrida even than I am, and Foucault said that Derrida practiced the method of obscurantisme terroriste (terrorism of obscurantism). We were speaking French. And I said, "What the hell do you mean by that?"

And he said, "He writes so obscurely you can't tell what he's saying, that's the obscurantism part, and then when you criticize him, he can always say, 'You didn't understand me; you're an idiot.' That's the terrorism part."

And I like that. So I wrote an article about Derrida. I asked Michel if it was OK if I quoted that passage, and he said yes. Foucault was often lumped with Derrida. That's very unfair to Foucault. He was a different caliber of thinker altogether. --Reality Principles: An Interview with John R. Searle
_

 

[exchemist]

I think another factor here is that social sciences inhabit this uncomfortable space between so-called "hard sciences" and the humanities. Go too far in one direction and you sound fascistic, or even like a monster of sorts; go too far in the other direction and you just sound flakey.

When I was a grad student, I found myself reviewing a lot of theses in anthropology--not my area, but it's adjacent and I was looking at stuff somewhat related to what I was working on. I remember thinking for a time something like, "man, these people can't write for shit." And it slowly dawned upon me that it wasn't necessarily that they couldn't write well, but rather that the constraints of the discipline obliged them to write badly. Or maybe just weirdly. Either way, even if you were versed in the jargon, they just weren't very satisfying reads.

Of course, there's also just a lot of crap--but that's just Sturgeon's Law and holds true for everything and always shall.

The tendency to portmanteau words seems to be a feature of German. A nice one I learned a few years ago is "backpfeifengesicht", which has no equivalent in English but means someone with a face you just want to punch.

Kingsley Amis in "The Old Devils" has a character called Malcolm, who is described as looking as if he is "begging for a smart clip round the ear". That is backpfeifengesicht, almost exactly.

 

[Sarkus]

German words can get somewhat ridiculous in length, and very specific with it. For example:
die Weihnachtskeksdosendeckelbeschriftungsfarbenzusammensetzungsanalysenergebnispräsentationsvortragsbewertung

Chucking it into Google Translate yields: "the Christmas cookie jar lid lettering color composition analysis results presentation lecture evaluation" - so basically it means the evaluation of a dissertation's presentation of results about the analysis of the colour composition of the lettering on Christmas cookie-jar lids.

First, imagine doing a dissertation for that!
Second, imagine that there is a single word for the evaluation of your presentation about it!!

 

[parmalee]

John Searle: With [Jacques] Derrida, you can hardly misread him, because he's so obscure. Every time you say, "He says so and so," he always says, "You misunderstood me."

But if you try to figure out the correct interpretation, then that's not so easy. I once said this to Michel Foucault, who was more hostile to Derrida even than I am, and Foucault said that Derrida practiced the method of obscurantisme terroriste (terrorism of obscurantism). We were speaking French. And I said, "What the hell do you mean by that?"

And he said, "He writes so obscurely you can't tell what he's saying, that's the obscurantism part, and then when you criticize him, he can always say, 'You didn't understand me; you're an idiot.' That's the terrorism part."

And I like that. So I wrote an article about Derrida. I asked Michel if it was OK if I quoted that passage, and he said yes. Foucault was often lumped with Derrida. That's very unfair to Foucault. He was a different caliber of thinker altogether. --Reality Principles: An Interview with John R. Searle
_

I was always a bit baffled by this. Foucault was just being Foucault, of course--plus he died in '84 and missed out on all the good stuff. But Searle? My slightly unorthodox take is that Searle wildly misread Derrida, yet so far as I know he has never revised his assessment. Of all the French (whom Searle disdains), Derrida (80s onward) and Lyotard were closest in spirit to PI and ordinary language philosophy.

One of my favorite lines from Derrida is from one of his published lectures on Heidegger("Heidegger's Hand", I think), and goes thusly:

There are no apes in the Black Forest.

The context here is presently unimportant, rather what matters is what is intended (yes), and that is precisely that: there are no apes in the Black Forest. No obfuscation and no word-play, just a brutal and effective takedown of some prime Heideggerian idiocy.

 

[parmalee]

Context:

Heidegger's Hand <<<
(Apes on page 12.)

An Interview with Jacques Derrida on the Limits of Digestion <<<