Thiago Oppermann wrote:
>As for the 'use small words' advice - that's pretty sensible,up to the
>point...
>
My advisor in grad school used to urge us to write as though for a high-end magazine, like the NYRB or the New Yorker. This has always struck me as sound advice, within reason. (There are obviously some contexts where technical language serves a useful purpose and saves time.) Pretending that you're writing for the NYRB isn't exactly like talking to "the carpenter next door" in that it assumes a certain level of education and patience on the part of your audience, but it does not assume that your readers all share your detailed knowledge and theoretical understanding of the subject. I see Foucault as a special case: he is so insightful and original that he's entitled to break the rules that the rest of us ought to follow. The comparison of him with Nietzsche that someone made seems apt. There's nothing at all wrong with "theory"--in fact, we can hardly do without it--but how you explicate it depends on who you're writing for. Outside of certain academic contexts, where one is communicating to a fairly narrow circle of peers, the use of in-group jargon in general writing usually strikes me as either showing off or a lack of regard for one's audience. When I come across even a relatively commonplace word like, let's say, "ontological" in a piece of writing intended for a broad audience, I don't necessarily regard it as a signal to stop reading, but it does make me think, OK, this had better be good.
Jacob Conrad