To try to prevent it?
This makes no sense at all. Who is talking about "preventing" language? This would make sense if any utterance was a final draft and there was some sort of instantaneous editing machine involved. But since writing is a process of drafts, it's entirely reasonable for people to expect writers to look at their own work and decide whether they are hanging onto something pretty or obfuscatory when they could be talking plainly.
1) Really good writers, like Doug Henwood, always have a gift for being succinct.
2) The purpose of writing is not an algebraic proof, but communication. All words are loaded with sound, appearance, history, and whether or not they are in common usage. The task of a writer is not to "get it right" but to communicate it right.
True, the words on the page must model the concepts as they exist in the writer's head. But THEN the writer must alter the words so they model the concept in OTHER people's heads - or endeavor to do so. And so there is and should be a preference for plain talk because one does not write for oneself, at least that is not one's job.
The Stalinist idea was that some language is "revolutionary" and some "counter-revolutionary" and that counter-revolutionary language should be excised. The idea here is a very rational, objective test: what percentage of people can understand this text? And it is entirely rational and reasonable that one should always endeavor to maximize that number. Even if the original purpose of the text is to communicate to a small number of people, it is always best to make it readable for the largest number of people. When we say writing is "clear", we are judging clarity not only by some objective measure of precision, but by a measure of reach. As with a bullet, the longer the arc it travels, the less accurate it is. The flatter the trajectory, the more bullseyes you can hit at all distances.
boddi