>
> 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.
You can't really believe this. This means that all specialized scientific research and theory in fields like medicine, physics, biology, geology, statistics, and chemistry has to be chucked out. Writing every text "to make it readable for the largest number of people" would bring scientific progress to a screeching halt. Is this your intent? If not--and this is the important question that you and Jerry keep sidestepping--what are the conditions under which it is okay to use specialized language? And how on earth can these conditions be identified a priori?
Miles