I won't comment on the rest of your post.
But as of yet no one has confronted, my argument, and the examples, that it is in fact quite the opposite. It is "obscurantism" of all sorts, "mystifications" of all sorts, and attempts to produce lexicons and customs of exclusion of all sorts, that have been _"crafted by and for people who historically had power."_ So hasn't the exclusion of obscurantism, and not the use of the vernacular language, been a prop for the powerful? If so, why is our society an exception to this general pattern?
Ripley's way of putting things is a very instrumentalist way of thinking about this issue but I am guilty of the same and we are both trying to use an economy of language.
But I am hard put to think of historical examples where attempting to write and talk with clarity and in the vernacular lexicon was the norm of the powerful. But perhaps in the age of mass media, Madison Avenue, the engineering of consent, mass propaganda, pseudo-democracy suddenly our society is an exception to the historical pattern.
I find it curious that I seem to be the only one who has brought up this argument in these threads. Why? Perhaps because this is an institutional argument similar to Chomsky's? I don't know. Some of Carrol's statements on how clear statements are actually a form of obscurity come closest to this argument. I would say in response that simplicity can also lead to mystification, without necessarily being a form of obscurantism or even providing much clarity.
Many slogans work this way. "Support the troops!" is very simple but also empty. A slogan or phrase that is empty is neither clear nor unclear, it is simply contentless. It takes a little thought to reveal this contentlessness and to show what is behind it, but it doesn't take obscure language. The slogan, "Support the troops" decoded means something like "I support this war and all of you who don't support this war obviously want 'our' troops to die. Thus you are traitors." To say present this in slightly obscure language I would say that the "denotation" for the slogan "Support the troops" is largely empty; but the "connotation" for the slogan means "I support the war and you who don't want 'our' troops to die."
If the age of mass media is an exception to the historical pattern that obscurantism has been _"crafted by and for people who historically had power."_ You also have to argue several other premises to make the case that in today's society the kind of writing committed by Derrida somehow provides us with ways to free our minds from the empty clarity of modern propaganda. One you have to argue for an inversion of the usual pattern. Clear and "non-obscure" lexicons are _now_ props for the powerful, and they are the intellectual norm. Only hard to understand lexicons, not written in the vernacular, can undermine the "clear" language of the powerful. Perhaps, but somebody has to make the argument. As far as I can see, the burden of proof is on the people who make this argument. But on an entry level to the argument I would be willing to hear someone explain why this "burden" should be shifted.
In the end I am asking Isn't Ripley's statement: "that the demand for "clear" writing may well carry with it norms and standards of writing that were crafted by and for people who historically had power" simply empirically wrong as far as we can see?
Jerry Monaco