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Lexical pollution:



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Mon Jan 08, 2007 8:29 pm
de_budding says...



OK here is an article that will give you an idea of what Iā€™m posting.

ā€œStudy: Using big words needlessly makes you seem stupider
Everyone knows how college students will try to make themselves sound smarter by reaching for the thesaurus and using big, ponderous words they barely understand. But now a new study shows that readers can see through this. Daniel Oppenheimer, a psychologist at Princeton, took a handful of writing samples and used a thesaurus to replace the simple words with needlessly flowery ones. As the Bad Language blog notes:
He created a "highly complex" version of each original text by replacing each noun, verb and adjective in it with the longest synonym. This is the kind of writing by thesaurus that many business people and techies employ when they want to sound knowledgeable and important or because they think writing like they speak will make them sound lightweight.
Then Oppenheimer gave all the writing samples -- the original, simple ones and the modified, flowery ones -- to 71 students to evaluate. The result? As the grandiosity and complexity of the language increased, the judges' estimation of the intelligence of the authors decreased. Oppenheimer wrote up his results in a paper with the gorgeously ironic title "Consequences of Erudite Vernacular Utilized Irrespective of Necessity: Problems with Using Long Words Needlessly."
His findings make perfect sense when you think about the nature of language. Every sentence and paragraph of writing is an organic whole; a writer's style is, too. Taking a sentence and swapping in synonyms plucked from a thesaurus is bound to warp the meaning and clarity of a sentence, because synonyms are not mathematical equals: They all have slightly different shadings. Describe someone as "angry" and it means one thing; describe them as "choleric" or "furious" or "splenetic" -- all synonyms offered up by Thesaurus.com -- and you're saying something slightly different. When an essay is filled with these sort of swapped-in synonyms, it winds up having Frankensteinian seams: You can feel its cognitive artificiality, its constipated straining to convey a higher meaning. No wonder the judges thought these essays seemed dumber.ā€

And a cite for it- http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 075447.htm

I am just putting forward that it is noticeable in these forums as well and that it generally clouds the meanings of the 'big', 'hard' or obscure words that are used. I spoke to Fand about posting this and for firsts it is only in 'writing tips' 'cos it wouldn't really go anywhere else in the forums.

I think that people genuinely incorporate a larger synonym instead of a more appropriate shorter word because they are under the thinking that this makes them seem smarter. And what is wrong with this?

1: People trying to look smarter means they aspire to be smarter.

2: This practice is often the only way people can get into the habit of using 'big' words.

Both i think are positive outputs and why not use the largest word you can find?

I think it has a few downsides, but the big one is the 'lexical pollution', larger words that are used are often chosen simply because the meaning that the word suggests or implies is the same as the first word that sprung to mind. Whether this connotation happens to be one you already knew or one you pull from a thesaurus on the spot, it may be for a specific context that you were not aware of or that the thesaurus didn't provide (they often don't). This leads to the lexical pollution, and then any one who reads the post or story afterward has a slightly distorted idea of what said word means.

I only notice it slightly and like i said i think this enthusiasm to be seen as smarter is nothing but a good thing, but as this is a site for young writers i think this is worth noting.

Dan x

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Mon Jan 08, 2007 10:23 pm
Lilyy03 says...



Interesting article! Hee, it reminds me of a quote I saw in one of my old English textbooks, which said something along the lines of "If you think a flea is as large as a Saint Bernard dog, as beautiful as the Queen of Sheba, and as dignified as the Archbishop of Canterbury, you say 'A conflagration consumed the edifice.' If not, say 'The house burned down.'"

1: People trying to look smarter means they aspire to be smarter.

I'm not sure this is necessarily true. I think if someone actively tries to look smarter, it has more to do with them lacking confidence in their abilities, rather than them striving to actually get better.

While having a broad vocabulary is a good thing, I do think the best way to come across (unless you're writing something technical) is with clarity. Being able to wrap up your message with lengthy wording isn't necessarily a sign of intelligence--more like a sign that you don't know how to put things plainly. .

I think it has a few downsides, but the big one is the 'lexical pollution', larger words that are used are often chosen simply because the meaning that the word suggests or implies is the same as the first word that sprung to mind. Whether this connotation happens to be one you already knew or one you pull from a thesaurus on the spot, it may be for a specific context that you were not aware of or that the thesaurus didn't provide (they often don't). This leads to the lexical pollution, and then any one who reads the post or story afterward has a slightly distorted idea of what said word means.


I agree with this... Words have a lot more to them than just their dictionary or thesaurus entries. I think if someone is unsure about what connotations a word carries, they should stick to a word they are sure about until they do know.
  





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Tue Jan 09, 2007 4:47 pm
Swires says...



Yeah, this is a nice little article.
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Tue Jan 09, 2007 8:22 pm
Dream Deep says...



... and you thought you were going to get lynched. ;)
  





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Tue Jan 09, 2007 9:47 pm
Fand says...



Well, of course if you replace every single noun, verb, and adjective with its longest synonym, you'll sound like an idiot. That's a completely pointless practice by anyone's standards. But using a few large words now and then has never been pointed to as a cause of death, and as I pointed out in the chat, some people naturally speak that way because their vocabularies are large enough to easily include such words.
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Tue Jan 09, 2007 10:30 pm
de_budding says...



Yeah that was a response to the article, google a sentence or two and you will see the responses to it. I think the citation might have some links also.

I noticed that also, but i think the general idea that 'big words = smart' is what needs to be countered, also i think it is the thesaurus bashing that it notes that is the real problem because some people simply do just shift+F7 (MS word) and chose the longest word... i bet they even click the antonyms sometimes XD
"One who understands much displays a greater simplicity of character than one who understands little."
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"Do not try to be pretty. You weren't meant to be pretty; you were meant to burn down the earth and graffiti the sky. Don't let anyone ever simplify you to just 'pretty'"
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