Re: re Tom on Zizek and speech

[knowware@xxxxxxxx (Tom Walker)]

Valis harped literally down the road,

>I would not harp on this speech issue were it not to become a literal
>life-or-death matter shortly down the road.

The Achilles' heel of "plain language" is that no matter how simply phrased
and worded an utterance may be, it can still mean different things to
different people. Plain language experts argue that the only way to ensure
the clarity of a text is to test it with people who are representative of
the intended audience.

There are all sorts of "rules" for writing clearly. Typically, they include
using short words and short sentences and using the active voice. You can
even run your prose through a software program that gives you an "index" of
its readability. You can write nonsense that scores high on the index, but
if you show that nonsense to actual readers, they can tell you it's nonsense.

Rules about using short words and active voice address the mechanics of
decoding sentences. But they ignore the motivational and thought processes
of comprehending a larger message. If you have to rely on rules, the best
ones are the classical rules of rhetoric. Translated into modern English,
those rules tell you to consider your MESSAGE, AUDIENCE and PURPOSE. "Ten
thousand proletarians" is not an audience, it's bombast. "Pen-l
subscribers", "Valis" or "the editor of the San Francisco Examiner" is an
audience. When you write to be understood by everyone, you're writing for no
one in particular.


Regards,

Tom Walker
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