Timothy, I hear that generative AI can be prompted to 'figure' its reply in the "style of" or the persona of an authoritative, canonical writer. We can expect that the AI programs' ability to emulate mannerisms of many writerly styles will soon integrate complex interpretations of how any one canonical author's style serves & constrains [her] meanings and purposes.
-I agree with you that the jargons of legalese and institutional/bureaucratic procedure obscure key meanings defensively, both because their uncommon idioms are impossible for all but expert specialists to parse and because the institutions of societal hierarchy that propagate them trade on the 'sublime' authority of their words' Origins to cow "ignorant" laypeople. In that light, plain/common English is always the more democratic medium. Plain expressions are supposed to avoid complicating ornamentation and incidental confusions. Further, because it's assumed that plain English works with---not necessarily 'simple'---but conventionally understood and agreed on meanings, we shouldn't be tricked by what it says.
-But the old rhetorical studies have always been concerned that preference for simple authoritative statements is often moved by deference to familiar authoritative slogans and by aesthetic preference for the 'transparently plain', the 'minimal', the 'classically' unadorned expression over the effete, elaborate style. As both these 'preferences' (ethical and pathetically aesthetic) are recognized and cultivated in our contemporary technical-writing practices and, especially, I think, in principles of effective institutional communication and advertising, we can anticipate that generative AI will become adept at distracting and obfuscating meanings with plain-language tactics *more quickly* than it will take to adapt institutional subterfuges for other different specialist idioms. The people who use generative AI most will learn most quickly and precisely how they should communicate and think.
-Orwell was wrong about many things, but, truly, the pressure to bring all public meanings into clear, simple common language *could* quickly develop into kinds of censorship that condemn complicated explanations as inherently duplicitous and actively teach that we should only trust plain (recognizable, well publicized) truths. The idioms of expertise are double-unplus bad. The Big Demagogue is a Plain-talkin' Man, and his talk is always acceptably familiar, for those of us with the common sense to understand what everybody ought to know.
-Common language can obscure. We all experience that many key words of our language worlds are crucial, acceptable, but so complex as to be inexplicable unless, in teaching them, we simplify and say, "You'll understand better later." Contemporary rhetorical studies argue that over-used, conventional figures become inert "dead metaphors": no one needs to go to much trouble to explain that "the White House" is a metonym for the authority of the President and his cabinet and, with less force, the whole executive branch's administration. But many people will fiercely attest that "basic human rights" are "self-evident" and "universal." And they won't allow that "basic rights," and that what is foundationally "self-evident," and that which everyone agrees is "universal" (except for the people who are profoundly, perversely wrong) are historical linguistic concatenations---extremely compressed and fragmentary legacy objects that were never, and cannot ever be fully unpacked or made plain, except in those specialized, privileged conventions where using them as accepted absolutes is absolutely conceded.
Some great points. Transparency isn't always democratic--or preferable; mysteriousness in terms of meaning is important and inevitable. And yes, it seems plain enough that AI will be able to reproduce the deliberate obfuscations of any prose style, though I am really taken with Dean's point that late 20th C/early 21st C. corporate prose is especially bereft of any referent outside of itself, is peculiarly unreal.
Timothy, I hear that generative AI can be prompted to 'figure' its reply in the "style of" or the persona of an authoritative, canonical writer. We can expect that the AI programs' ability to emulate mannerisms of many writerly styles will soon integrate complex interpretations of how any one canonical author's style serves & constrains [her] meanings and purposes.
-I agree with you that the jargons of legalese and institutional/bureaucratic procedure obscure key meanings defensively, both because their uncommon idioms are impossible for all but expert specialists to parse and because the institutions of societal hierarchy that propagate them trade on the 'sublime' authority of their words' Origins to cow "ignorant" laypeople. In that light, plain/common English is always the more democratic medium. Plain expressions are supposed to avoid complicating ornamentation and incidental confusions. Further, because it's assumed that plain English works with---not necessarily 'simple'---but conventionally understood and agreed on meanings, we shouldn't be tricked by what it says.
-But the old rhetorical studies have always been concerned that preference for simple authoritative statements is often moved by deference to familiar authoritative slogans and by aesthetic preference for the 'transparently plain', the 'minimal', the 'classically' unadorned expression over the effete, elaborate style. As both these 'preferences' (ethical and pathetically aesthetic) are recognized and cultivated in our contemporary technical-writing practices and, especially, I think, in principles of effective institutional communication and advertising, we can anticipate that generative AI will become adept at distracting and obfuscating meanings with plain-language tactics *more quickly* than it will take to adapt institutional subterfuges for other different specialist idioms. The people who use generative AI most will learn most quickly and precisely how they should communicate and think.
-Orwell was wrong about many things, but, truly, the pressure to bring all public meanings into clear, simple common language *could* quickly develop into kinds of censorship that condemn complicated explanations as inherently duplicitous and actively teach that we should only trust plain (recognizable, well publicized) truths. The idioms of expertise are double-unplus bad. The Big Demagogue is a Plain-talkin' Man, and his talk is always acceptably familiar, for those of us with the common sense to understand what everybody ought to know.
-Common language can obscure. We all experience that many key words of our language worlds are crucial, acceptable, but so complex as to be inexplicable unless, in teaching them, we simplify and say, "You'll understand better later." Contemporary rhetorical studies argue that over-used, conventional figures become inert "dead metaphors": no one needs to go to much trouble to explain that "the White House" is a metonym for the authority of the President and his cabinet and, with less force, the whole executive branch's administration. But many people will fiercely attest that "basic human rights" are "self-evident" and "universal." And they won't allow that "basic rights," and that what is foundationally "self-evident," and that which everyone agrees is "universal" (except for the people who are profoundly, perversely wrong) are historical linguistic concatenations---extremely compressed and fragmentary legacy objects that were never, and cannot ever be fully unpacked or made plain, except in those specialized, privileged conventions where using them as accepted absolutes is absolutely conceded.
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Some great points. Transparency isn't always democratic--or preferable; mysteriousness in terms of meaning is important and inevitable. And yes, it seems plain enough that AI will be able to reproduce the deliberate obfuscations of any prose style, though I am really taken with Dean's point that late 20th C/early 21st C. corporate prose is especially bereft of any referent outside of itself, is peculiarly unreal.