OF BIG WORDS AND CONVOLUTED PROSE


Lefty educator and wanna be intellectual Arthur Vandelay takes exception to my claim his invention of the nonsensical "presuppositionalist apriorism" shows he has delusions of grandeur:

Granted: it's not the kind of language you're likely to hear at the footy, but the idea that it demonstrates my having delusions of grandeur is completely nonsequitous (oops! Another big word). The only explanation I can come up with is that whenever this individual sees someone using TEH BIG WORDS, he concludes that it's all part of a conspiracy to make him feel stupid. Bruce and I only used TEH BIG WORDS, you see, because we think we're betterer than him.

Oops, another big non-word word from pretentious Arthur, who makes the most of every opportunity to embarrass himself:

I'm actually something of an advocate for plainer English. When I was teaching essay writing earlier in the year, I was amazed at how difficult it was to disabuse my students of the myth that they would get bad marks if they didn't use unnecessarily big words (many of which they plainly misunderstood anyway) and convoluted prose. They were convinced that to adopt a simpler approach would be to appear "unprofessional"--as if maintaining an image of professionalism is more important than getting a message across.

Coincidentally, whoever it was at Answers.com who wrote the entry for "disabuse", he appears to be familiar with Arthur's work:

To free from a falsehood or misconception: I must disabuse you of your feelings of grandeur.

Yes, "I must disabuse", also.

It isn't possible to disabuse students "of the myth that they would get bad marks if they didn't use unnecessarily big words". The students thought that the use of big words was necessary to achieve good grades. For them this was not a myth but something they thought true; it was therefore a notion, albeit a false one. And it makes no sense to say that students thought they were expected to use "unnecessarily big words"; if the students already knew big words were unnecessary they would feel no need to use them.

Had Arthur really wanted to express himself plainly he might have said something like:

When teaching essay writing earlier in the year I was reminded of how difficult it is to disabuse students of the notion that they will get bad marks if they don't use big words (many of which they plainly misunderstand anyway) and convoluted prose.

That's a big fat F for modeled writing for teacher Arthur. For homework he is to write 100 times, "In future I will not be a pretentious twat."