On simplicity – Irina Dumitrescu in TLS:

‘One fear is that by writing simply, we will come across as simple – with all that word’s disparaging associations with disability and low class. When a chorus of pundits insists that modern life is complex, simplicity starts to seem old-fashioned. Once we spoke of love; now we might talk about attachment and co-dependency. Fear has transformed into anxiety. The old words seem too plain to serve.
This prejudice is wrong. One of the fascinating things I noticed when I was first learning to read medieval languages was that poets tended to repeat vocabulary. Instead of using varied terms for different aspects of an emotion or an idea, they used the same word over and over again. They did this because the words were often richer in meaning.’

(…)

‘And yet there is nothing as powerful as plain language, as this well-known Middle English religious lyric shows: Nou goth sonne vnder wod, Me reweth, Marie, thi faire rode.
Nou goth sonne vnder tre, Me reweth, Marie, thy sone and the.
The first line describes the sun’s rays slipping behind the woods. But the poem’s early Christian audience would have known that “wod” and “tre” could also refer to the Cross. Perhaps we are not looking at a forest, but at the sun reddening behind Calvary, highlighting the crosses as it descends. The speaker pities Mary’s beautiful blushing face, or “rode”, as well as the Rood, lovely in its promise of salvation despite being an instrument of torture. Above all, the repetition of “sonne” – a sun, a son and soon – would have recalled the sunrise, or resurrection, to come. This quatrain was not written to impress or deflect, but to invite its readers to meditate with language both humble and rich.’

Read the column here.

Word repetition can be quite powerful. I’m a big fan of it, and in general I do like ‘plain language,’ style is of the essence, but when it’s only about style boredom is unavoidable.

And jargon is almost always a defeat. We speak about co-dependency and attachment, because we have seen too many therapists.