Is Clear the New Obscure?
I have been a huge admirer of George Orwell ever since I read Animal Farm . Then there was 1984 , which was so eerily prophetic that it made you wonder if the guy had managed to build a time machine… Orwell also wrote a famous essay, “Politics and the English Language” , in 1946. His argument went pretty much like this: “…the great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words.” But this may be the one time that Orwell got it wrong. Or possibly a case where politicians and corporate bigwigs wised up and started achieving the same goals as before by being clear ! Huh? Take a complex issue. Use a simple (ideally catchy) phrase to describe your view on that complex issue and bingo! It is memorable, hence likely to be repeated; it sounds like common sense, and hence accompanied with that sense of obviousness. Did I just define sound bytes? Isn’t that exactly what you hea...