Balancing diction (quality) and comprehensibility (effectiveness)
Something which by now may have become apparent to my colleagues and friends alike, is that in personal writing I gravitate toward long and complicated sentences. The formality of my writing has also been remarked upon by more than one friend. On the other hand, I also try to optimize diction: that is, I have an old habit of attempting to use whatever word I believe is most appropriate, regardless of how rarely one might hear it.
In my Japanese language post from May, I had mentioned that I experience a constant struggle to maintain linguistic competence. In fact, it seems self evident that disuse leads to atrophy in many situations, be they physical (musculature), neural (pathways to access memories) or otherwise.
With tweeting, the stringent limit on message length means I struggle with the inevitable prevalence of abbreviations and (in that case, &) initialisms - and rarely, acronyms - far more in English than I do in Japanese. However, in the latter tongue I clearly need to acquire more Kango (vocabulary of Chinese origin). This is why I can finally appreciate the efficacy of Kango (in succinctly yet accurately conveying information), and in turn why reading the newspapers in Japanese is a challenge.
Professionally speaking, my time as documentation author both while at university (I created an administrator's guide for OCLC) and in the workplace (for a Notes-based CRM application) begot some persisting habits. In that context, I ensure that sentences are shorter and vocabulary is pared, although in the latter practice there is a clear conflict between wishing to give the reader a plethora of synonyms for interests' sake, and the need to facilitate the translation process especially where MT (machine translation) is involved at the onset.
This blog, then, is a merged entity when it comes to its style as it consists of personal ramblings about professional topics, readers may anticipate that my thought processes will be documented here without too much editing. Hopefully, my formality will not be mistaken for aloofness, any more than my diction is taken (as it had been, quite often, during my school years) for arrogance.
I have run into similar challenges, particularly with my home situation. My professional life revolves around extremely intelligent, well educated and literate people while my personal and family life are mostly blue-collar and products of a substandard education system. I find I unconsciously switch modes from work to personal and more narrowly focus my vocabulary usage when at home or with local family and friends. I originally found it uncomfortable, like I was "talking down" to them, but I had several conversations with my wife on the subject. The short of it: the balance between efficient use of my full vocabulary and efficient communication with a given audience is not always the same thing.
ReplyDeleteRe: Japanese, my 日本語 is kind of stuck now. I don't put enough study time in to advance, and I don't have anyone to practice conversation with here. I really need a 2 year ex-pat gig in Japan to advance I think! :-)
Hi Mick, thanks for your comment. Yes, I think the cardinal rule for effective communication is "know thy audience". In my case, my family and relatives all expected Japanese to be used, and they were understanding that I wasn't a product of the educational system in Japan. And as I was extremely fortunate, in the English speaking context at school and at work I have always been surrounded by mainly better educated and brilliant minds.
ReplyDeleteI agree that immersion in the target language is the most expedient way to acquire it, but as it's so different to Western languages, I'd also say that substantial study commitment would be unavoidable even then to gain literacy - though without it, casual conversation skills could still be attained.