Big Words or Colossal Terminology?

I need to vent about an issue Ryan brought up for the past two classes. The idea what we need to use such heavy language to explain simple concepts drives me nuts. If you’ve ever had a conversation with me, I’m sure you’ve picked up that I tend to be relaxed and informal. I like to be this way when conversing with anyone- whether it is with my peers, the students in practicum, or my professors. The concepts and ideas being discussed should be more complex and intellectual, but I do not feel like the language I am using should change drastically. It should not make me any less intelligent because I choose not to use a large vocabulary. I feel that people should be able to express themselves using basic words that we have all learned. We can still be bright and educated without complicating things. And honestly, if I decided to create new concepts and thoughts that I wanted to be critiqued and expanded on, I would try to express these ideas as easily as possible. I would want it to be understood quickly and without misinterpretation.

When writing, I find myself using more complicated words then in my speech. Throughout our education, we are taught to keep improving our writing and the way in which we write out our thoughts. When following this idea, in my own experiences, I usually get bored after the first paragraph. I turn to the heading ‘Tools’ at the top bar of Word, click, and scroll down to ‘Thesaurus’ for help. I am more entertained by the funny sounding words I see for the first time and usually put them in my paper for amusement. What a harebrained scheme.

Big words are good, but I think they are used too often in contexts they should be left out of. Life is complex enough as it is, so why do we make language so difficult? As I mentioned in a previous blog post, we are expected to do and think so much in our lives as musicians, teachers, students, friends, siblings, mentors, children, etc.

There’s a quote I was exposed to that I connected with the second I heard it. No worries- it’s easy to comprehend. It goes a little something like this:

“Simplify, simplify, simplify!”