As civilizations decline, they become increasingly concerned with form over substance, particularly with respect to language.
I agree with your points about the way language has become increasingly ridiculous Rincewind, but I think that it’s at best a side alley of Political Correctness. Most of the ridiculous inflation of language that I come across is not due to PC but to the writer trying to impress people and show off erudition (that they often don’t have).
I also notice while that Dr. Jernigan is sticking the boot into everyone else he still uses equally pompous phrases such as "current effete sensibilities" in his own language. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/biggrin.gif" alt="" /> But of course he understand those words, so they don't jar with him - even though he could have easily used simpler language.
A few years ago I spent about a week re-writing a government manual into plain English – de-bullshittising it. My wife was overseeing the production of the manual, but had received sections from a number of other agencies and departments. Much of it was full of absurdly overblown language, which I translated into something that could be generally understood.
I also read a lot of books and articles about a certain area of intellectual disability, and the language is for the most part unnecessarily flowery. It’s as if the writers are all trying to impress a professor for an exam, or advance their own reputations, rather than "engaging in the dissemination of pertinent and relevant data" (i..e. telling us the facts <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/biggrin.gif" alt="" /> )
It’s not all bad though. The example of “Shell shock” morphing into “Post Traumatic Stress Disorder” seems quite defendable to me. Shell shock was a pretty basic, and specific term. Whereas Post Traumatic Stress Disorder” is a reasonably good description of the condition and has the advantage of applying to a much wider range of situations. Not many troops are just shocked by shells, it actually is a much wider sort of trauma that they often suffer from. And the majority of cases of PTSD occur in civil life as a result of car crashes, being involved with deaths or any number of other traumatic experiences.
I’d be happy to keep Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, if we could weed out "engaging in the dissemination of pertinent and relevant data" and "current effete sensibilities". <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/biggrin.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/devil.gif" alt="" />
