I was on LinkedIn this morning, clearing my notifications, scrolling with no aim in mind, reading (questionable) stories of inspiration, success, failure, life-lessons, ‘expert’ commentary, and everything in between. What struck me was not how disingenuous some of the posts seemed but how people had taken an entirely different language to express themselves there – ‘business talk’, full of legalese, buzzwords, and thesaurus-esque contraptions which complicated basic ideas. It seemed almost dystopian, this way of talking, turning nouns to verbs and verbs to nouns & making sure the only words in a sentence having less than 2 syllables were articles. Why do we think complicated language is a signal of intelligence? Rather, why do we disregard clear expression as oversimplified?

The other day I sat in front of an Indian news channel after ages. The discussion, in between all the screaming and shouting, was dismal at best but my family felt the anchor was doing a great job because she could turn a clever phrase. In that moment they were so impressed with her vocabulary that the fact that it lacked substance was beside the point. They are not alone. Think back to your school, college, and work years and see how we have been taught collectively to reward the smart talker, the juggler of jargon. My point is not to disregard flourish of language but to question the correlation we assume between breadth of vocabulary and depth of ideas.

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