What is your attitude towards narration infested with rare, obscure and outdated words that no one in their right mind uses in real life?
Depends why it's done. Usually it's just showing off and that's stupid. Writing is to communicate.
Dislike it, but not as much as I despise those who find it necessary to complain about it.
I agree with your picture but not with your post. Then again, I'm not a native Anglophone and I've learned the language through media rather than conversation.
Just yesterday I had to google "ignominy", which was pretty annoying since I'm lazy and would rather not put my book down to do such things, but it was simply the most accurate expression for the scene in question. And it's not like learning is bad.
Always try to use the single most accurate word, unless the narrator or style you're using would forbid it.
>>8215911
>infested
>outdated
>no-one in their right mind uses
Loaded question t b h f a m
i like words
>>8215911
Depends on the purpose of the writing. Some works could benefit from linguistic peacocking, though most wouldn't.
>>8215911
I say anyone can use whatever the fuck words they want if it's fiction. This insistence that everything be as accessible as possible is its own sort of pretension that says the average reader is too good to take the 5 seconds to look up a word or try figuring it out through the context of use.
In academic writing, yes spoonfeed and simplify.
In literature and artistic writing, as long as it's your true, refined voice do as you please.
Too many English teachers would be hacking away at Milton or Hawthorne if they fell into their laps today. And it's not like laconic, "simple" writers like Hemingway are the best the English language has to offer. "The grass is green" just isn't satisfying.
>>8215911
It's a question of whether the vocabulary is appropriate for creating the author's desired emotional effect. This is being literary - writing in a deliberate, marked style.
So when HP Lovecraft uses archaic or unusual words like eldritch, gibbous, and aperture, he is conveying deliberately the dream-life sensation of the stilted, the unusual. the out-of-time-and-place, the weird.
Some words are better suited for very narrow purposes, too. For example, consider how you would prefer to convey an impression of something unchanging, but with religious rather than scientific overtones. Here, it would be preferable to say 'X is abiding' rather than 'X is permanent.'
It follows that writing which is concerned conveying more subtle and nuanced life-dream sensations demands more well-chosen and sometimes unusual language from the author.
>>8215911
there's nothing wrong with a bit of sesquipedalianism every now and again
but it should be like tabasco, sprinkled enough to improve the flavour, but not poured on so much that it ruins the dish.
>>8215954
>Just yesterday I had to google "ignominy"
>it was simply the most accurate expression for the scene in question.
english football fan detected
but wtf? ignominy is not a particularly uncommon word
pic unrelated
