I was thinking (I find it hard, feel proud) and it came to me that, of all the words I understand, I only use a small fraction even when it might make sense to use them. I’ll give you an example: I know what the word “humongous” means, but I never use that particular superlative. I say “huge” or “massive” or “enormous,” but I never use “humongous.” And this has nothing to do with whether or not I understand the word.
It then occurred to me that people may have a sort of sub-vocabulary within the store of words that they understand. This would be a set of words they’re apt to use at all. I refer not just to words you’d rarely have cause to use (like “defenestrate”) but words like “grandiloquent,” “humongous,” etc.
I could be wrong about language psychology, but maybe I’m right too. This is all just based on things I was thinking about going down the street.
So, is there such as a thing as a set of words that a person is apt to use when it might be functional to use them as a subset of words they understand?
IANA Expert or anything, but I’ve had similar thoughts. I think it’s neither linguistics or psychology, but rather sociology (if that’s the right word for something that is a social phenomenon)
In other words. I think most of us have a particular way of talking/choice of word usage that is judged to be ‘normal’ when used in social situations.
I was thinking just recently how much better I am at articulating myself than how I choose to do so. I wondered why I don’t talk to people the way I think (in word form) about things.
And my brain’s answer back to me was “Because you’d sound like a f***ing weirdo!”
(Ok, my brain can be harsh. But the point is: I choose a way of talking that is designed to fit in with the norm)
I usually see the terms “active vocabulary” and “passive vocabulary.” In my discipline (folklore) there is the concept that each subset of your identity comes with its own speech: you use different vocabulary with family than with work colleagues or friends or with strangers on the street. Slang and jargon are most easily identifiable, but regular word choice is involved too, as are accent and intonation.
You know “humongous,” so if you started hanging out with a group of people who used it more, you’d use it more too.
A linguistic concept that’s close but not quite what you’re talking about (but exactly what **Lobsang **is talking about) would be collocations, which are defined as combinations of words that show up more often than others, not strictly based on their simple meaning. They’re not quite fixed idioms yet, but they’re not interchangeable associations of words either.
For example, if you’re in a kitchen, and that kitchen is really clean, you might say it’s a “spotless kitchen”. But you wouldn’t say it’s an “unsullied kitchen”. This is not because the latter adjective doesn’t apply, it’s just that it’s not typically associated with the noun “kitchen”.
And the thing is, there is absolutely no semantic or rational reason why adjective X wouldn’t be applied to noun Y by the average speaker. The meaning is the same. But they just don’t, because it would feel or sound weird.
Try teaching an automated translator to figure *that *out.
This concept is why attempts to measure the size of people’s vocabulary, by recording the words they actually use, fall massively short of the actual number of words they understand and could use correctly if they so chose. You could record every word I say for a year and never hear the words “deleterious”, “intergenerational”, “mazurka” or “cavort”, or any of thousands of other words that I am familiar with.
I’ve gotten the highest grades on vocabulary tests for quite a long time. But you’ll notice I rarely use anything too fancy. If a simple word will do, why bother with a more advanced one unless you are just trying to sound smart?
It not only says that some words will be used much more than others, it gives a fairly accurate account of how often the most common word, the second most common word, the third most common word, etc. can be expected to be used.
I’ve heard the term ideolect used to describe the same phenomenon as dialect but at an individual, rather than community, level. I think this may be close to what you are talking about, though ideolect, like dialect would also include choices of grammatical tenses or word order when different dialects prefer one or the other of “correct” forms.
Idiolect, like dialect, refers to everything about a single person’s individual variety of his language. It refers to his pronunciation, his morphology (how words are conjugated or declined), his grammatical structures, his vocabulary, etc.:
It’s thus the same as dialect, except it’s applied to a single person’s speech.
As a Linguist I would be inclined to support the “Idiolect” faction but it’s not that simple. A person’s idiolect would be comprised not only of their own personal phonology, syntax, lexicon, word choice, etc., but also their regional dialect (possibly more than one per person), social register (also possibly more than one), and the context in which the speaker finds themself. I also believe that Kobal2 makes a very good point about collocations. The truth, it would seem, lies somewhere in the midst of all.
Many times, simple words are too generic. You want the writing to convey rich shades of meaning. For example, the word “walk” is very simple – as in:
“He walked into the room.”
But you can also express that action more descriptively without making the sentence longer (e.g. no need to add adverbs or dependent clauses):
“He slithered into the room.”
“He slumbered into the room.”
“He skipped into the room.”
All these different verbs give the sentence more punch. One could argue that “slithered”, “slumbered”, “skipped” are more advanced but I think most editors (and even average readers) would prefer writing that’s richer in imagery and connotations.
On the other hand, there’s another type of “advanced” word usage that seems to impart no additional meaning. Examples would be using multi-syllable scientific terminology instead of everyday words like this:
“It’s going to precipitate tomorrow” instead of just saying “It’s going to rain tomorrow.”
Another example that’s annoying is embedding unnecessary Latin phrases or French idioms in English text. For example, when I see journalists write “raison d’être” , I don’t get any additional shades of meaning. It just looks like fancy and pretentious writing to “sound smart.”
That does impart an additiona meaning; it leaves open the possiblity of snow or hail instead of rain.
If you actually mean rain, then using “precipitation” is not so much pretentious as inaccurate, or just plain wrong (if you actually think it means “rain”). But if you mean precipitation, then say “precipitation”.
Right, but I sometimes heard it while living in Florida. It doesn’t typically snow or hail in Florida (well… maybe in the northern part such as Jacksonville once every 20 or years.)
In Florida, “precipitate” was just a pretentious way of saying “rain.”
I think a lot of it may have to do with one’s target audience. If your audience does not understand certain words, then you will probably find yourself not using those words.
I was writing a white paper for an audience that was made up mostly of people with PhD degrees. I used the term “locus”, meaning a “center” or “source”. I was told by several people that they had no idea what I meant. They thought I had either misspelled “focus” or “locust”, neither of which made any contextual sense.
Needless to say, I don’t use the word “locus” any more, simply because I don’t hang out with people who know what it means.
I am kind of alarmed by the number of people talking about somebody using a given word or words to “sound smart.” The people who use words to sound smart are usually misusing them, or at least, using them awkwardly.
But many of those people using big or uncommon words aren’t trying to sound smart – they **are ** smart.
That in mind, I also find it frightening that a roomful of people with PhDs didn’t know what a “locus” is.
<shakes fist> You juveniles remove yourselves from my decorative ground cover!
Of course, a PhD doesn’t say anything about a person’s knowledge of or fluency in English, or any other language for that matter (unless it was the subject matter of the PhD). I’ve worked with PhD’s (I’m a BS) who had a much weaker grasp on the English language than me.
