great movie, great line, Del Toro got robbed
Posted on 07/24/2016 7:47:21 AM PDT by AC Beach Patrol
Donald Trump isn’t a simpleton, he just talks like one. If you were to market Donald Trump’s vocabulary as a toy, it would resemble a small box of Lincoln Logs. Trump resists multisyllabic words and complex, writerly sentence constructions when speaking extemporaneously in a debate, at a news conference or in an interview. He prefers to link short, blocky words into other short, blocky words to create short, blocky sentences that he then stacks into short, blocky paragraphs.
(Excerpt) Read more at politico.com ...
to help build rapport with today's typical undereducated mindless audience
After Trump gave his acceptance speech on Thursday night, the talking heads presumed to tell us what he said.
great movie, great line, Del Toro got robbed
I referenced this article as a prelude to the passage I used in my comment. Marden, who was friend of the greats (Emerson, Holmes, et al.), highlights the simple language as a traits of great men and minds.
Bmk
In case you read only the title and date, I included this quote in the comment section on the article. It’s from a friend of some of the greatest writers and thinkers:
“Conciseness, brevity of expression are characteristic of a great mind. Weak people use twice as many words as strong people. General Grant was a man of few words. Lincoln could put a great proposition into a brief sentence. Read the eighty lines of his Gettysburg speech. Not a single word could be eliminated without crippling the thought. It has the conciseness of condensation. Great minds have ever been simple in their language and concise in their expression.”
-Orison Swett Marden (Hints for Young Writers. NY, Thomas Y. Crowell Publishers, 1914; pp. 59-60)
I presume you see the broad brush...
“This is common theme in the MSM to denigrate Trump, his ideas, and his candidacy.”
Yep. We had a sitting Congressman state that he was worried about Guam ‘tipping over’ because of having too many military personnel on it, but they are attacking the intelligence of Trump.
I remember how they skewered Palin for using too many big words. Trump talks to people where they are. You don’t need 10 dollar words to relate to people. The elites use their words and positions to create class barriers between them and others. This is why far too often with our politicians they can say so much yet say nothing memorable or relevant at all. Trump speaks with impact and while I love literature and the full range of words available in the English language in a country sliding quickly toward the abyss we don’t need someone using big words to obscure that fact and the urgency needed to address it.
In communication, you must talk to your audience. You want the words to be common and the grammar to be simple in order to reach the widest number of people.
I am a scientist. I could say, “Two aliquots of 1.5 mg of N. meningitidis antigen suspended in phosphate buffer injected intramuscularly at intervals of two weeks induced a protective antibody titer of 1:500 (95% CI 1:433 to 1:564) in 457 out of 498, or 91.8%, of study participants.” Or I could say, “Two shots of meningitis vaccine protected over 90% of the test subjects” and reach a lot more people with my message.
In my experience, many people who use complicated jargon-filled language to non-expert (but otherwise intelligent) audiences do so not to communicate a specific idea, but to show off how smart they are. As far as I’m concerned, anyone who knows their stuff should be able to explain it in language that school children can understand.
Trump obviously has the intellect—a dummy could NOT have achieved all that he has. But he’ll save the esoteric language for his professionals, and use the ordinary language to communicate his ideas to the public. Truly intelligent people can do that.
To speak to the great unwashed masses, one must speak on a level they can comprehend.
Newspaper write on a 4th grade level so a broad audience can understand the articles. If Trump speaks on a 3rd grade level, he’ll reach even more people. A win-win.
This is one of the main reasons Cruz washed out in the primaries. A. Keep it simple, B. Use small words.
Strunk and White: “Omit needless words.”
The point of speaking to others is to communicate a point efficiently...it’s not to impress others...
WINNAH!!!!!!
Will Shakespeare had a dislike of words with more than one syllable ....
Trump is smart enough to know that the average American these days is not nearly as bright as before. You do what you have to do to win, you can’t do any good unless you get elected.
“Most of them are trying to explain how to build a clock”
I think we all know very well how to build a clock by now.
First, you get a Radio Shack clock.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.