Sometimes one is forced to consider the possibility that affairs are being conducted in a manner which, all things being considered and making all possible allowances is, not to put too fine a point on it, perhaps not entirely straightforward. -- Sir Humphrey Appleby, Yes, Minister (Translation: "You're lying.")
Oh, Parent, at present deemed to be domiciled in the stratosphere, May Your name be established and maintained on the highest level of sacrosanctity, May You be allotted and obtain an area of control with appropriate areas of administration, May Your policy be fully executed on a geo-political basis as well as in the normal stratospherical sphere of influence.... -- Bruce Rogers, You Can Say That Again!: A Fun Approach to Sounding Better When You Open Your Mouth to Speak (Translation: "Our Father, which art in heaven, Hallowed be Thy name, Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done, in earth as it is in heaven....")
Bureaucratese, according to most dictionaries, is a style of language ... that uses jargon or euphemism to the detriment of broader understanding. Such language often contains many non-essential words intended to imply more importance or intelligence than actually present. While the examples above are fictional, real life examples abound:
Ways of exit access and the doors to exits to which they lead shall be so designed and arranged as to be clearly recognizable as such. Hangings or draperies shall not be placed over exit doors or otherwise so located as to conceal or obscure any exit. Mirrors shall not be placed on exit doors. Mirrors shall not be placed in or adjacent to any exit in such a manner as to confuse the direction of exit. (Translation: "An exit door must be free of signs or decorations that obscure its visibility.")
Government officials in the United States have long been aware of the problem. In 1998, President Clinton signed a Memorandum that directed the heads of Federal agencies and Executive departments to use plain language in all new documents ... that explain how to obtain a benefit or service or how to comply with a requirement you administer or enforce. President Carter's 1978 Executive Orders, which had previously sought to simply the language of the Federal Government, had not had the intended effect, probably because President Reagan had had those Orders rescinded after he took over from Carter in 1981. Efforts continue (most recently, in the guise of the Plain Writing Act of 2010).
With all due respect to bureaucrats, though, most are rank amateurs when it comes to the art of truly mind-numbing obfuscation. For that, you need academics writing for other academics. (Warning: Not for the faint of heart! No one will be seated during the last sentence! Hemingway fans will be turned away at the door!)
This is the real exteriority of the absolute outside: the reality of the absolutely unconditioned absolute outside univocally predicated of the dark: the light univocally predicated of the darkness: the shining of the light univocally predicated of the limit of the darkness: actuality univocally predicated of the other of self-identity: existence univocally predicated of the absolutely unconditioned other of the self. The precision of the shining of the light breaking the dark is the other-identity of the light. The precision of the absolutely minimum transcendence of the dark is the light itself/the absolutely unconditioned exteriority of existence for the first time/the absolutely facial identity of existence/the proportion of the new creation sans depth/the light itself ex nihilo: the dark itself univocally identified, i.e., not self-identity identity itself equivocally, not the dark itself equivocally, in “self-alienation,” not “self-identity, itself in self-alienation” “released” in and by “otherness,” and “actual other,” “itself,” not the abysmal inversion of the light, the reality of the darkness equivocally, absolute identity equivocally predicated of the self/selfhood equivocally predicated of the dark (the reality of this darkness the other-self-covering of identity which is the identification person-self). -- D. G. Leahy, Foundation: Matter the Body Itself (1996)
By comparison, the tidbit below is a paragon of academic clarity:
The move from a structuralist account in which capital is understood to structure social relations in relatively homologous ways to a view of hegemony in which power relations are subject to repetition, convergence, and rearticulation brought the question of temporality into the thinking of structure, and marked a shift from a form of Althusserian theory that takes structural totalities as theoretical objects to one in which the insights into the contingent possibility of structure inaugurate a renewed conception of hegemony as bound up with the contingent sites and strategies of the rearticulation of power. -- Judith Butler, "Further Reflections on the Conversations of Our Time," Diacritics (1997)
Many academics routinely excuse this sort of writing as necessary to convey nuances of meaning that are not available via simpler language. Other academics dismiss such apologetics as little more than disciplinary gatekeeping (in several senses of the term discipline!).
Folks interested in building a private library devoted to such matters (we assume you have strong drink on hand) may want to add the classic titles below for starters:
Orwell's essay, which first appeared in the April 1946 issue of Horizon, has been reprinted many times and is a staple of introductory writing classes. Flesch, best known for the 1955 classic Why Johnny Can't Read, was arguably America's foremost proponent of plain English. His 1948 article, "A New Readabilty Yardstick," published in the Journal of Applied Psychology, was the basis for J. Peter Kincaid's work that led to the Flesch-Kincaid readability tests, now standard tests used to assess the readability of a wide range of English-language texts. The title below left, for example, has a Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level of 2.9; the text below right has a Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level of 5.5:
It may, or may not, be a source of comfort to know that George Washington's Farewell Address of 1796 comes in at a Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level of 12.0, while President Obama's victory speech of 2008 comes in at 7.4 on the same test....
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