Hi Cheryl and others,
Some of my thinking on plain language, context, expertise, etc. can be found at
http://www.stthomasu.ca/inkshed/jamie.htm
I'm not quite as down on capital P Plain Language as Janet and Cathy appear to be. I agree with them that it can't be turned into a nostrum and it can't be universalized.
Having read a lot of depressing, opaque, convoluted academic junk, especially but not exclusively post modernist junk, I wish you well, Cheryl, in teaching academics about plain language.
I'd focus on:
- George Orwell's "Politics And The English Language," "The Prevention of Literature," etc.
- what informs plain language as a modern (1970s onward) political movement
- document design research
- Sokal and the "Social Text" affair
- the rhetorical strategies best applied in planning / audience analysis, revising and editing
- plain language contexts / discourse communities
all of this attached to and springing from their own frustrations and needs as readers.
Jamie MacKinnon
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