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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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