Brain Rot was chosen by the Oxford Dictionary team as the representative expression for the year 2024. It is a journalistic commonplace to examine new vocabulary in order to identify trends – in this case, “the excessive consumption of trivial or unchallenging [online] material” – but also to criticize linguistic fads. Last December, Ancelmo Gois, a columnist for Globe, consulted a group of writers and scholars about the words “that no one can stand to hear anymore”. The criticisms targeted abstruse expressions (“disruptive crossing” would have been “the most unpleasant duo of the year” for the poet Geraldo Carneiro), but also the indiscriminate application of terms of specific use: “resilience”, “iconic”, “layers”, “inclusion” were some examples. Days later, the publication’s Sunday magazine promised to show how a certain actress “transformed Christmas into a synonym for diversity and welcoming”. I remembered an “inclusive menu” for Christmas dinner, heard by chance at the time, and understood the discomfort.
Is it a mere implication or an intuitive reaction to the naive belief in the liberating power of novelties? The most banal conformism can disguise itself as… disruption. In any case, I am disturbed by certain innovations based on obvious mistakes. The recently invented “acertivo” (meaning the degree of accuracy), the use of “sufferable” for something bad or the improper use of the infamous “prezar por” (to cherish) are symptoms of a precarious command of our lexical repertoire (“assertivo” designates something expressed in a confident manner; “sufferable” means “acceptable”; “zealar por” seems to be the vernacular form that generates confusion), tending towards hypercorrection. In the same spirit, some academics fill their texts with vague and extravagant terms, supposedly able to capture the subtleties of the topics they examine. Thus, “to experience”, “in-between places”, a bizarre “painfulness” and similar terms became part of the collection of these nouveau riche of discourse. “The first quality of speech is clarity, and the less talent one has, the greater the effort to raise oneself and inflate oneself, like those dwarfs who rise on tiptoe” (Quintiliano, Oratory Institute II, 3, 8).
More than ensuring the standard norm, or erecting useless barriers against neologisms, it is about recognizing the value of vocabulary for elaborate, precise and lively communication. The issue has been discussed for centuries. The treatise Of the sublime, from the beginning of the first millennium, recalls that the choice of “appropriate and magnificent” words attracts and enchants listeners, and speakers and writers should apply themselves with extreme care, as this “gives grandeur, beauty, elegance, weight, strength, vigor and even a kind of polish to words”. Beautiful expressions, which are “the very light of thought”, give “soul and voice to things”. It is warned, however, that solemnity is not always necessary: “giving small things great and noble names is like putting a large tragic mask on a small child”. Mark Twain translated the idea into a famous piece of advice: “Don't use a five-dollar word when a fifty-cent word will do”.
Clear and vigorous language can benefit from figures of speech (Mark Twain's phrase would be an example). Aristotle saw metaphors as essential resources for the elaboration of complex ideas. More than a linguistic ornament, a well-constructed metaphor, by bringing together disparate concepts, provides the listener with new forms of understanding. However, he observes (Rhetoric, 1406b, 7-8), some metaphors are bad because they are grandiose and theatrical, or simply ridiculous (like the one committed by the Jesuit Baltasar Gracián, who referred to the stars as “chickens of the celestial fields”).
At the beginning of the 19th century, the English essayist William Hazlitt praised the “familiar style”, which he distinguished from the “vulgar style”, noting that “writing without affectation” is not the same as “writing at random”. On the contrary, “nothing requires greater precision and greater purity of expression”. On the one hand, “all empty pomp” is avoided, but “all vulgar expressions, set phrases, loose, disconnected and worn-out allusions” are also discarded.
“Instead of taking the first word that offers itself, one should take the best, according to common usage; instead of gathering words under any attractive combinations, one should adopt and make use of the true peculiarities of a language. To write genuinely in a familiar style is to write like one who, in ordinary conversation, has full control over the choice of words, or like one who can discourse with ease, force, and clarity, putting aside all pedantic and oratorical flourishes.” (Table Talk)
Nietzsche (Human, too human II, 148) contrasted the “grandiose style” with the “superior style,” recalling that one learns more quickly to write in a pompous manner than to do so in a light and simple manner. “The reasons for this are lost in the moral realm,” he says. And who knows, perhaps there is something even deeper than moral discomfort behind the discomfort that strikes us when faced with certain words? Could it be the almost religious promises of language (suggested by poetry, for example) that lead us to reject its profanation by the inept or mystifying?
“The writer is the one who chooses his language and is not dominated by it. He is the opposite of the child. He does not beg for that which dominates him: he works on that which frees him. His mouth is no longer a simple feeling: it is a cult. He approaches the gods who speak. Minerva, Mercury, Apollo, Liber and the fauns are the masters of words.” (Pascal Quignard, Speculative rhetoric).
This text does not necessarily reflect the opinion of Unicamp.
