"Complicate" = "elucidate the complexity of"

Jonathan Lighter wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM
Wed Mar 23 02:19:24 UTC 2011


I've seen this many, many times.

I believe the intended meaning is not to "elucidate the complexity of" but
rather to "make more interesting or significant by developing complexities
that may be said to follow from the text."

The difference, if there is one, is that your interpretation suggests that
the complexities are plainly and indisputably there. Mine implies that they
are developed imaginatively  by the relentless, self-important critic.

For example: one cannot easily "complicate" Das Kapital because
it's complicated already.  But one could easily "complicate" an episode of
The Fintstones by pointing out, with extensive support from theory, the deep
sexism, racism, elitism, homophobia (or homoeroticism),
anti-intellectualism, and, above all, self-negating contradictions suggested
by following the deductive and inductive implications of the characters,
plot, dialogue, milieu, etc., to their penultimate logical conclusions.

Now that's what *I* call "complicating.

JL


On Tue, Mar 22, 2011 at 10:03 PM, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET>
> Subject:      "Complicate" = "elucidate the complexity of"
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>  From an announcement of a forthcoming Newberry Library
> Eighteenth-Century Seminar presentation by PROFESSOR DENA GOODMAN:
>
> Professor Goodman seeks to complicate the picture of
> nineteenth-century reactionary aristocrats and modern republicans by
> bringing an eighteenth-century perspective to bear on French
> revolutionary and post-revolutionary culture and society.
>
> I think I'll skip this -- historical life is complicated enough as it is.
>
> Joel
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>



--
"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org



More information about the Ads-l mailing list