"Complicate" = "elucidate the complexity of"

[Joel S. Berson]

At 3/22/2011 10:19 PM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>I've seen this many, many times.

I hadn't -- but perhaps I'm reading stuff from the stone age (viz. LH
below).  20th century.

>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."

I knew that -- but my def is shorter, and I wanted to be ... is it
"ironic", Jon? by using a verb that suggested the opposite of
"complicate".  :-)


>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

And LH wrote:
>Isn't this what used to be called (in the good old days)
>"problematizing" an issue rather than complicating it?

I think so.  The problematized (or is it complicatized?) jargon evolves.

Joel




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