Abstract language: What's wrong with it?
The biggest problem with abstract words is that it’s hard to get a grip on what exactly they mean. As you replace specific words with abstract ones, things drift farther out of focus. One of the meanings of abstract is “to take away,” and that’s what abstraction does: it takes away form and detail.
Even when an abstract term is familiar, it can still mean different things to different people. William Zinsser explains it this way in On Writing Well:
[U]se specific detail. This avoids dealing in generalities, which, being generalities, mean nothing. “The play is always fascinating” is a typical critic’s sentence. But how is it fascinating? Your idea of fascinating is different from someone else’s. Cite a few examples and let your readers weigh them on their own fascination scale.
Love is another great example of an abstract word. Ask 10 people what it means and you’ll get 10 definitions. (And with the way we bandy the word about so casually, without attaching some concrete information as to what exactly we mean, it’s no wonder that so many people appear to think that love refers to a tingly sensation in one’s trousers.)
In some cases, abstract words have become almost entirely detached from any specific meaning. Fascism used to be used to refer to a specific form of government; now its various forms are mostly used as a general-purpose slur. “You’re a fascist” is just another way of saying “I really don’t like you.”
People like concrete detail. We use specific instances of things in order to understand abstract ideas. Concrete details give us something to picture and therefore to quickly understand. When I think of an abstract idea like contentment, I think of things like this:
Your picture of contentment is different. Tell me about yours, and I can then connect it to my picture, and we’ll understand each other.
Writing is all about using words to convey ideas from one mind to another. Most writers want to convey ideas clearly and correctly. Too much abstract language, without adding concrete, specific detail, doesn’t help you do that.
Roy Jacobsen
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