I think the strongest argument for using small words, simpler sentence structures, etc, is that many EAs aren’t native English speakers. Using simpler language makes the posts more accessible to them. That said, Google Translate and other forms of machine translation are becoming increasingly good, so I wouldn’t be surprised if that particular problem fixes itself in 1-3 years.
That said, I think your third point is plausible, but the first two are less so.
I don’t think big words are less respectful than small words. If anything, you might expect the opposite effect (small words sometimes sound condescending). By default, I assume my audience is literate[1], and I think this is more respectful than dumbing down.
I think it’s easier to screw up with small words than big words, because small words tend to have multiple meanings for the same word, whereas big words (in general) tend to have more precise and isolated meanings.
Consider “good” vs “highest EV” or “tiny” vs “nanometer”
(If there are studies where big words are more likely to be misleading, even among a reasonably selective audience, I’m willing to be corrected).
When I conducted a Twitter poll of what my follower’s reading SAT (an American college entrance test) scores are, of the people who took the SAT, ~1/3 of followers claimed to have the highest possible score, and ~1/2 of followers claimed to have a score in the 99th percentile. Now, it is very possible that those people were lying. But if you lie about how good you are at reading, dumbing down my word choices probably wouldn’t make you feel more respected.
I think the strongest argument for using small words, simpler sentence structures, etc, is that many EAs aren’t native English speakers. Using simpler language makes the posts more accessible to them. That said, Google Translate and other forms of machine translation are becoming increasingly good, so I wouldn’t be surprised if that particular problem fixes itself in 1-3 years.
That said, I think your third point is plausible, but the first two are less so.
I don’t think big words are less respectful than small words. If anything, you might expect the opposite effect (small words sometimes sound condescending). By default, I assume my audience is literate[1], and I think this is more respectful than dumbing down.
I think it’s easier to screw up with small words than big words, because small words tend to have multiple meanings for the same word, whereas big words (in general) tend to have more precise and isolated meanings.
Consider “good” vs “highest EV” or “tiny” vs “nanometer”
(If there are studies where big words are more likely to be misleading, even among a reasonably selective audience, I’m willing to be corrected).
When I conducted a Twitter poll of what my follower’s reading SAT (an American college entrance test) scores are, of the people who took the SAT, ~1/3 of followers claimed to have the highest possible score, and ~1/2 of followers claimed to have a score in the 99th percentile. Now, it is very possible that those people were lying. But if you lie about how good you are at reading, dumbing down my word choices probably wouldn’t make you feel more respected.