It&#x27;s<p>1. Convey meaning<p>2. Establish social&#x2F;tribal register - which can be done in inclusive (welcoming) or exclusive (aggressive) ways.<p>I think elegant, beautiful English peaked in the 1950s. I have a small collection of books from that period about various topics. They&#x27;re all written in an effortlessly understated and unaffected English style that seems to have vanished now.<p>George Orwell&#x27;s essays have some of the same quality.<p>At the other extreme, academic arts literature can be particularly bad, because the wilder fringes of (e.g.) critical theory seem to have developed a cargo cult vocabulary that primarily exists for social signalling, not for communication - while, ironically, spending a lot of time discussing social signalling.<p>When it&#x27;s so easy to hack together an academic paper generator [1][2] and no one is much the wiser, it&#x27;s clear that communication is no longer the point.<p>[1] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;bocktherobber.com&#x2F;2010&#x2F;05&#x2F;post-modernism-generator&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;bocktherobber.com&#x2F;2010&#x2F;05&#x2F;post-modernism-generator&#x2F;</a>
[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theguardian.com&#x2F;technology&#x2F;shortcuts&#x2F;2014&#x2F;feb&#x2F;26&#x2F;how-computer-generated-fake-papers-flooding-academia" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theguardian.com&#x2F;technology&#x2F;shortcuts&#x2F;2014&#x2F;feb&#x2F;26...</a>