But it’s not a great secret that plenty of people routinely go too far, turning minor language infractions into major crimes, while adopting a discourse that is so complex and jargon-laden that people outside university settings often find it off-putting—or straight-up absurd. (“Speak in the vernacular,” the radical historian Mike Davis once pleaded with young organizers. “The moral urgency of change acquires its greatest grandeur when expressed in shared language.”)
