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A comment on Smooth Talk. Parent comment

Re:Smooth Talk by microcolonel on Thursday November 02, 2017 @02:15PM (#15612811)
I did not say that the purpose of writing is "business communications first and foremost". Business communications are a good way to measure whether or not you're being understood, because people's actions are affected by what they think you mean.

I would hold any day that the purpose of writing is to have something understood.

P.S. "late capitalism" is not "capitalism", it's a phrasing meant to normalize the implication that capitalism is expiring and/or coming to an end. This implication has been popular with socialists for well over a century, so apparently it's never been too late for capitalism. ;- )

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Re:Smooth Talk by maldusiecle on Thursday November 02, 2017 @02:27PM (#15612948)
> I would hold any day that the purpose of writing is to have something understood.

See, that's exactly the issue. Shakespeare didn't write his sonnets simply to be "understood," he adopted a more difficult language for the sake of expressivity and aesthetic pleasure. Direct transmission of the author's intent is only one of writing's purposes. To treat it as the only one is to obliterate entire realms of human experience.

This is pretty clearly the author's point, anyway.

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