Quote:
Originally Posted by taosaur
[W]riters generally come by their vocabulary honestly, by having read a great deal more than the average person, and specifically having read a great deal more of existing canon. Often enough, that knowledge is augmented by life experiences wherein the author has been exposed to specialized vocabularies.
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I agree; I'd go even further than that.
Many writers acquire specialized vocabularies
despite the fact that some readers might be put off. They certainly aren't trying to discourage their potential audience.
Rarefied diction can happen when a writer zeroes in on the kinds of observations they tend to make and wish to be more exact. It can happen as the result of extensive research that left a mark. It can happen because a writer's childhood placed them in close proximity to a library filled with old, odd and oddly compelling books. It can also happen when the music of language becomes so important that they wish to learn about every sound, every nuance, as a composer does classes of intervals, chords and timbres.
It happens for other equally valid reasons as well.
Whether or not they should privilege some projected normative reader over the joy of writing in their own voice is a question that doesn't come down to populism versus elitism. It can be a question of sales, if the writer is dependent on sales, but it can also be a question of innate talent. Some writers simply can't write in a popular style, and the choice would be between writing pandering swill that would continue to remain unpopular or writing novels that allowed them to develop and perfect the full range of their gifts.