In case anybody is wondering why the diction in my posts has read as if a five-year-old has written them, it’s partly because of stress, and partly because I’ve been helping to take care of my five-year-old autistic grandson. I’m a linguistic mimic. Meaning that as I immerse myself in the voice of a writer, or speaker, my diction, vocabulary and syntax starts to take on characteristics of the model. And thanks to stress, it’s been taking on characteristics of the lowest-denominator speaker, the speaker with whom I most need to understand and communicate.
We’re moving. Meaning the stress is going down, meaning that my subconscious evidently feels that it’s free to taste and try more complex forms of language.
Welcome back, verbal artistry. At least, here’s hoping.