Have you ever read an article that interested you, and soon realised that you couldn't continue reading, because the writer was writing in a language you understood and yet did not understand? You know the person is writing in English, it's just not English you understand.
To put it more simply, sometimes when I read something, I come away from it feeling impressed by the writer's command of language, and yet knowing absolutely nothing about what he or she just wrote about.
One thing I've learnt in communication school is, nothing communicates better than the simple word, and the most effective prose is always by nature, succint.
I will be the first person to admit that my abilities of comprehension are limited. Often, when I read articles on social issues I don't know what the hell they are talking about. In most cases, the writers don't make any effort to make it relevant to me anyway. It is almost as though they are hiding the perceived superiority of their argument behind verbosity and vocabulary, so that at the end of it, I don't even understand your argument enough to rebut it.
It makes me wonder then, why did you write the piece if you don't want anybody to understand it? Is it an ego trip, is that it? So you can show us just how intelligent you are? By doing that you just reaffirm your status as a minority that cannot be understood, and really, nobody cares enough to make the effort.
Remember those review pages in newspapers? Now, hands up the number of you who actually read them on a regular basis. I thought as much.
The irony is, if you're debating a social issue, you want to engage society. So use the language everyone is most familiar with - simple words. I find it funny sometimes that people chide the layman online for using Singlish and laugh at his command of the English, because we understand him fine. He doesn't write perfect, but he gets his point across. At least he cares enough to post. If you smartasses could actually lay it off enough to realise its the content that's important, you might begin to understand why people can't be bothered to read about what you write sometimes.
By the way, don't even get me started on university readings. Were they even written to be understood? What's with all these stupid attributions to books that I will never find time to read, or all these "invented" terms that mean nothing to me because I don't even understand the explanations for them. And why do I find myself checking the dictionary 3 times in every paragraph? Is that what you want me to do, practice using my dictionary?
Small wonder I still haven't figured out what you're trying to tell me. And it's not like I'm not trying. I just read the same paragraph 3 times and I might as well be "eye-powering" it because nothing's gone in. You know, half the books in university libraries, nobody ever reads them. The other half, I wish someone would publish an abridged version of them. The library could burn down and the only thing I'd miss is like, the Wi-Fi. Oh, I just realised that doesn't go away. Even if the place burns down. Hooray.
I remember a time when my textbooks used simple English that I could understand. Holy shit, I think that was the PETS textbook.