Sophistication in the English language

A fellow graduate student and I were discussing the following topic during dinner. Why has English writing become less varied and sophisticated with time? Even the everyday literate person in the 1880s or supposedly even the 1960s could write better than today's American college graduates. Our vocabulary has diminished and the length of our sentences has shrunk. The graduate student I was speaking with claimed that she was told in Britain that one should only use words with Anglo-Saxon roots and not words with Latin roots. Yet there are many words in each system that have no duplicate (in connotation) in the other system. It's not just that our present day vocabulary is smaller; the way we use it is also less sophisticated. I sometimes have to re-read passages in Victorian novels because the sentences are far longer and convey so much meaning. I've also been told that biology students who have read articles from the 60s are struck by their clarity and elegance.

My graduate student friend argued that society has an obligation to educate its citizens in the better usage of language. If journalism and media raised their standards, everyday people would, too. Even in the academy, both of us have been told to use the simplest language. The advice makes some sense in science where articles are read by an international audience. However, it is strange that this tenet holds in humanities culture as well.

Perhaps I will make it my goal to write science beautifully.