Dead Poets Society Empty Words

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“Avoid using the word ‘very’ because it’s lazy. A man is not very tired, he is exhausted. Don’t use very sad, use morose. Language was invented for one reason, boys – to woo women – and, in that endeavor, laziness will not do.” In the movie Dead Poets Society, Robin William uses this line as an English teacher to inspire his students. This line also speaks personally to the way that I find myself in the problem of using “empty words” in my communication. I’m probably worse at using fillers such as “um” and “like” than I realize, but one thing that I have noticed is that I tend to draw out the time that it takes for me to say a word when I don’t know what to say. When looking through the list of “empty words” that we learned about in class, I noticed a theme suggesting a reduction in adjectives. …show more content…

One of my academic confessions is that I almost always keep a thesaurus website accessible while writing so that I can use the same word multiple times but just by concealing the repetition through an arsenal of advanced vocabulary. It seems like my word choice is always either highly intellectual or simplistic to the point that it seems like I’m talking to a child – there’s not in between. Another reason why I am guilty of using empty words in the form of adjectives is simply to take up space in a paper in order to meet the word count or page length requirement. Even now as I’m writing this, I have begun to think twice about every time I attempt to use an adjective. From a more casual conversational stance, though, I still think that these fillers can be helpful. I understand that imprecise ambiguity can cause a sentence to take on a different meaning than intended, but I personally think that precise and straightforward messages that do not include additional adjectives can come off as too detached and

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