I don't think this is about "protect[ing] language from being captured by formal analysis", it's about calling out bogus analysis when you see it. This "vividn

I don't think this is about "protect[ing] language from being captured by formal analysis", it's about calling out bogus analysis when you see it. This "vividness" analysis is bogus for two reasons: (1) The idea that individual words have objectively different levels of "vividness" completely divorced from context (when and where the novel was written, which character is speaking, etc.) is extremely debatable; (2) The idea that the "vividness" of individual words makes the novel as a whole "vivid" is a logical fallacy (compositional fallacy). I'm 100% behind the use of "formal analysis" to extract new insights into literature and language – there are examples where it has been done very well [1] – but analysis has to be robust, which I don't think it is here. [1] http://jonreeve.com/2016/07/paradise-lost-macroetymology/ http://jonreeve.com/2016/07/paradise-lost-macroetymology/