5 ms·

The New Yorker is a classic example of higher level English that is far above the level of “random comments on the internet”. The typical New Yorker article is

by csa 7y ago

The New Yorker is a classic example of higher level English that is far above the level of “random comments on the internet”. The typical New Yorker article is CEFRL C2 [1] or ILR 3/3+ [2]. Most internet comments are at CEFRL A2 or so, with some (often faulty) more thoughtful responses at B1 or B2. Said another way, your median high schooler can read and understand a typical internet comment, but the median high school student cannot read and comprehend a typical New Yorker article. There are three aspects of writing in the New Yorker that elevates the level: 1. Vocabulary level. Often this is used to add color, and it typically does so well. 2. Complex structure at passage level with appropriate cohesive devices. This loses a lot of people, but makes the article linguistically rich. 3. There can be a great deal of inference and/or tone in New Yorker articles that some folks just don’t get. It will sometimes cause less proficient readers to take away substantial misunderstandings about the contents of the article. If you try to talk about a New Yorker article in detail with most people, it is not that tough to reach linguistic breakdown. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_European_Framework_of_Reference_for_Languages https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_European_Framework_of... [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ILR_scale https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ILR_scale

csa 7y ago
Slight mistake that I can’t edit — New Yorker articles can range from C1-C2... maybe even down to B2 at times. Regardless, all of the main points still hold.
kieckerjan 7y ago
Not to mention that the typical New Yorker article is looong. Way longer than the typical random internet comment. This puts some demands on the reader as well. :-)
C1sc0cat 7y ago
Do you have some examples here?
nabla9 7y ago
> It will sometimes cause less proficient readers to take away substantial misunderstandings about the contents of the article. The most prolific example of the reading level mismatches causing trouble is Paul Krugman's August 2002 column: Dubya's Double Dip? https://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/02/opinion/dubya-s-double-dip.html https://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/02/opinion/dubya-s-double-di...? The famous sentence from the article: > To fight this recession the Fed needs more than a snapback; it needs soaring household spending to offset moribund business investment. And to do that, as Paul McCulley of Pimco put it, Alan Greenspan needs to create a housing bubble to replace the Nasdaq bubble. If you read the whole article and think that Krugman says this housing bubble is a good idea your reading level can't be that good. Too many people did read the whole article and failed to grasp the tone and nuance. Even Arnold Kling had to point out this to his readers http://www.econlib.org/archives/2009/06/defending_what.html http://www.econlib.org/archives/2009/06/defending_what.html
- mordymoop 7y ago
  Maybe Krugman’s writing is just actually very unclear. “Difficult” writing is to be avoided, not praised.
  - nabla9 7y ago
    One of the marks of a good writer is how they uncomplicate the writing without watering it down. Krugman is really good writer in that regard. His writing skill was probably a big reason why he became regular columnist in NYT. That kind of writing can still be inaccessible to lower reading comprehension levels. If you are uncertain of his writing skills, I don't know what to say.
  - barry-cotter 7y ago
    This is only true if you aim to reach as wide an audience as possible. If you are writing for a specialist audience making the reader work to connect the dots themselves has an extremely long history. https://econjwatch.org/articles/a-beginner-s-guide-to-esoteric-reading https://econjwatch.org/articles/a-beginner-s-guide-to-esoter... > This article is a republication, by permission, of a chapter of the author’s book Philosophy Between the Lines: The Lost History of Esoteric Writing (University of Chicago Press, 2014). The piece provides a beginner’s guide to techniques and devices used in esoteric writing. Among the techniques and devices described are the following: dissembling the true message (sometimes by presenting it as from a disputant, beggar, or buffoon, sometimes by arguing against it in ways that enhance awareness of its truth); dissembling the true target (exoterically speaking of Y when the real target is some other thing Z); developing a compelling argument and then taking it back; textual incongruity (for example, departing from a declared plan); conspicuous inconsistency or self-contradiction; the commission of errors that the author’s demonstrated competence and mastery would not allow (for example, altering a quotation in a significant way); dispersal (dispersing argumentation for a tacit viewpoint throughout the text); expressing very striking or intense thoughts in an oblique or ancillary fashion, such as in a meandering digression or in the notes; meaningful silence or conspicuous omission (as when the text creates expectations of coming to something that then remains unaddressed or unstated); alluding subtly to the writings or opinions of a significant figure; and placing thoughts of particular significance in middle of the text or in the exact center of a list or sequence.
Mvandenbergh 7y ago
The CEFR is intended to measure the proficiency of foreign language learners and not measure the sophistication of native language speakers. Everyone that speaks English as a first language would pass a C2 level examination very easily. The standard ways to measure text complexity in English for native speakers are the Flesch-Kincaid readability and grade level tests. These depend on the length of words and on the number of words in sentences so they're obviously not perfect, in particular they do not measure the use of rare vocabulary or references nor of difficult content. I tested the OP and found: Flesch reading ease 53.2 (fairly difficult) Gunning Fog 11 (hard to read) Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level 10.1 grade Coleman-Liau 10th grade SMOG Index 9.6 grade ARI 9.5 grade Linsear Write Formula 11.4 grade Where the references to grade are to American school grades. In other words this text can be read by average American 10th graders without difficulty. I ran an article from the current New Yorker through as well (the one on Basquiat) and that came out as 11th grade reading level.
- acjacobson 7y ago
  While it sounds like your measurements are more attuned to native speakers, I am not so sure that any high schooler could easily pass a C2 exam. Here is an example C2 practice exercise that doesn't seem all that far off from something you might see in the SAT: https://www.examenglish.com/cpe/cpe_reading_part1.htm https://www.examenglish.com/cpe/cpe_reading_part1.htm
- tsss 7y ago
  I doubt that the average native English speaker would pass a C2 level exam (even if you only consider the US and UK, as there are many other countries that speak English (for example India). While they probably won't have any problems with the grammar, C2 uses a lot of vocabularity that you won't be familiar with if you don't read much.
- barry-cotter 7y ago
  > Everyone that speaks English as a first language would pass a C2 level examination very easily. This is almost exactly equivalent to saying that an average ten year old can read the New Yorker. A ten year old already has their native language down, the rules of grammar and syntax, the accent, the vocabulary, the capacity to discriminate between words with the same denotation but different connotations. There are ten year olds who can profitably read the New Yorker but very few. At least 10% of the adult population will have an absolute score on an IQ test similar to the average ten year old’s. There are undoubtedly New Yorker articles that a ten year old could completely understand with sufficient exegesis but it’s the US’ premier literary journal and has been for decades. If they haven’t published articles with the depth and complexity of a Supreme Court judgment on some level I will be greatly surprised. Most people are literally incapable of passing a law degree just as they are of learning calculus. You can write formal logic in English prose instead of using the symbols. The English prose version will be no more comprehensible to an average native English speaker than the one with mathematical symbols.
javajosh 7y ago
>C2 I wonder if there is a similar scale for cartoons, and if (inscrutable) New Yorker cartoons are at D1 or higher.
- csa 7y ago
  1. I don’t think that there is a D1 on the scale. 2. A scale for cartoons would be interesting. The top level would probably require something like awareness of current events, knowledge of one or more complex/academic theoretical concepts, and deep cultural embeddedness and awareness of cultural trends.
  - moate 7y ago
    "On a scale of Marmaduke to the New Yorker, how complex is this comic strip"
- C1sc0cat 7y ago
  From all the US satirical cartoons I have seem they seem rather crude and tame compared to the UK and still rely rather old tropes that always seem to require labelling "oh look its the cat with $ signs for eyes and labelled "wall street" whereas in the UK a cartoon might make a reference to a cartoon from 50-60-70 years ago and you would be expected to understand the reference with out labelling
  - fiblye 7y ago
    Do you have examples of these sorts of cartoons? I've never seen one so I can't imagine what they're like.
    - pmyteh 7y ago
      So here's an example of a Steve Bell editorial cartoon. He's a leftwinger, in the fairly angry and vicious tradition of British satire, but this is a fairly restrained one: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/picture/2019/jun/05/steve-bell-75th-anniversary-d-day-cartoon https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/picture/2019/jun/0... It's a comment on the pageantry around the 75th anniversary of D-Day, and directly refers to a famous cartoon from WW2, which was published on VE Day by the (also socialist) cartoonist Philip Zec: http://www.cartooncounty.com/serendipity2/uploads/Zec2site.JPG http://www.cartooncounty.com/serendipity2/uploads/Zec2site.J... The whole genre isn't self-referential, but it's not unusual for leader cartoons to refer to other cartoons, famous paintings, television, or other things.

by csa 7y ago

csa 7y ago

Slight mistake that I can’t edit — New Yorker articles can range from C1-C2... maybe even down to B2 at times. Regardless, all of the main points still hold.

kieckerjan 7y ago

Not to mention that the typical New Yorker article is looong. Way longer than the typical random internet comment. This puts some demands on the reader as well. :-)

C1sc0cat 7y ago

Do you have some examples here?

nabla9 7y ago

> It will sometimes cause less proficient readers to take away substantial misunderstandings about the contents of the article. The most prolific example of the reading level mismatches causing trouble is Paul Krugman's August 2002 column: Dubya's Double Dip? https://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/02/opinion/dubya-s-double-dip.html https://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/02/opinion/dubya-s-double-di...? The famous sentence from the article: > To fight this recession the Fed needs more than a snapback; it needs soaring household spending to offset moribund business investment. And to do that, as Paul McCulley of Pimco put it, Alan Greenspan needs to create a housing bubble to replace the Nasdaq bubble. If you read the whole article and think that Krugman says this housing bubble is a good idea your reading level can't be that good. Too many people did read the whole article and failed to grasp the tone and nuance. Even Arnold Kling had to point out this to his readers http://www.econlib.org/archives/2009/06/defending_what.html http://www.econlib.org/archives/2009/06/defending_what.html

mordymoop 7y ago
Maybe Krugman’s writing is just actually very unclear. “Difficult” writing is to be avoided, not praised.
- nabla9 7y ago
  One of the marks of a good writer is how they uncomplicate the writing without watering it down. Krugman is really good writer in that regard. His writing skill was probably a big reason why he became regular columnist in NYT. That kind of writing can still be inaccessible to lower reading comprehension levels. If you are uncertain of his writing skills, I don't know what to say.
- barry-cotter 7y ago
  This is only true if you aim to reach as wide an audience as possible. If you are writing for a specialist audience making the reader work to connect the dots themselves has an extremely long history. https://econjwatch.org/articles/a-beginner-s-guide-to-esoteric-reading https://econjwatch.org/articles/a-beginner-s-guide-to-esoter... > This article is a republication, by permission, of a chapter of the author’s book Philosophy Between the Lines: The Lost History of Esoteric Writing (University of Chicago Press, 2014). The piece provides a beginner’s guide to techniques and devices used in esoteric writing. Among the techniques and devices described are the following: dissembling the true message (sometimes by presenting it as from a disputant, beggar, or buffoon, sometimes by arguing against it in ways that enhance awareness of its truth); dissembling the true target (exoterically speaking of Y when the real target is some other thing Z); developing a compelling argument and then taking it back; textual incongruity (for example, departing from a declared plan); conspicuous inconsistency or self-contradiction; the commission of errors that the author’s demonstrated competence and mastery would not allow (for example, altering a quotation in a significant way); dispersal (dispersing argumentation for a tacit viewpoint throughout the text); expressing very striking or intense thoughts in an oblique or ancillary fashion, such as in a meandering digression or in the notes; meaningful silence or conspicuous omission (as when the text creates expectations of coming to something that then remains unaddressed or unstated); alluding subtly to the writings or opinions of a significant figure; and placing thoughts of particular significance in middle of the text or in the exact center of a list or sequence.

Mvandenbergh 7y ago

The CEFR is intended to measure the proficiency of foreign language learners and not measure the sophistication of native language speakers. Everyone that speaks English as a first language would pass a C2 level examination very easily. The standard ways to measure text complexity in English for native speakers are the Flesch-Kincaid readability and grade level tests. These depend on the length of words and on the number of words in sentences so they're obviously not perfect, in particular they do not measure the use of rare vocabulary or references nor of difficult content. I tested the OP and found: Flesch reading ease 53.2 (fairly difficult) Gunning Fog 11 (hard to read) Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level 10.1 grade Coleman-Liau 10th grade SMOG Index 9.6 grade ARI 9.5 grade Linsear Write Formula 11.4 grade Where the references to grade are to American school grades. In other words this text can be read by average American 10th graders without difficulty. I ran an article from the current New Yorker through as well (the one on Basquiat) and that came out as 11th grade reading level.

acjacobson 7y ago
While it sounds like your measurements are more attuned to native speakers, I am not so sure that any high schooler could easily pass a C2 exam. Here is an example C2 practice exercise that doesn't seem all that far off from something you might see in the SAT: https://www.examenglish.com/cpe/cpe_reading_part1.htm https://www.examenglish.com/cpe/cpe_reading_part1.htm
tsss 7y ago
I doubt that the average native English speaker would pass a C2 level exam (even if you only consider the US and UK, as there are many other countries that speak English (for example India). While they probably won't have any problems with the grammar, C2 uses a lot of vocabularity that you won't be familiar with if you don't read much.
barry-cotter 7y ago
> Everyone that speaks English as a first language would pass a C2 level examination very easily. This is almost exactly equivalent to saying that an average ten year old can read the New Yorker. A ten year old already has their native language down, the rules of grammar and syntax, the accent, the vocabulary, the capacity to discriminate between words with the same denotation but different connotations. There are ten year olds who can profitably read the New Yorker but very few. At least 10% of the adult population will have an absolute score on an IQ test similar to the average ten year old’s. There are undoubtedly New Yorker articles that a ten year old could completely understand with sufficient exegesis but it’s the US’ premier literary journal and has been for decades. If they haven’t published articles with the depth and complexity of a Supreme Court judgment on some level I will be greatly surprised. Most people are literally incapable of passing a law degree just as they are of learning calculus. You can write formal logic in English prose instead of using the symbols. The English prose version will be no more comprehensible to an average native English speaker than the one with mathematical symbols.

javajosh 7y ago

>C2 I wonder if there is a similar scale for cartoons, and if (inscrutable) New Yorker cartoons are at D1 or higher.

csa 7y ago
1. I don’t think that there is a D1 on the scale. 2. A scale for cartoons would be interesting. The top level would probably require something like awareness of current events, knowledge of one or more complex/academic theoretical concepts, and deep cultural embeddedness and awareness of cultural trends.
- moate 7y ago
  "On a scale of Marmaduke to the New Yorker, how complex is this comic strip"
C1sc0cat 7y ago
From all the US satirical cartoons I have seem they seem rather crude and tame compared to the UK and still rely rather old tropes that always seem to require labelling "oh look its the cat with $ signs for eyes and labelled "wall street" whereas in the UK a cartoon might make a reference to a cartoon from 50-60-70 years ago and you would be expected to understand the reference with out labelling
- fiblye 7y ago
  Do you have examples of these sorts of cartoons? I've never seen one so I can't imagine what they're like.
  - pmyteh 7y ago
    So here's an example of a Steve Bell editorial cartoon. He's a leftwinger, in the fairly angry and vicious tradition of British satire, but this is a fairly restrained one: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/picture/2019/jun/05/steve-bell-75th-anniversary-d-day-cartoon https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/picture/2019/jun/0... It's a comment on the pageantry around the 75th anniversary of D-Day, and directly refers to a famous cartoon from WW2, which was published on VE Day by the (also socialist) cartoonist Philip Zec: http://www.cartooncounty.com/serendipity2/uploads/Zec2site.JPG http://www.cartooncounty.com/serendipity2/uploads/Zec2site.J... The whole genre isn't self-referential, but it's not unusual for leader cartoons to refer to other cartoons, famous paintings, television, or other things.