Weeeell, there's more to it than that. English has a rich vocabulary, why not use it? Just like there is more to a palette than primary colors, why restrict yourself?
Me, I enjoy using "five dollar words" where they fit, I also enjoy inserting slang, obscure puns, deliberate misspellings, foreign words, all to add some texture and color. Wakarimasu ka?
My father was felled by Alzheimers. What was interesting is his sentences became an incomprehensible jumble of words, but the words were from a well educated man's vocabulary. He never sounded pretentious, it was just how he talked.
(My family does not hail from English aristocracy as far as I can discern. He was the first to attend college.)
I'm from a lower class background; I learned from early on to adapt my language to that of the upper/upper-middle class, and it has 1000% earned me more credibility than my intellect or experience deserve. This isn't to say that this kind of implicit classist gatekeeping is merited--it's not--but this is the reality of the world we live in.
So the scenario in question is "someone trying to fit in with the upper classes" to which your response is something like "use the language however you like"--which is a fine thing to say, and no doubt especially easy to say for those of us who have the ability to speak in the upper class dialect/register, but that's not the stated goal. I.e., if you're trying to fit in with the upper classes, using "utilize" is a tell that you don't fit in (IMO the upper class register prefers to use very few words to convey a lot of meaning; precise, terse, and fashionable vocabulary is the name of the game)--if your goal is to use English however you like, and if you like "utilize" instead of "use", then go right ahead.
> I'm from a lower class background; I learned from early on to adapt my language to that of the upper/upper-middle class
I have a similar background, but I can't say I adapt my language to that of upper classes. My accent and skin color pretty much gives away my background when I utter my first word, and unfortunately, just like having a southern US accent, people are subconsciously biased to thinking I'm probably not too smart. I love using "ten-dollar words"[1] - not that I shoe-horn them in, but they are the ones that usually pop into my head first and I can't be bothered to water them down. Additionally, I figure, "dumb" accent + "smart" words cancel each other out - more or less - which puts me on equal footing with my "normal" sounding colleagues. It's easier to change/adapt my vocabulary than it is to change my accent.
I love language, I do a lot of reading, and it's a delight when you find the right word that precisely expresses what you're thinking. Reading a lot expands your vocabulary and improves your adeptness at deploying it. When done in moderation, using puns and subtle literary references is fun (even when no one picks up on it) - as long as it doesn't detract from the actual message I'm communicating.
1. I do not mean speaking like the Architect from The Matrix here. The other week, I was called out by a monolingual collegue for using "nomenclature" rather than "naming convention" or "naming system" - which feel kludgey to me. Also, when I do make the effort to use shorter words after thinking of a long one first, that adds brief pauses to my speech, which gives the appearance of an ineffective communicator.
One interesting tell that I might have heard in Jamie Johnson's documentary "Born Rich" was talk of holidays.
If you talk about holidaying with one's family in some exotic locale or of having a summer home in the Hamptons, the person you're speaking with can surmise that you're not poor.
The rich kids in that documentary also regularly go out to bars and think nothing of spending hundreds or even thousands of dollars on champagne.
It's definitely not just about how one talks that signals to others that one is part of the upper class.. but once one is established as in the upper class, then things such as one's manner of speech might distinguish you.
I still need to grow out of the opposite. I had a typical lowish middle class upbringing, not poor, but parents were teachers so I was ahead of most classmates just by being around that environment and reading a lot. Being a country town this of course attracted teasing. I learned to talk plain and dumb it down. It's still hard for me to talk otherwise, but writing is OK. Only the teacher saw that so I never changed how I wrote too much.
Much worse than using high-falutin' vocabulary (I might sometimes take advantage of 'utilise' myself) is using high-falutin' grammatical constructions AND USING THEM WRONGLY. Which takes us back nicely to the OP:
> "Having lived in the U.K., I know many whose first (and only) language is English and who make routine errors when speaking and many more when writing," says Madani.
The latest horror is people trying to use the 'so [adjective] a [noun]' construction but instead saying 'so [adjective] of a [noun]'. Folks, when you say 'so [adjective] of a [noun]' you don't sound no ways educated. There's a reason that Abraham Lincoln wrote of "the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice on the altar of freedom" and not "so costly of a sacrifice"; and the reason is that Abraham Lincoln was not bloody illiterate. (It may actually have been written by John Hay https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bixby_letter, but Lincoln's secretaries weren't illiterate, either.) Now you might not think it makes much of a difference; but 'much' is a determiner, not an adjective, which should be clear if you think about it for a much time.
"I enjoy using "five dollar words" where they fit, I also enjoy inserting slang, obscure puns, deliberate misspellings, foreign words, all to add some texture and color. Wakarimasu ka?"
This reminds me of William Gibson's Sprawl slang, of Anthony Burgess' Nadsat slang from A Clockwork Orange, and of Cockney rhyming slang, thieves' cant, etc.
That sort of use can have a certain appealing charm to it in small doses (or might be annoying, depending on who you talk to and what you say), but unfortunately I don't think most users of "utilize" and the like rise to that level.
Yep. I'm not sure there isn't ever a place for utilize; it's not 100% interchangeable with use. But, yes, it's part of a list of business and related jargon that is usually best avoided. Sometimes there are legitimate synergies. And sometimes leverage does actually apply--as in getting outsized benefits from using something. But, yes, should probably be used a lot less than they are.
I actually purposefully try not to use sesquipedalian language much anymore ( ;) ) because I'm always afraid it's going to come off as pompous, and moreover nothing is worse than someone who learned a new fancy word but is using it incorrectly. Well, one thing is worse: when you're that person.
Of course I'll simplify the language I use when talking to people who have limited English skills, like kids or others learning the language.
Sesquipedalian means use of very long words, not quite the same as using a rich vocabulary.
> incorrectly
I sometimes pronounce words incorrectly that I'm very familiar with. What happened was I read the word a lot, yet had never heard it spoken. My mind would make up a pronunciation as I read, and eventually thought that was the real pronunciation.
Weeeell, there's more to it than that. English has a rich vocabulary, why not use it? Just like there is more to a palette than primary colors, why restrict yourself?
Me, I enjoy using "five dollar words" where they fit, I also enjoy inserting slang, obscure puns, deliberate misspellings, foreign words, all to add some texture and color. Wakarimasu ka?
My father was felled by Alzheimers. What was interesting is his sentences became an incomprehensible jumble of words, but the words were from a well educated man's vocabulary. He never sounded pretentious, it was just how he talked.
(My family does not hail from English aristocracy as far as I can discern. He was the first to attend college.)