Overly Formal Diction

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I'm frequently told that my lexicon is too formal for standard conversational settings; my mother often asks if I "swallowed a dictionary" and my sister and her friends typically ask me to translate what I've said into layman's speech. I find it happens a lot more around people I don't know, as if I'm keeping them at a safe distance by using stiff, academic language that can in no way be misinterpreted. I've read these sorts of speech patterns in many fiction books about aspies, but I've never met another real one. Do any of you get accused of talking like walking dictionaries?

I dumb down my speech for most people.

My natural register can get convoluted as I seek for precision of meaning. I hide behind this when I want to keep people at a distance.

When I was a kid I was the little professor. Big words used to come spewing out of me like raindrops from a cloud. By my teen years, even after I'd pilfered a dictionary and read it cover to cover, I really wasn't socializing with anyone anyway. Around that time I decided to dumb down my language. What's interesting now is I forgot quite a few of those big words. The act of dumbing myself down to please society effectively caused me to dumb down for real. That sucks.

I typically speak in a very precise way, picking the words that best communicate exactly what I want to say. I've been told that I take a long time to make my point. Likewise sometimes I get stuck and can't talk if I can't find the perfect word to express what I am thinking.

Like Redrobin I used "big words" when I was a child. Biblical expressions and sentences from the encyclopedia poured out of me. I also had to dumb it down in order not to get laughed at. As a young adult I was there again, having a very professor-like language and being asked not to speak like a "bloody academic".
Over the years have I let go of most of it, and I feel, I have lost it. Yet I very much depend on precise language, and to the frustration of many, I can´t take instruction given in an imprecise/illogical layman language.
It is confusing.

I also have a rather pedantic idiolect, which is pointed out to me frequently; by the time that I had realized that it would be more socially acceptable for me to use a less complex vocabulary, however, I was already too "set in my ways" to change my manner of speaking or writing. I am willing to "translate" when people request that I do so, though it will seldom occur to me out of my own observation that any particular phrase is "too" formal for the given occasion.

Yes. This happens very often. However, I'm a teacher; therefore, I'm expected to use academic language. Because I'm a teacher (and the mother of a 5-year-old), I've also developed a habit of rephrasing what I say in simpler terms immediately after speaking.

I do the same thing that some others have mentioned, speaking very precisely. Most of my vocabulary comes from reading but I'll look up words I already know so I know exactly when to use it and when another word would be more exact. I never actively seek to learn new words, I just pick them up, here and there. I especially like words that have fallen out of use.

I feel like I'm a mix of the posters on this thread.

In certain situations I've learned to 'dumb down' my vocabulary, and to adopt less rigid and formal speech patters, but I often revert if a subject comes up that I feel needs precise words to accurately describe.

I also feel like choosing the correct word for each situation is very important and that being as precise in my communications as possible is a paramount concern for me.
Even though at times I end up having to define words for people, which is generally not a good thing socially speaking. I've learned to recognize the look on peoples' faces when they dont understand what I'm saying, and to try to explain myself in simpler terms to them.

Either way, I often come off as long winded, pedantic, pretentious, and condescending.

The author of the indicated reciprocation is impuissant at separating the quandary.

This would've worked so much better were it not for the spelling mistake.

Still - at least I got to look up "impuissant". Thank you.

And the weird thing - when I "quote": "seperating", the quoted text is auto corrected...

Ah, maybe not. I was replying whilst you were editing, and the software got confoosed.

You're speech is more formal than any other I've ever met or read.

One thing that has been bothering my mind is your use of "lexicon" in the first sentence.
Lexicon:- a workbook or dictionary.

It's not your lexicon that is too formal; it's your choice of word.

And now I'm thinking about "too formal". What's formal about a choice of word? Formal is probably not the word they want to use (it's the layman's word that nearly describes it). You're simply using words unfamiliar to them. They incorrectly relate this to "formality", or "educated". The sort of precise wording used in technical manuals (which turn off their brain because the information is too densely packed into each sentence).

I've not been told I'm too formal or anything. I have always been fascinated with words, and like redrobin62, I used to read through the dictionary when I was young just to find fantastic words to use. Then I discovered Frank Herbert, who had a very large vocabulary of words.

I used to, but I very consciously modified my speech and then my writing style after uncomfortable realizations, both in high school and college, that my habitual modes of expression were alienating me from my community and damaging my grades.

Now, in casual speech, I am less precise and far less nuanced. If there are two words which might express an idea I wish to convey, I select the more common word, even if the other word carries a meaning more congruent with my own.

I have learned that short sentences are better. Three of them make a point more effectively than one sentence that confuses. This is true even if the longer sentence very precisely conveyed a thought. Brevity is the soul of wit.

My, like, spoken style, now--Whoa! That's a whole other thing.

I started out, you know, copying people. Like: carefully, you know?

Naturally, the selection of style is contingent on circumstances. A presentation to the senior partners requires a different tone than a chat in the hall.

I eat lunch at my desk everyday in order to avoid the cafeteria. Partly because I am just uncomfortable in that environment and partly because the sheer number of people to talk to becomes exhausting. The personae I have learned to work through are effective, but maintaing them is exhausting. Like, speaking that way, but, you know, the right way for the situation is one of the most tiring parts of it.

So, no, I don't get accused of talking like a dictionary. People are sometimes surprised, though, when they have only heard me speak in dumb-down casual mode and suddenly hear a small part of my very much larger rhetorical repertoire.

I've been told I use too formal of language from time to time. I don't tend to do it *as* much these days. I've been asked several times in my life what my parents do for a living as people expect me to say doctor/lawyer/engineer & that's supposed to explain my vocabulary and knowledge.. and they're surprised to hear drywaller & home daycare business.

This thread reminds me of when I was chatting with an old neighbour outside a bar and some big dude looks at me and says, "you're boring." lol that reminded me not to be so technical/formal etc. Then he says he should punch me out and I laughed and told him he wasn't going to do that because I used to work at this bar and know all the staff. My old neighbour then spoke up and said she knew me and the guy just ignored me from then on.

I've also been accused of being a cop many many times, being told I talk like & sound like a cop - both via vocabulary as well as aspie prosody IMO as there are many aspies in law enforcement so people tend to associate the sound of an aspie voice with being a cop, especially ghetto people who have many dealings with cops.

I learned to dumb it down at a young age, so it's not a problem except in cases in which I cannot readily think of a simpler or more common word. I read dictionaries as a kid as well, although it was probably mostly for lack of other reading material in my home.