"Most people who bother with the matter at all would admit that the English language is in a bad way." So said George Orwell more than 60 years ago, and his quote still hits a nerve.

A motion tabled at last week's Association of Lecturers and Teachers' conference saw Orwell's admonition against jargon writ large: in an effort to rid the teaching profession of "edu-babble", the ALT motion agued that some members of the profession were guilty of using "pointless, artificial and incomprehensible expressions" and that the worst examples should be publicised to discourage jargon.

This smacking down of such language seems to be a worldwide phenomenon: in March, Los Angeles county, in a bid to help employees write clearer English, spent over £200,000 installing StyleWriter software on office machines; in February the Queensland education minister, Rod Welford, heralded the Australian state's new syllabus saying: "Curriculum waffle is out, clear English is in." But despite the fact that I, like most people, want the instructions on my tax-return form to be as clear and jargon-free as possible, all this talk of pared down plain English makes me nervous. My fear is that ban-the-babble campaigns are not so much about undoing waffle as ironing out the eccentric and difficult in language. We're not automata and language isn't just a matter of immediate computation: sometimes we need to wrestle with it. This is particularly true of literature.

The truth of the matter is that we like - nay, love - plunging into the joyous complexities and spontaneous challenges of language. All around us is proof that most people would find a world where we all write, sound and think the same - in however plain a fashion - a deathly one. Take the welcome news that "Geoffrey Chaucer Hath a Blog". The delight of Geoffrey's blog is all in the language. A mundane gym-workout, for example, prompts some free and clever riffing on medieval diction, syntax and imagery: "So ich haue ben yiven up to sondry peynes and tormentes far more grevous than thos recorded in the helle of Dant - many grim machines that doon twisten myn limbes this wey and that, and bicycles the which travel no wher."

It is clear from the blog's comment pages that punters (many of whom take a stab at writing in middle English themselves) get off on the pure enjoyment of this enticing language: as one comment puts it, while historicism and social critique are all very well for understanding Chaucer's works, "it is also very good to be reminded of their sheer joie de vivre". Damn right! This isn't just about joy in language, it's about joy in life.

Now, I'm not suggesting we come over all medieval and start slipping the odd "thorn" or "yogh" into our correspondence. What the medieval blogger gives us is a welcome reminder of language's delight in itself and its ability to communicate that enchantment.

Such delight is with us still. My second hero is not a 14th-century blogger-bard but an inspired author of the humble out-of-office message. Although the author in question will remain nameless, I have been fortunate enough to see some of his o-o-o messages. Instead of those dry missives written in as-plain-as-you-like functional English, this is a man who takes pleasure in human communication. His o-o-o messages are treasures. Here's a taster. After opening the o-o-o with some lines of poetry including "What are those blue remembered hills, what spires, what farms are those?" the author continues: "There! That's better, isn't it? Something of the frustration you felt in discovering that I, somewhat inconsiderately, am not around has faded away, I'm sure. But wherever can I be, you ask?" The answer is Shropshire where the author is "revelling in bucolic isolation".

I am a total stranger to this man and yet I like and warm to him - because instead of a mealy-mouthed Crystal-marked tick-box of a sentence, I have the sense of a human being who really wants to communicate with me (and share his joy in Housman - to boot). An everyday proof that although Orwell was right to slam the poverty of thought behind hackneyed metaphor and pretentious gobbledegook, the language that grabs hold of us and stays with us isn't plain English: it's language fit to burst with life.