Quite apart from whether he’s accurate or has any particular reason to know about it (which I gather That Fish is mentioning elsewhere)…
Yes, all right, there are people who deliberately use words their listeners won’t understand. But most people suit their speech to the people with whom they’re speaking. And Jim’s been in the village for what, twelve years now? If anyone manages to string four syllables together without a pause for thought it probably goes in the parish magazine. Even if he has an extensive electronic correspondence with people who can read and write and even sometimes pronounce the letter T, his speech should have shifted by now simply from lack of occasion to use the complex forms to which he might previously have been accustomed.
Because the editorial team and scriptwriters know nobody even slightly erudite, their idea of an erudite man is one who bangs on constantly about the things he knows and his auditors don’t. Who can forget the hilarious scene when Jim, in charge of the pub quiz for some obscure reason, chose to ask questions in Latin?
It is at this point that I utter a loud cry of “pseuds and lovies!” to describe the fake erudition of the people they may have encountered.
The truly erudite are far too polite to bother obfuscating at the ignorant; they just smile and talk about things the people they are talking with are going to understand. You know that they have decided you might be worth their while as a conversationalist when they start to argue with you about things and be rude in their interest in the argument, and produce knock-down stuff they don’t care whether you understand or not. (And start sentences with “Yes, but” and then demolish you.)
I am quite prepared to believe that Jim does know what a ‘fronted adverbial’ is - there have been press articles and the like about the KS2 content. What I do not swallow is that ‘fronted adverbial’ has become part of his mental furniture to the extent that he would feel the need to comment on the damned things wrt any piece of literature with which he might be involved. Nor would it add anything to the understanding or appreciation of said piece if he did, of course.
