Today marks exactly one month since I started my employment in the public sector, and in that time I have noticed a few annoying things. One of them, near and dear to my heart as I consider myself a fairly good user of the English language, is the misuse of the English language in the form of buzzwords.
My father, who worked in human resources for a very long time, has a book of early Dilbert cartoons, one of which features the employees getting ready for a meeting with "buzzword bingo" cards (see it here). While I suspect the the private sector, in which Dilbert and much other shenanigans take place, is a far greater offender in terms of buzzwords, some of the offenders which I have encountered in public have made it into government, much to my dismay. Two in particular have irked me enough to bring them up because they occurred within the space of five minutes in a meeting yesterday, and to keep from cringing visibly, I wrote them down and vowed to rant about them later. Now, I'm going to explain why these two constructions of the feeble mind should be blasted straight out of existence.
1. "Disconnect" as a noun
Simply put, this word does not exist. I don't care what the dictionaries say - in our language, dictionaries document whatever tomfoolery the public decides to spew forth. But surely, you may say, if it's in the dictionary it's legitimate! My answer to you: have you ever heard of a connect? Of course not - it's a connection, the opposite of which is disconnection, not disconnect. Disconnect, like connect, should only be used as a verb, as in "When people used words stupidly, I feel a strong urge to disconnect their heads from the rest of their bodies." Disconnection: it's only three more letters, one single syllable! Surely that's a small price to pay to not sound like you have a cliche-ridden corporate phrasebook lodged in your nasal cavity?
2. "Reach out" as a synonym for "contact"
Unlike "disconnect," "reach" and "out" are perfectly fine words, and "reach out is indeed a verb phrase. But when it is used to mean "contact," I lodge an objection. My reasoning is that "reach out" reeks of sentimentality and excessive emotion. When I hear it, I think of a secluded, bedridden invalid, isolated from human company and desperate for human contact, reaching out pathetically to brush her nurse's hand because he (male nurse) is the only human the invalid ever interacts with. Think Miss Havisham, except human. This is not an appropriate connotation for a phrase used in a business setting; the concept of contacting someone should not inspire intense feelings of sentimentality (unless that someone happens to be your one true love who's on the other side of the world for an indeterminate length of time, in which case I will forgive you for a fit or two of excessive sentimentality).
Simply put, if you need information from someone at work, you don't need to "reach out" as though you had been marooned on a deserted island for the greater portion of your adult life. Just send a blinking e-mail. If you're so starved for emotional meaning that you feel compelled to "reach out" to people at work, you might want to contact someone who can help you. Like a psychologist. Or a counselor. Or a grammarian.
To be fair, "disconnect" is absolutely a word in my line of work. Didn't used to be, now it is, but that's the way things go. "Disconnection" doesn't quite work for certain instances, and "disconnect" has shades of "sein" behind it that neither "disconnection" nor "non-connection" have.
ReplyDelete"Disconnect," for me, is a fundamental ontology, whereas "disconnection" is a thing that has been done to something (or a pair of things). There is always already a disconnect - no one has disconnected anything.