If he was asking you to think beyond the dictionary definition, that's one thing.
But if he was asking you to use the word in a way that was unrelated to the dictionary definition, then it was probably a case of his needing a different word, not knowing it or not thinking to coin it, and then trying to press the word he knew into service to do a job it doesn't do.
It doesn't bug me when academics try to narrow down which of a word's nuances they want to invoke--as in "for our current purposes, let us consider ethnography in terms of its etymological roots, as a written attempt to render the collective life of a community, and set aside for now the assumption that engaging in ethnography requires all the bureaucratic apparatus of the discipline of anthropology." In an example like that, the scholar's looking at meanings that are already present and choosing among them, while admitting that there's some sleight of hand going on with the definition, because there isn't a better single word to do the job he wants the word to do.
What bugs me is when there actually is a word that's a better fit, and it wouldn't be hard to find, but the writer decides to be either lazy or disingenuous. For instance, the for-our-purposes definition of cooperation actually included the word "compliance," which was a far better fit for the job they were trying to get "cooperation" to do. If what you mean is compliance, say compliance. Following orders is an entirely different power dynamic from partnership among peers. Looking beyond the dictionary definition of cooperation was disingenuous.
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2005-12-19 08:03 am (UTC)But if he was asking you to use the word in a way that was unrelated to the dictionary definition, then it was probably a case of his needing a different word, not knowing it or not thinking to coin it, and then trying to press the word he knew into service to do a job it doesn't do.
It doesn't bug me when academics try to narrow down which of a word's nuances they want to invoke--as in "for our current purposes, let us consider ethnography in terms of its etymological roots, as a written attempt to render the collective life of a community, and set aside for now the assumption that engaging in ethnography requires all the bureaucratic apparatus of the discipline of anthropology." In an example like that, the scholar's looking at meanings that are already present and choosing among them, while admitting that there's some sleight of hand going on with the definition, because there isn't a better single word to do the job he wants the word to do.
What bugs me is when there actually is a word that's a better fit, and it wouldn't be hard to find, but the writer decides to be either lazy or disingenuous. For instance, the for-our-purposes definition of cooperation actually included the word "compliance," which was a far better fit for the job they were trying to get "cooperation" to do. If what you mean is compliance, say compliance. Following orders is an entirely different power dynamic from partnership among peers. Looking beyond the dictionary definition of cooperation was disingenuous.