The language of deception
Perhaps the glory of the English language is that it so expressive. Its remarkable heterogeneous origins have given it an almost limitless vocabulary. And American English, particularly, has used that tool with an enormous flexibility to make it the international means of communication. One is able with a minimum of linguistic dexterity to capture every meaning, or almost every nuance. Thats why it is so depressing to note that of late there is a growing tendency to do the opposite, that is, to camouflage real meanings with obfuscation.
It has become the fashion and interestingly enough the tendency swells as one moves up the educational ladder to mask real meanings with words or phrases that tell less than one could easily relate. At the moment my favorite bete noir in this regard is the phrase to reach out to which has become omnipresent.
What the hell does that mean? There are dozens of words which describe in precision relationships and communication among individuals, and which would lend authenticity and further meaning to any such statement. If you have to obfuscate, how about contact? Long ago [but in my time] we turned contact from a simple noun into a verb, much to the horror of strict grammarians. But it still, generally, has retained the meaning of a spoken communication.
But to reach out to now substitutes for a wide variety of unknowable meanings: written communication, a face to face exchange, a telephone conversation, an exchange of e-mails or snailmail, a connection through an emissary or other intermediary. Or you name it! In any case, I doubt that most of the time it means extending an arm or a leg to touch another person.
Why? If you want to say that information has been exchanged about a particular subject, why not use one of many verbs which tell us how it was done and thereby give us more information?
I am afraid that this horrible example is only one of hundreds of such bromides commonly used these days.
