Kris Kobach: Pretentious grammar dropouts ruin the language

A disturbing new current has recently become evident in the unending babble that flows from society’s talking heads. It has become strangely trendy to use nouns as verbs in everyday speech.

For example, I recently heard a radio commentator exhort Republicans and Democrats “to dialogue with each other” about a particular issue. And it has become fashionable to find ways “to office at home.” Nobody tries to “affect” a situation anymore; instead, you have to “impact the situation.”

And, hey, “let’s interface about that over lunch tomorrow.” Perhaps the best example comes from the sports world: At the end of last football season, a play-by-play commentator on a major television network explained that “the pass interference penalty was a good call, since the defender clearly collisioned the receiver.”

This trendy new talk is troubling because it violates one of the most fundamental rules of grammar: Only nouns can perform noun functions, only verbs can do what verbs do, and so on. Disregarding this law of grammar is like pretending that the law of gravity no longer applies to you: You eventually have difficulty explaining why you are sticking to the floor.

It is also troubling because it is coming from the elite, supposedly well-educated sectors of society. It’s no big deal when surfers and surfer-wannabes invent new meanings for the word “shred” and rappers explain that they have been “dissed.” These are short-lived slang verbs. They can’t become widespread because it is impossible for anyone over the age of 30 to use them without feeling guilty.

Now don’t get me wrong - I’m not saying that the English language should never change. If that were the case, we’d still be saying things like: “Egad, Bob, thy jerkin doth seem rather taut about the midriff. Hast thou been quaffing too many pints at the alehouse of late?”

Change in the language is fine when it serves a purpose. We need new words when old words become too cumbersome to use regularly. We also need a new word when there is no single old word that adequately describes something. For example, “Internet” is easier on the ears than “that worldwide, telephone-line-based connection of computers for the purpose of sharing data thingy.” The Senate Judiciary Committee has been accused of “Borking” judicial candidates like Douglas Ginsburg and Clarence Thomas, that is to say, “attacking nominees because of their political viewpoints.” And you might decide to call me a “lexipurist” rather than a “person who gets ridiculously uptight about word meanings.”

But this recent spate of noun-verbs is utterly unnecessary. In every case, there is a grammatically correct old word that serves the desired purpose better than the new word (and usually with fewer syllables, for those of you who care about word economy).

Here is the way I see it:

interface talk

dialogue talk

transition change

impact affect

collision hit

office work

How can this bizarre trend be explained, you ask? I have a couple of theories. The first is that the individuals who use these typically polysyllabic words are pathologically insecure people who seek to impress others with their overblown, high-tech-sounding lingo. The second is that they flunked grammar.

The solution? We could make it a misdemeanor to misuse these words and then use the collected fines to improve basic English instruction in public schools. Unfortunately, that proposal would never pass in the legislature because politicians are the worst perpetrators.

I’m afraid that it may already be too late. The verb-abominations are upon us and they are reproducing like aliens in a bad sci-fi movie. Surrender may be the only hope for survival. In which case, I’d better conclusion this article, vehicle straight home, and flame my grammar manual before someone locations it.

Kobach is a law professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law.

This story was originally published May 21, 1997 at 12:00 AM.