| 词组 | communicate, communication |
| 释义 | communicate, communication 1. Terms of considerable popularity, especially when they are much used in educational institutions, tend to come under the disapproving scrutiny of usage commentators. The disapprobation expressed of communicate and communication is a bit on the nebulous side; the words are said to be overused or pretentious or unnecessary. An occasional commentator expresses a general uneasiness about the use of the terms; Copperud 1980 is disturbed by their invasion of schools of journalism, and Edmund Wilson, in The Bit Between My Teeth (1965), expresses nearly the same concern in a wider perspective. All the while the usage panel of Heritage 1982 finds the intransitive use of communicate acceptable. There does not appear to be a burning issue here. The intransitive communicate is more than a hundred years old but has blossomed in the 20th century: • Because the objects of art are expressive, they communicate —John Dewey, Art as Experience, 1934 • ... genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood —T. S. Eliot, "Dante," in Selected Essays, 1932 • If I had been a little older than eight, and Mr. Yarnall a little younger than eighty, we might have communicated more largely —Christopher Morley, Saturday Rev., 28 Aug. 1954 • ... that love of practical jokes that is often the desperate attempt of the solitary and the shy to communicate —May Sarton, New Yorker, 9 Jan. 1954 • That was not the same understanding that the French had. We did not communicate adequately — Jimmy Carter, quoted in N.Y. Times, 14 Feb. 1980 This sort of use is too well established to quibble about. 2. Janis 1984 objects to communication when it does not imply reciprocity, and Follett 1966 objects when it refers to concrete carriers of information. Both would disapprove this example, but it is nonetheless a completely standard use: • Great books are original communications. Their authors are communicating what they themselves have discovered —Mortimer J. Adler, Playboy, January 1966 3. One of our older handbooks, Raub 1897, says that communicate should be followed by to for a singular noun and by with for a plural. Our evidence shows with in most cases, singular or plural, but to is still in idiomatic use. • ... how could Moses communicate to him that the thread of a woman's life might depend on his consideration? —John Cheever, The Wapshot Chronicle, 1957 • ... Cynthia forced Cabot to communicate with her entirely through the keyhole —James Purdy, Cabot Wright Begins, 1964 • Now if you wish to communicate with someone — Huntington Hartford, American Mercury, March 1955 • Suppose ... that there are actually human beings existing in our midst who are able to communicate with each other in this spin-off of the mother tongue —Thomas H. Middleton, Saturday Rev., 16 Oct. 1976 |
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