Re: usage question

["Dave Healy" <healy001@maroon.tc.umn.edu>]

This is very interesting stuff.  Different contexts, it seems, create different 
verbs.  I can think of three contexts:

1. What we say to each other.  In a walk-in center, for example, a staff member,
noticing someone sitting alone, might ask the desk manager, "Should I take him?"
To which a colleague might reply, "No, I already did him."

2. What we say to outsiders.  Promotional literature about the writing center, 
for example, might describe "conferencing" or "talking" with writers.

3. What we say to writers:  "Can I help you?"  "What do you want to work on?"

It would be interesting to deconstruct some of these terms.  "Take" and "did" 
evoke for me a kind of assembly-line ethos.  "Help" makes me nervous; it seems 
to imply hierarchy:  a helper and a helpee.  "Conference" as a verb seems to 
have become an acceptable back formation within composition circles, though to 
non-comp people it may have vaguely corporate overtones.

The meta-discourse of writing centers:  worth thinking about, it seems to me.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dave Healy                                 General College
Director, Writing Center                   University of Minnesota   
Editor, The Writing Center Journal         128 Pleasant St. SE
612-625-1541                               Minneapolis, MN 55455-0434          
612-626-7848 (FAX)                         healy001@maroon.tc.umn.edu