'Dialogue' as a noun. Or possibly not

Spotted in a recent piece of corporate communication:

I have already made a personal commitment to dialogue with the union about the changing environment we face


Is this an example of 'dialogue' as a verb or just an example of 'commitment to' + noun?

I've never come across the former before, although it is listed in my Concise OED: "v. chiefly N Amer. take part in dialogue."

7 comments:

Unknown said...

Sounds like the corporate American jargon word to me.

The Ridger, FCD said...

No way to tell. Though as an American, I'd interpret it as the verb, just because "dialog" is not a noun I'd expect.

Anonymous said...

I think the "with" after dialogue makes it a verb, but I'm too lazy to site references right now.

-- said...

I personally wouldn't use it as a verb, but an unambiguous Google search ("want to dialogue") shows that plenty of people do:

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&safe=off&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-GB%3Aofficial&hs=GBp&q=%22want+to+dialogue%22&btnG=Search&meta=&aq=f&oq=

JD (The Engine Room) said...

I'm not sure the 'with' necessarily makes it a verb; it's possible to 'enter into dialogue with' somebody, for example - and that's an example of 'dialogue' as a noun.

garicgymro said...

I agree with JD. There's nothing about the "with" that makes this more likely to be a verb. In fact I'd say it's almost certainly intended as a noun, simply because that's a perfectly reasonable reading of the sentence, and rather less remarkable.

But it could be a verb, and there's nothing in the sentence itself that can tell us for sure. We'd need to know more about the writer.

Anonymous said...

I don't know about corporate America, but I'd vouch for this being non profit American jargon. I've come across this before; it's the kind of thing you find annoying at first and then suddenly, you realize that you're saying it all the time.