Define “collaborate”

Today’s Dilbert:

Alice gives a witheringly sarcastic response to the pointy-headed boss, supplying a definition of collaborate that unpacks some of the connotations of the word for her. The boss then puts her down by maintaining that she is uncooperative (she ought to “play well with others” by collaborating with Larry), and she counters by pulling out the gender assumptions in the boss’s observation (women are supposed to be cooperative and collaborative, men are supposed to be assertive and confident).

This entry was posted on June 8, 2013 at 7:03 am and is filed under Connotation, Language and gender, Linguistics in the comics, Sarcasm and irony, Semantics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

One Response to “Define “collaborate””

arnold zwicky Says:
June 8, 2013 at 3:10 pm | Reply
On Facebook:

Alessandro Michelangelo Jaker: I think it’s true the word “collaborate” is often used in the sense of “be subordinate”. “Why can’t you collaborate?” = “Why can’t you be more obedient?”

Ruth Lawrence: has seen it used repeatedly as ‘Let’s everone get credit for the low-rung person’s wits and work’.

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