Marketing versus Shopping.
---------------------------------------------
Knowledge may not be the exclusive province of the knowledgeable. That is especially so when it comes to colloquial usage of the English language.
This struck me recently when a friend of mine on an evening walk asked me with reference to a brief telephonic conversation he had with a learned Professor engaged in English teaching, who had earlier mentioned his brief inability to spare time because he was in the market doing his errand. After a while the two again got in touch on phone. The first thing my friend ,on walk with me, asked was whether he had finished his 'marketing'. Pat came an advice, instead of an answer, 'shopping, not marketing'. Marketing, he advised, implied selling activity, whereas the buying activity is called 'shopping'.
Having thereby been hit somewhere , as if below the belt , my friend turned to me, asking whether 'marketing' was a wrong expression for what is actually intended to mean 'shopoing'?
My instant reply was that marketing was not wrong but I preferred putting up this question to one retired Professor of English who was available around the walking track with whom we often chat matters of current interest.
When questioned, the learned Professor concurred with what the other Professor had said, mentioning the same logic that marketing was essentially a selling engagement whereas the buying replica thereof was appropriately termed as shopping, not marketing.
So? Even I was wrong, for I thought, marketing is a term in usage which conveys both activities, buying as well as selling , depending upon the construction of the sentence in context with how and where it has been used.
That led me to search and to discover that the dictionary meaning (attached herewith) vindicated my stand.
Stand vindication is quite a trivial issue. The substantial part is the knowledge of the knowledgeable whose audacity in the cover of purported enthusiasm to correct what may ,or may not at all be wrong , is indeed astonishing.
Why at all tend to correct others without yourself being sure? More so, if something seems to be an aberration in the use of exact terminology ? That too in loose or casual conversation?
---------------------------------------------
Knowledge may not be the exclusive province of the knowledgeable. That is especially so when it comes to colloquial usage of the English language.
This struck me recently when a friend of mine on an evening walk asked me with reference to a brief telephonic conversation he had with a learned Professor engaged in English teaching, who had earlier mentioned his brief inability to spare time because he was in the market doing his errand. After a while the two again got in touch on phone. The first thing my friend ,on walk with me, asked was whether he had finished his 'marketing'. Pat came an advice, instead of an answer, 'shopping, not marketing'. Marketing, he advised, implied selling activity, whereas the buying activity is called 'shopping'.
Having thereby been hit somewhere , as if below the belt , my friend turned to me, asking whether 'marketing' was a wrong expression for what is actually intended to mean 'shopoing'?
My instant reply was that marketing was not wrong but I preferred putting up this question to one retired Professor of English who was available around the walking track with whom we often chat matters of current interest.
When questioned, the learned Professor concurred with what the other Professor had said, mentioning the same logic that marketing was essentially a selling engagement whereas the buying replica thereof was appropriately termed as shopping, not marketing.
So? Even I was wrong, for I thought, marketing is a term in usage which conveys both activities, buying as well as selling , depending upon the construction of the sentence in context with how and where it has been used.
That led me to search and to discover that the dictionary meaning (attached herewith) vindicated my stand.
Stand vindication is quite a trivial issue. The substantial part is the knowledge of the knowledgeable whose audacity in the cover of purported enthusiasm to correct what may ,or may not at all be wrong , is indeed astonishing.
Why at all tend to correct others without yourself being sure? More so, if something seems to be an aberration in the use of exact terminology ? That too in loose or casual conversation?
No comments:
Post a Comment