I'm excited to share our first guest post on Palmer Language Blog! This is a post by Ann Anderson Evans, from one of the first language teaching blogs I started reading - Linguistics in the Classroom. Check out her blog and check out the bio at the end of the story!
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| Slave? Master? Slave master? |
“That’s what the dictionary says,”
ends the dinner table disagreement. Doesn’t it?
Maybe the answer should be “Which
dictionary?” Dictionaries have different goals, methods and styles,
and may have different agendas. One editor might believe that
emerging language should be honored while another believes that words
should be well proven before they are enshrined in the dictionary –
no bling and bro for her. These decisions reflect competing views of
language, art, and politics.
The editors of the 1971 The Compact
Edition of The Oxford English Dictionary present the following
categories of meaning: Common, Literary, Colloquial, Scientific,
Foreign, Dialectical, Slang, Technical. They treat each word by
noting its “Main Words, Subordinate Words, Combinations, including
the Identification, Morphology, Signification and Illustrative
Quotations” with senses presented chronologically. In other words,
they want to provide everything to everybody. In the hard copy, the
information has been “reproduced micrographically” and for many
human beings is accessible only through a magnifying glass. A more
visually accessible OED is available online, but it costs around over
$900 for a subscription, so most people use their local library or
university’s subscription.
The editors of Webster’s New
Collegiate Dictionary, 5th edition, on the other hand, tailor their
dictionary to the needs of the college student and of the general
reader, with encyclopedic knowledge specifically excluded. If you
want to know the meaning of bathukolpian (deep-bosomed), you will be
better off with the OED.
There are also differences between
British and American dictionaries (not to mention Indian, Australian,
Jamaican, etc.). The British legal system, for example,
distinguishes between solicitors and barristers, while in America,
there is no such distinction, thus the definitions of the word
attorney differ.
British: OED: A professional and properly-qualified legal agent practising in the courts of Common Law …; one who conducted litigation in these courts, preparing the case for the barristers, or counsel, whose duty and privilege it is to plead and argue in open court.
American: Webster’s: One who is legally appointed by another to transact business for him; a legal agent qualified to act for suitors and defendants in legal proceedings.
Collins has published a new, freedictionary online.
It has a multitude of features, including:
- Definitions, of course, and the phonetic representation of the word.
- A comprehensive list of synonyms and of related terms. For the word “beat,” for example, related terms include “beat it,” “beat up,” etc., and for nearby words there are “beat a retreat,” and “beat around the bush.”
- Audio files which give the pronunciation of the word using standard American English and standard British English. (Not all words have this feature.)
- Translations of the word into 24 different languages, from Finnish to Korean, to Arabic. I noticed that Hungarian, Swahili, and Hindi were missing.
- Usage examples: for “doggie” (or “doggy”) there is “A close friend describes their Kenmore Hills home, on Brisbane's westside, as doggy heaven.” COURIER, SUNDAY MAIL (2004)”
- In the case of doggies and many other nouns, there are photographs.
- The origin of the word is also given, though not as comprehensively as in the Oxford English Dictionary.
(The iPhone app for this dictionary
costs $12.99, which puzzles me, but I am easily puzzled when it comes
to the interaction of various kinds of equipment these days. Are they
counting on making their money on the App, not the online version?)
Too much thinking
about dictionaries can be dizzying, and can remove a source of what
you once thought was absolute authority. They are fascinating and
useful, but you should treat your dictionary as your slave, not your
master.
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Ann Anderson Evans’s blog,
www.linguisticsintheclassroom.com
is read around the world by teachers and people interested in how
language is constructed, how meaning is made, and the role of
language in our lives. Ann is a writer, linguist, and teacher of
writing at Montclair State University. Her article, “Beyond
Grammar: Linguistics in the Writing Classroom” appeared in the
Spring 2011 issue of the Duke University journal Pedagogy.
