1) Béjoint, H. Modern Lexicography: An Introduction (Oxford, 2000). Chapter 3, '
The Historical Origins of the General-Purpose Dictionary' (pp. 92-106) and.
PAPER 1: THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE
Class discussion: Dictionaries
Preparatory reading: 1) Béjoint, H. Modern Lexicography: An Introduction (Oxford, 2000) Chapter 3, ‘The Historical Origins of the General-Purpose Dictionary’ (pp. 92-106) and Chapter 4, ‘General-Purpose Dictionaries and Society (pp. 107-39) Copies available in the Lower RadCam and the EFL – contact me if you can’t find one. 2) The handout contains the prefaces of Cawdrey’s Table Alphabeticall (1604, 4th ed. 1617), Johnson’s Plan of the English Dictionary (1747), Webster’s preface from the 1828 of his American Dictionary, the preface from the International edition (1890), James Murray’s preface to volume 1 of the 1st edition of the OED (1884-1928), and the preface of the 2nd edition of the OED (1989).
Preparatory exercise: 1) Find the same word (or related words if the same word is not included in each text) in Johnson, Webster and the OED and bring copies of the entries to class – remember to note down which editions you use. Be prepared to discuss your findings in class. 2) Compare these results to any other dictionary – you may look up the same word, or a related concept, or a definition which in your mind is representative of that dictionary as a whole. You might consider: Children’s dictionaries – Mylius’s School Dictionary (1809) Alternative dictionaries – A Feminist Dictionary (1985), A Dictionary of Slang (1937, 2002) International dictionaries – South African Concise Oxford Dictionary (2002) Be creative!
Further reading: Jackson, Howard and Etienne Zé Amvela. Words, Meaning and Vocabulary: An Introduction to Modern English Lexicography. 2nd ed. (London, 2005). Osselton, N. E. Chosen Words: Past and Present Problems for Dictionary Makers (Exeter, 1997). Landau, Sidney I. Dictionaries: The Art and Craft of Lexicography (Cambridge 2001). Mugglestone, L. C. ‘Departures and Returns. Writing the English Dictionary in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries', in The Victorians and the Eighteenth Century: Reassessing the Tradition eds. F. O'Gorman and K. Turner (London, 2004). Stein, G. (ed.). The English Dictionary from Cawdrey to Johnson (Amsterdam, 1991). Dictionaries and Meanings at the British Library: http://www.bl.uk/learning/langlit/dic/meanings.html
Johnson's Dictionary Hitchins, H. Dr. Johnson's Dictionary (London, 2004). Lynch, Jack. Anniversary Essays on Johnson’s Dictionary (Cambridge, 2005). Micklethwait, David. Noah Webster and the American Dictionary (Jefferson, N.C., 2005). Reddick, A. The Making of Johnson's Dictionary (Cambridge, 1996). Reinert, Thomas. Regulating Confusion: Samuel Johnson and the Crowd (Durham, N.C., 1996).
The OED Brewer, Charlotte. (2004) ‘The Electronification of the OED’, Dictionaries 25: 1-43 Mugglestone, Lynda. Lost for words: the hidden history of the Oxford English dictionary (New Haven, 2005). ---, ed. Lexicography and the OED: Pioneers in the Untrodden Forest (Oxford, 2002). Schafer, J. Documentation in the OED: Shakespeare and Nashe as Test Cases. (Oxford, 1980). Winchester, Simon. The meaning of everything: the story of the Oxford English Dictionary (Oxford, 2003). See also the endless archives and background information at www.oed.com
