A "New Word Order"
My previous blog post was about lexicography in the Internet age: how dictionaries are coping with the speed of language change. Here is solid background, and further reflection, on this ever more mercurial subject.
A Guardian article dated 2001 shows that back then the “New Word Order” was beginning to set in. Competition was suddenly hotting up between dictionary makers. Lexicographers had started implementing more sophisticated methods to keep up with language evolution. The author, D. J. Taylor, notes that speed had suddenly become of paramount importance in a field not particularly notable for speed. Hopeful for the future, he used a most revealing analogy: “If language is a butterfly, endlessly and effortlessly soaring above the heads of the entomologists who seek to track it down, then the nets are getting larger every year.” He reminded readers of Samuel Johnson, the most influential English lexicographer, who was the first to vehemently reject the prescriptivist approach, indicating that language is so variable that trying to police it is a doomed endeavour. Taylor added that while language does need to be tracked closely, it is like a beast that transforms itself into something else by the time one has finished the process of capturing and dissecting it. Some words take on new meanings between detection and publication.
Policing language is one thing, and tracking it is another. No wonder the constant searches, solicitation of user input, statistics and research. Will any of the well-known dictionaries ever implement live online updates to their definitions, or will they continue to solicit new input, adding appendices of possible new words, between editions? If they do all go “live”, that may be better for users, but any print editions published would automatically become obsolete. Will these dictionaries follow in the footsteps of the Encyclopedia Britannica soon?
Far-sighted thinkers, such as Michael Rundell, might ask whether there is a future at all for lexicography, or whether dictionaries will simply “dissolve” into our computers ("The Future of Lexicography: Does Lexicography Even Have a Future?”) . It would be interesting to watch and see.
Posted by May Mikati on 06 April 2012, 2:46 PM
My previous blog post was about lexicography in the Internet age: how dictionaries are coping with the speed of language change. Here is solid background, and further reflection, on this ever more mercurial subject.
A Guardian article dated 2001 shows that back then the “New Word Order” was beginning to set in. Competition was suddenly hotting up between dictionary makers. Lexicographers had started implementing more sophisticated methods to keep up with language evolution. The author, D. J. Taylor, notes that speed had suddenly become of paramount importance in a field not particularly notable for speed. Hopeful for the future, he used a most revealing analogy: “If language is a butterfly, endlessly and effortlessly soaring above the heads of the entomologists who seek to track it down, then the nets are getting larger every year.” He reminded readers of Samuel Johnson, the most influential English lexicographer, who was the first to vehemently reject the prescriptivist approach, indicating that language is so variable that trying to police it is a doomed endeavour. Taylor added that while language does need to be tracked closely, it is like a beast that transforms itself into something else by the time one has finished the process of capturing and dissecting it. Some words take on new meanings between detection and publication.
Policing language is one thing, and tracking it is another. No wonder the constant searches, solicitation of user input, statistics and research. Will any of the well-known dictionaries ever implement live online updates to their definitions, or will they continue to solicit new input, adding appendices of possible new words, between editions? If they do all go “live”, that may be better for users, but any print editions published would automatically become obsolete. Will these dictionaries follow in the footsteps of the Encyclopedia Britannica soon?
Far-sighted thinkers, such as Michael Rundell, might ask whether there is a future at all for lexicography, or whether dictionaries will simply “dissolve” into our computers ("The Future of Lexicography: Does Lexicography Even Have a Future?”) . It would be interesting to watch and see.
Posted by May Mikati on 06 April 2012, 2:46 PM
No comments:
Post a Comment