Uniquely Canadian, Eh? Review of Barber, Katherine. 2007. Only in Canada You Say: A Treasury of Canadian Language. Oxford University Press. (original) (raw)
Related papers
Despite considerable research activity over the past half-century (e.g., Avis 1954; Chambers 1994-; Dollinger 2008), Canadian English has not yet become a standard field of research within every English and/or linguistics department in Canada. This is surprising, as the Canadian public seems to take a real interest in their Canadian speech ways (for some examples of media coverage, see Canadian English Laboratory 2008). As with most public issues, however, only the most obvious phenomena figure prominently. In the case of language, this means that virtually all popular Canadian language handbooks focus on words and their meanings. Forty years after The Senior Dictionary (1967), the first, fully-fledged dictionary of Canadian English, Only in Canada, You Say sets out to celebrate, once more, Canadian English words. As such, Barber's book is one of the most recent additions in a lineage of word books for the Canadian public, which includes prominent predecessors such as Orkin (1970), Casselman (1995), and Thay (2004). Barber, as editor of the Canadian Oxford Dictionary (2004), is in the position to provide a more thorough look at Canadian English vocabulary than most authors of similar publications. Only in Canada, for instance, provides the most complete published word list of present-day (English) Canadianisms outside of dictionary sources. But what exactly is in that list? What exactly is a Canadianism?
This short and informal account speaks briefly to the problem of regionalisms in the context of Canadian English as it relates to the forthcoming Second Edition of the Dictionary of Canadianisms on Historical Principles, DCHP-2, which I have had the honour to lead since its inception in March 2006. I will present some data and statistics, yet my conclusions will be tentative and will end with a plea for assistance. At the time of writing, DCHP-2 is targeted for completion in 2016 in open access format (Dollinger et al. forthc.). A digital edition of the first edition (Avis, Crate, Drysdale, Leechman, Scargill and Lovell 1967) is now available as DCHP-1 Online (Dollinger, Brinton and Fee 2013).
Routledge Handbook of Lexicography, ed. by Pedro A Fuertes Olivera, 2017
This article presents the result of a 10-year project revising the Dictionary of Canadianisms on Historical Principles, First Edition (DCHP-1). DCHP-1 was the product of a period of nationalist zeal in Canada. Rushed to publication in 1967 to coincide with the 100th anniversary celebrations of the Canadian state, DCHP-1 was very warmly received – and relatively quickly forgotten. By the 1980s only specialist circles were aware of it. The Second Edition (DCHP-2) project set out in 2006 to place the lexicography of Canadian English on a new footing. The plan was to offer clear evidence for all Canadianisms, which are defined as words, expressions or meanings that are native to Canada or distinctively characteristic of Canadian usage. While DCHP-1 did conceptually do many things rights, it is only now, with the backing of computational methods, that the inherently comparative approach that this type of dictionary requires can be executed. All Canadianisms are classified by at least one of six categories and an explicit rationale is offered for their classification. It is a principle of DCHP-2 to offer the evidence and empirical data with each entry as much as possible while keeping the account readable and succinct. In addition to the six types, a rubric of "not Canadian" is added to dispel and correct some erroneous classifications. DCHP-2 is expected to go live in open access during the course of 2016 and is comprised of a digitized DCHP-1 (10,000 words) with an update of about 1,000 new Canadianisms in a contrastive framework.
Early North American English, ed. by Merja Kytö & Lucia Siebers, 2022
This paper introduces the use of a historical dictionary as a linguistic resource. This dictionary, the Dictionary of Canadianisms on Historical Principles, Second Edition (Dollinger and Fee 2017) affords a new real-time perspective on the Canadian vocabulary. As it is based on an empirical, cross-variational perspec- tive, it instills a comparative perspective into the data. The dictionary's genesis, benchmarks and entry structure will be explained, before the vocabulary of Canadian English is sketched in four key components: typology, semantic donor domains, com- pounding as a key word-formation pattern and regionalisms within Canada. This study is intended as an introduction to this open access resource (www. dchp.ca/dchp2) and a first step towards a more sophisticated analysis of lexis over time.
Dictionaries of Canadian English: the first century (1912-2017) [rev.]
The lexicography of Canadian English is a niche field today. Once looming large, the field was abandoned by academic linguistics in the early 1980s. Since around 2000, Canadian dictionary publishing has proven to no longer be economically viable, which successively forced the retreat of dictionary publishers Funk & Wagnalls, then Nelson, then Gage, and at last Oxford University Press, which had been carrying on the tradition to a degree. Consequently, the lexicography of Canadian English is currently not adequately institutionalized. There is, however, a strong history with many impressive dictionaries and some landmark works, including three regional scholarly historical dictionaries (Story, Kirwin and Widdowson 1999, Pratt 1988 and Davey and MacKinnon 2016), a recently updated open access historical dictionary of Canadianisms (www.dchp.ca/dchp2) and at least three carefully crafted desk dictionaries from around 2000. It needs to be added that a good number of dictionaries geared towards the Canadian market have been of questionable quality. With one exception, the latter ones will not be mentioned in this essay. Popular wordbooks (e.g. Casselman 1995), while useful, are also beyond the scope of this brief account.
New Cambridge History of the English Language
Chaque mot a son histoire – ‘every word has its own history’ – is probably the reason why words are the Cinderella in English sociolinguistics: barely studied, often belittled, simply overlooked. Jules Gilliéron’s famous dictum (or Hugo Schuchardt’s, see Campbell 2004: 212-13), which expresses the idea that open class vocabulary has very little system, lots of idiosyncrasy, seems to lie behind this sociolinguistic neglect of vocabulary (Dollinger In press). This chapter looks at the open class of words in Canadian English from historical, structural and social points of view, all of which will be couched in the history of the discipline in Canada. It attempts to give a reasonably comprehensive overview of the available work, organized along three domains.
By Jesse Sheidlower in the New Yorker: A Delightful Dictionary for Canadian English
You won’t find “come from away” or “screech-in”—a mock ceremony depicted in the musical that confers Newfoundland “citizenship,” featuring extreme drunkenness and the osculation of a raw cod—in the Oxford English Dictionary. But the scholarly and scrappy second edition of the Dictionary of Canadianisms on Historical Principles (D.C.H.P.-2), released online last week, includes these and many more examples, common and obscure, of Canadian English.