Class by Name and Number in Eighteenth-Century Britain (original) (raw)

Late eighteenth-century English orthoepic dictionary front matter

Lexicography, 2020

Authors of late eighteenth-century English dictionaries provided instruction in their front matter on how to use these reference works; how the language which they advocated for was superior to that in other dictionaries; and how users from regions outside of London could use dictionaries as self-help aids. The two authors discussed, James Buchanan and Thomas Sheridan, represent a group of lexicographers who attempted to impose structure on English to fix "problems" in pronunciation and writing. The authors of these dictionaries used their texts to assist readers in applying their methods to reduce unacceptable accents and improve understanding by others. These texts show that the English of England was prioritized by authors who were ministers, schoolmasters, and orators; that is, they were experts in their fields and were known specifically by their backgrounds and ideologies. That situation, however, is different from the anonymization and implicit politicization of online dictionaries today that neither name their writers nor obviously express editorial principles. Readers have become so accepting of what they read in online dictionaries that they do not question the validity of the information or from whence come senses and definitions, thus showing that there is an essential need for additional media literacy.

Answering the Call: The History of Political and Social Concepts in English

History of European Ideas, 1999

The "rst editor of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), James Murray, delighted to tell the story of a dream in which he had overheard his great lexicographical predecessor, Samuel Johnson, in conversation with James Boswell, his biographer: J its proponents argue that the OED's coverage is so complete, and that its lexicographical principles are so congenial to historians, that it will do duty as an English GG for all foreseeable purposes. Murray would no doubt have been pleased by these plaudits, as he would surely have been intrigued by the GG. Like the OED, the GG has been a collective and collaborative enterprise, superintended by scholars with a commanding historical research programme; each was based on &historical principles', and each relied heavily on the use of quotations as the basis for its entries. However, both were products of their times and places, and of the particular research agendas on which they were

English Examined: The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (Chapter 10)

2021

The article starts with a short account of the factors affecting the English language in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It then moves on to a discussion of the new scientific terms that appeared in the language in such fields as medicine; electricity; physics; atomic energy and nuclear weapons; chemistry; psychology; space science; the automobile and related activities; film, radio, and television; digital computers; as well as popular terms. Following this the article deals with the effect of the World Wars I and II on English. The sources of the new words form the subject matter of the following section. These sources are: borrowing words form languages such as French, Italian, Spanish, German, Russian, Czech, Indian, Persian, Chinese, and Japanese; self-explaining compounds; making compounds from Greek and Latin elements; attaching prefixes and suffixes to existing words, e.g. trans-, post-, pre-, counter-, super-, sub-, de-, -dom, -ster, and –eer; coining words; forming acronyms; blending words; forming common words from proper names; and using old words with new meanings. The influence of journalism on English in terms of colloquialisms, slang, and verbal novelties constitutes the point covered in the following section. Discussed also are the changes of meaning in terms of extension of meaning, narrowing of meaning, degeneration of meaning, and regeneration of meaning. Dialects of British English are then tackled in terms of the dialects of northern and southern England, the speech of the great midland, the dialect of Scotland, and finally Irish English. Considered also are the varieties of English used in the former British Empire, namely Australian and New Zealand English, South African English, West and East African English, South Asian English, English in Singapore, Malaysia, and Hong Kong, English in the Caribbean, as well as English in Canada. Renewed interest in spelling reform is discussed in terms of British, American, and Swedish efforts. Then renewed objection to certain words and expressions is tackled and exemplified, with a short note on the Society for Pure English. Because of the great importance of the Oxford English Dictionary, it is dealt with in a separate section. The article concludes with an examination of the grammatical and lexical tendencies in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. These include verb-adverb combinations, in addition to several miscellaneous tendencies that are enumerated and exemplified. I. Factors Affecting English in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries The events of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries affecting the English-speaking countries were of great political and social importance, but not of great linguistic importance. The establishment of the first cheap newspaper in 1816 and of cheap postage in 1840, as well as the improved means of travel and communication, e.g. the railroad, the steamboat, and the telegraph, united the different parts of Britain and spread the influence of the standard speech. The World Wars in the first half of the twentieth century left their mark on the language. The growing importance of some of England's colonies, their later independence, and the rapid development of the United States made the forms of English spoken in these countries more significant, and raised claims as to considering these varieties standard. Some of the events and changes that took place in these two centuries had their effect on the English vocabulary in the fields of sports and amusements, and in improvements in the mode of living. The nineteenth and twentieth centuries offer an excellent example of the relation of a civilization to the language that expresses it.

ENTRY LAYOUT IN THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH LEXICOGRAPHY: BAILEY 1736, MARTIN 1749 AND JOHNSON 1755

The present paper focuses on the history of lexicography and proposes a comparative analysis of three significant English dictionaries of the 18th century: Nathan Bailey’s Dictionarium Britannicum (second edition, 1736), Benjamin Martin’s Lingua Britannica Reformata (first edition, 1749), Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary of the English Language (first edition, 1755). The paper discusses the structure of the entries in these texts, concentrating on the changes undergone from Bailey to Johnson, and attempts to show that the increased complexity of Martin’s and Johnson’s lexicographic entries marks a departure from the model of the “universal” dictionary. While the structure of universal dictionaries such as Bailey’s retains important similarities with that of the encyclopaedias of the time, later 18th century dictionaries, such as those of Johnson, are closer in structure to contemporary dictionaries of the English language, indicating a more complete separation of what starts to count as “linguistic” from what starts to count as “encyclopaedic”.