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From: tindall@panix.com (Bruce Tindall)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban,alt.usage.english,rec.arts.books
Subject: New book about the OED
Date: 31 Jan 1996 04:26:41 -0500

A new book about the OED, _Empire of Words: The Reign of the Oxford English Dictionary_ by John Willensky (University of British Columbia), published by Princeton, was the subject of the U.S. National Humanities Center's weekly radio program "Soundings" recently.

Willensky pointed out some limitations of the first OED, some of which also apply to the current edition. For example, its definitions are based on written, not spoken, usage [except, I suppose, when the OED cites other dictionaries that may document spoken usage]. And even the citations from written sources are not very inclusive or representative. In the first OED, for instance, Shakespeare was not surprisingly the most-cited author, but number 2 was Walter Scott, whose language was often deliberately (and incorrectly) anachronistic.

(This happened partly because many of the citations were sent in by "amateur readers," among whom Scott was popular at the time; the editors, too, were amateurs rather than professional linguists.)

There was also an underrepresentation of women's writings (Geo. Eliot was pretty well represented, but not the Brontes or Jane Austen); the working-class press (Dickens was quoted, but not the working class's own words); and bureaucratic language (even though, he said, the switch from French to English as the language of the bureaucracy, and documents produced by the Chancery courts in the 15th and 16th centuries, drove many important changes in the language).

He did praise the old and new OED's practice of including citations from different centuries, which makes it clear how the language has changed and continues to change.

His problems with today's OED include a lack of "truth in advertising" (they don't explain very well how they arrive at the citations they do use), and a dearth of non-British citations (he speculated that there are more English-language writers in India than in England, for example).

A tape recording of the interview with Willensky is available for $10 from the National Humanities Center, Research Triangle Park, N.C. 27709; ask for Soundings program number 798.

Bruce "no, but I saw the movie based on the summary of the interview with the author" Tindall
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Bruce Tindall :: Apex, North Carolina :: Fuge, Tace, Quiesce


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