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CURRENT ISSUE

Volume 40 • Issue 2

Contents

Articles

Shared Lexical Innovations in Australian and New Zealand English ⋅ Pam Peters, Adam Smith, Tobias Bernaisch

The Century Dictionary Definitions of Charles Sanders Peirce ⋅ Orin Hargraves

Forum

Usage in Dictionaries: An Introduction ⋅ Edward Finegan

Defining your P’s and Q’s: Describing and Prescribing Politeness in Dictionaries ⋅ M. Lynne Murphy

Etymology and the Doctrine of Correctness: Word Meaning in Dictionaries of English Usage ⋅ Don Chapman

Usage in the Lexicography of Italian: Two Viewpoints and a Few Basic Reflections ⋅ Giuseppe Polimeni

Recent Bilingual English-Italian Lexicography: Insights into Usage ⋅ Giovanni Iamartino

Irish: Whose Language Is It Anyway? ⋅ Pádraig Ó Mianáin

Creating Regional Norms: A Mission for Caribbean Lexicography ⋅ Jason F. Siegel

Reference Works in Progress

The Middle English Dictionary Revenant ⋅ Paul Schaffner

Obituary

John Algeo, A Life with Language: In Memoriam ⋅ William A. Kretzschmar, Jr.

Reviews

Green’s Dictionary of Slang Online, by Jonathon Green  ⋅ Reviewer: Ammon Shea

English-Haitian Creole Bilingual Dictionary, edited by Albert Valdman, Marvin D. Moody, and Thomas E. Davies ⋅ Reviewer: Jeannette Allsopp

Etymological Collections of English Words and Provincial Expressions, by White Kennett. Edited with introduction and commentary by Javier Ruano-García ⋅ Reviewer: Anatoly Liberman

DCHP-2: Dictionary of Canadianisms on Historical Principles, Second Edition, edited by Stefan Dollinger and Margery Fee ⋅ Reviewer: Victoria Neufeldt

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CALL FOR PAPERS

Vernacular Practices of Lexicography

Dictionaries: Journal of the Dictionary Society of North America invites submissions for a special issue focused on practices of lexicography arising outside of professionalized or scholarly dictionary-making. Other disciplines describe as “vernacular” the everyday practices and products that coexist (and may preexist) alongside officially codified and valorized practices. Scant research addresses the topic even though, on the scale of human linguistic history, most “practices of lexicography” have taken place outside the context of professional lexicography.

What are practices of lexicography?

  • Explanations of meaning, in formal definitions or by other, pretheoretical strategies
  • Glosses
  • Organization of words into alphabetical, thematic, or other lists
  • Thematic or schematic arrangements of concepts (thesauruses, ontologies; alignment-chart memes, Venn diagram memes)
  • Division of word meanings into senses and methods of indicating multiple senses

What is vernacular lexicography?

Most, if not all, of what happens on Wiktionary and Urban Dictionary; digital, crowdsourced, and other electronically mediated community dictionary projects; glossaries — the brief, usually simplified and topic-constrained, dictionary-shaped word-to-definition lists found in some books; dictionary-formatted creative works; dictionary-style texts that appear in marketing, consumer goods, and internet memes that may appropriate, subvert, or parody professional standards. The tropes of structure and content in these works reveal what everyday people notice (and don’t notice) about dictionaries.

Between vernacular and professionalized lexicography

  • When did the professionalization of lexicography begin?
  • What similarities and differences are there between the work of vernacular lexicographers today and the work of important pre-professional lexicographers such as Nathan Bailey and Samuel Johnson?

Insiders and outsiders in vernacular lexicography

Missionaries have documented the languages of the communities they work with and—though now trained by organizations like SIL (https://www.sil.org/training/lexicography)—missionary lexicography has historically been vernacular. What kind of lexicography arises when an endangered or minority language is documented, from the inside, by its native speakers? How compatible are diverse indigenous linguistic practices with (largely western) lexicographical traditions? Does adherence to present-day lexicographical standards erase essential aspects of such languages?

Inquiries and expressions of interest are strongly encouraged ASAP to special issue editor: Orion Montoya (orion@mdcclv.com).

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Subscribe to Dictionaries: Journal of the Dictionary Society of North America (ISSN: 0197-6745)

  • Individuals who join the Dictionary Society of North America as members are entitled to receive one print copy of the journal Dictionaries.
  • Members are entitled to password-protected access to the online version of Dictionaries via Project MUSE.
  • Members also receive a copy of the Society’s newsletter.
  • Per the terms of the DSNA’s agreement with Project MUSE, access to the online version  is available to individual members only, and not to institutions.

For further details about membership rates (retiree and joint), see the DSNA Membership page.

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Claims

One claim is allowed per issue; one replacement copy will be sent gratis, with tracking or registered mail. In case of a second claim, if records show that the item was delivered, we require payment both for shipping and for the prior costs before sending another replacement.

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Contact the editor: Finegan@USC.edu