We are constantly enriching our resources to enable smart research not only for lexicographers and researches in Natural Language Processing, but also for teachers and other professionals without formal training in lexicography. And what better way to start off a new school year than with newly developed resources?
Below, you can find a comprehensive overview of all open-access resources that are currently available. The newest ones are listed first, but you can find a quick list of all resources right here:
The Executive Board of DSNA is delighted to announce that Lynne Murphy has been appointed as the next Editor of Dictionaries, to take over the role when Ed Finegan steps down next year. Lynne is an accomplished lexicologist and theoretical semanticist, the author of Semantic Relations and the Lexicon (Cambridge UP, 2003) and Lexical Meaning (Cambridge UP, 2010), as well as co-author of Key Terms in Semantics (Bloomsbury, 2010) and Antonyms in English (Cambridge, 2012). She is also author of the extremely popular The Prodigal Tongue: The Love-Hate Relationship between American and British English (Penguin, 2018), written with support of a very competitive National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship for public-facing scholarship. She is the Lynneguist behind the blog, Separated by a Common Language. She has taught at the University of the Witwatersrand, Baylor University, and the University of Sussex, and has been a member of DSNA at least since 1992, when she was studying for her Ph.D. with Ladislav Zgusta at the University of Illinois.
Lynne’s scholarly sophistication and command of style, her experience with writing and editing in various registers, her deep roots in the Society and American lexicography, and her access to the United Kingdom and Europe, all contribute to making her an exceptionally well-qualified choice to take over Dictionaries. I know you will join me in welcoming her appointment in the warmest terms.
With great regret, but having carefully considered the circumstances relating to the COVID pandemic, the Executive Board of DSNA has agreed to postpone the planned in-person 2021 biennial meeting. The Board has an unwavering commitment to holding an in-person meeting, with the focus already publicized, at a later date to be announced as soon as possible. We are also exploring the feasibility of holding an exciting one-day virtual meeting in June of 2021.
More details will follow, but it seemed right to convey the key information without delay.
The 23rd Biennial Dictionary Society of North America Conference will be held at the University of Colorado, Boulder, in June 2021. Presentations on any aspect of lexicography and lexicology in any language are welcome. Those focused on aspects of lexicology and lexicography of the American West are particularly encouraged. The conference will feature a workshop and plenary panel on lexicography of indigenous North American languages.
All presenters must be members of the DSNA. To join or renew membership, click on the “Join Us!” link at the website dictionarysociety.com. The program will begin with presentations on the evening of Wednesday, June 2 and will run through Saturday afternoon, June 5.
Workshop proposals (including pedagogy sessions) should be between 800 and 1000 words, excluding references. Submit these to Orin Hargraves, the conference host, at orin.hargraves@colorado.edu.
Abstracts for presentations of 20 minutes, 10 minutes Q&A, are invited. Submission of abstracts (300-500 words) is via EasyAbs (http://linguistlist.org/easyabs/DSNA2021Boulder). Please do not put any self-identifying references in your abstract.
Workshop submission (to conference host) is open from 1 Sept 2020 to 1 Dec 2020.
Abstract submission for papers (via EasyAbs) will take place in two rounds:
Round 1 is open from 1 Sept 2020 to 15 October 2020. Round 1 presenters will be notified by 16 Nov 2020 of their acceptance.
Round 2 is open from 1 Nov 2020 to 5 Jan 2021. Round 2 presenters will be notified by 15 Feb 2021 of their acceptance.
Conference Dates: Thursday, June 2 to Saturday, June 5, 2021
Location: the University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado, USA.
Information about the sponsor: The Dictionary Society of North America promotes the development, practice, and study of lexicography, and the use, compilation, curation, marketing, maintenance, and scholarly examination of dictionaries and related reference works. It provides forums for discussion and dissemination of information on all of these topics, including a peer-reviewed journal, a newsletter, a blog, and biennial meetings. The DSNA was formed in 1975 to bring together people interested in dictionary making, study, collection, and use. Our members include people working on dictionaries, academics who engage in research and writing about dictionaries, dictionary collectors, librarians, booksellers, translators, linguists, publishers, writers, collectors, journalists, and people with an avocational interest in dictionaries. The only requirement for membership is an expression of interest in language, in words, dictionaries and lexicography, or any combination of these.
We’re happy to report that registration for DSNA 22 (May
8-11, 2019, in Bloomington, Indiana) is open! Register at https://www.indiana.edu/~iucweb/dsna/
Attendance at DSNA 22 is open to members of the DSNA. If you
aren’t sure about your membership status, contact the DSNA office at dsnaadmin@gmail.com. We encourage you
to register early to guarantee your lodging preference.
REQUEST
FOR NOMINATIONS – CASSIDY and BAILEY AWARDS
At the upcoming DSNA biennial conference in Bloomington, two
awards will be presented. These awards honor colleagues of great distinction,
and they are named for distinguished colleagues:
The
Frederic G. Cassidy Award for Distinguished Achievement in Lexicography
or Lexicology will be presented to a longstanding member of the
Society who has, throughout their career, significantly advanced
lexicography or lexicology by major achievements as a
lexicographer in research or practice at the highest scholarly or
professional standards. [Frederic G. Cassidy (1907–2000) was a Fellow of
the society, editor-in-chief of the Dictionary of American Regional
English, and, with R. B. LePage, editor of the Dictionary of Jamaican
English. For a full account of his career, see the memorial article
in Dictionaries(2001).]
The
Richard W. Bailey Award for Distinguished Service to Lexicography
and Lexicology will be presented to a longstanding member of the
Society who has, throughout their career, significantly advanced
lexicography or lexicology by service to members of these fields and
to the fields themselves. [Richard W. Bailey (1939–2011) was also a Fellow
of the Society, as well as its Vice-President (1977–1979 and 1999–2001),
President (2001–2003) and Past President (2003–2005). A fuller account of
his career can be found in Dictionaries(2011).]
The members of the selection committee are Donna Farina,
Steve Kleinedler, Katherine Martin, Lindsay Rose Russell, and Jesse Sheidlower.
We welcome nominations for either or both awards from any DSNA member. Please
email your nomination(s) to Steve Kleinedler by January 15, 2019 at dsna.stevekl@gmail.com . In the
subject line please use Bailey Nomination: [Nominee] and/or Cassidy Nomination
[Nominee].
PAST RECIPIENTS:
2015: Gerald Cohen (Cassidy) J.
Edward Gates (Bailey)
2017: Lise Winer (Cassidy),
Madeline Kripke (Bailey)
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
Final
submission deadline July 8, 2019. Publication date November 2019.
PRELIMINARY
ANNOUNCEMENT: eLex 2019
Electronic
lexicography in the 21st century
eLex conference series continues with a conference in the
beautiful city of Sintra, a UNESCO World Heritage site in Portugal. Please
forward this announcement to any colleagues or lists that may be interested in
the conference.
Dates: 1-3 October 2019
Venue: Vila Galé Hotel, Sintra, Portugal
Deadline for abstract submissions: 15 February 2019
Conference website: https://elex.link/ (more information
available soon)
Language of the conference: English
Further information such as call for papers, keynote
speakers, registration etc. will be made available soon. The authors of
accepted papers will be invited to submit a full paper for the conference
proceedings, which are indexed by SCOPUS.
Those interested in sponsoring the conference or conducting
a pre/post-conference workshop, please contact the organizing committee at oc@elex.link
<mailto:oc@elex.link> .
Looking forward to seeing you in Portugal.
eLex 2019 organizing committee:
Tanara Zingano Kuhn, CELGA-ILTEC, University of Coimbra
(head of the organising committee)
Margarita Correia, CELGA-ILTEC, University of Coimbra /
University of Lisbon
José Pedro Ferreira, CELGA-ILTEC, University of Coimbra
Maarten Janssen CELGA-ILTEC, University of Coimbra
Isabel Pereira, CELGA-ILTEC, University of Coimbra
Jelena Kallas, Institute of the Estonian Language
Miloš Jakubíček, Lexical Computing
Iztok Kosem, University of Ljubljana / Jožef Stefan
Institute
Simon Krek, University of Ljubljana / “Jožef Stefan”
Institute
Carole Tiberius, Dutch Language Institute
Honorary
Presidential Memberships for 2018: Call for Nominations
Honorary Presidential Memberships recognize outstanding
professional lexicographers and lexicologists early in their careers by
awarding four-year memberships to the DSNA. Additionally, for the first
DSNA conference that a recipient attends during this four-year period, $400
will be awarded to help defray the cost.
Members of the Society are encouraged to nominate graduate
students or professional lexicographers in the first five years of their
careers for Presidential Memberships. Please send letters of nomination to
Steve Kleinedler at dsna.stevekl@gmail.com.
In the Subject line, please put “Honorary Presidential Membership
Nomination:” followed by the last name of the nominee. Letters should
explain nominee’s lexicographical or lexicological interests, relevant activity
and accomplishments, how sponsors see their nominees developing professionally,
and why nominees should be members of the DSNA, in terms of both what the DSNA
can do for the nominee, and what the nominee can do for the DSNA.
Please send nomination emails by September 30, 2018. Presidential
Members will choose Founding Members or Fellows of the Society as their
namesakes: so, a successful nominee might be, for instance, the Frederic G.
Cassidy Presidential Member of the Dictionary Society of North America, if they
so choose. Help us identify and recognize the next generation of DSNA’s leaders
today!
Calling
for Members for New DSNA Membership Committee
Dear Colleagues,
Earlier this year, the DSNA Executive voted to install a
Membership Committee, for which I have taken the pro-tem lead.
We have seen in last year’s (very successful) attempt by
David Jost (thanks a lot!) that a more active outreach is crucial for a healthy
membership count. In this next phase, we would like to expand our efforts and
attract new groups of potential members, for which I’d like to form a committee
of 4-6 people that will report to the Board. If you’re interested to help
decide, via the character of its membership so to speak, where DSNA will be
heading, please be in touch. There are some ideas, but nothing is set in stone
at all and I hope, very much indeed, that you will bring your own ideas to the
table. Think: “DSNA in the 21st century? What do you need to do to
stay/become (more) relevant?”
Please contact me if interested at Stefan dot dollinger
at u b c dot c a.
Stefan
Assoc. Prof. Stefan Dollinger, Ph.D, M.A.
Departments of English Language & Literatures, UBC Vancouver
Canadian English Lab, Director, UBC Vancouver
(located on unceded Musqueam Territory)
Web: https://ubc.academia.edu/StefanDollinger
Middle
English Dictionary Renovation
A year ago, we at the University of Michigan Library
reported that long-deferred revision of the online Middle English Dictionary
and its associated resources had begun, thanks to support from the National
Endowment for the Humanities (awarded under its Humanities Collections and
Reference Resources program), as well as the University of Michigan Library,
which has taken up the challenge of Michigan’s decades-long commitment to
historical lexicography. Though no dictionary revision is ever complete, and
least of all this one, we can now report that the immediate goals of the
project have been met, and that our revision efforts have borne fruit in the
form of a new online platform and interface, bolstered by improved and enlarged
data. We have been making changes in all three of the components of the Middle
English Compendium (Dictionary, Bibliography, and Corpus), but only the former
two of three are getting the new interface, for now. The Corpus is merely
getting new texts (roughly doubling the total, as well as expanding the genre
coverage), but remains temporarily housed on the old interface.
Changes to the data underlying the Dictionary and
Bibliography fall roughly into four categories: enlarging the content (more
quotations, more senses, more entries, more works cited, etc.); updating the
data (to reflect changes in scholarly consensus, and the recent appearance of
reference works like the Digital Index of Middle English Verse and the Linguistic
Atlas of Early Middle English); correcting the data (where it was wrong or
misleading); and ‘opening’ the data to make it less print-oriented and more
computer-searchable.
Changes to the interface partly reflect changes in the
data — for example, we now include a search by modern English reflex based on
improved links between MED and OED; and partly reflect a more modern
sensibility with regard to the user experience. We have given up the ‘90s look
and embraced something a little cleaner and mobile-friendly, with some modern
tricks like marginal facets (by part of speech, subject label, and language of
etymon) and type-ahead word selection.
Finally, changes to the underlying indexing platform
move the MED from an obsolescent, vulnerable and heavily customized one-off
system to one employing modern and far more nearly off-the-shelf components,
ensuring the continued viability of the site, as well as making it far easier
to update regularly and frequently–something we intend to do.
The ‘old’ MED and the ‘new’ MED will run concurrently for a
few months, at least till we work the bugs out of the new system (please report
any you find), and probably till we add an ‘advanced search’ with cross-field
Boolean options to the new system.
2,000
wholly new entries (mostly in draft or ‘stub’ form).
A
smarter, more modern interface, with some faceting.
A
more informative results list, making it easier to choose the desired
entry.
A
(beta) lookup search by modern English reflex.
The
expansion of many cryptic abbreviations; the resolution of 80% of the
surviving blind (undocumented) bibliographic references
Improvement
of the ‘other spellings’ search by resolving all those difficult-to-parse
parenthes(es and -dashes.
More
nearly comprehensive linking to OED and DOE.
Redatings
of some manuscripts, done in coordination with OED.
About
350 works added to the bibliography, including most of the major editions
of the past twenty years.
References
to DIMEV and LAEME (from the Bibliography) and to J. Norri’s Dictionary
of Medical Vocabulary (from the Dictionary).
About
150 additional texts in the associated Corpus of Middle English.
The
ability to be updated as often as new material is available.
What the new MED loses:
Some
of the more sophisticated but less used multi-field Boolean searches (at
least for the time being).
Its
frozen-in-time quality.
Its
veneer of authority and comprehensiveness, since we are adding much
semi-digested material without having the time to incorporate it fully;
many ‘stub entries’ on the Wikipedia model, and many draft additions, all
marked as such. Making the material available seemed important enough
that it was worth exposing the fact (which was always true) that the MED,
like almost any dictionary, is always a contingent set of surmises, always
a semi-informed work in progress.
What will stay the same:
The
same familiar structure.
The
same text, aside from corrections, etc.
The
same editorial principles.
A
continuous editorial tradition (some of the same lexicographers)
An
unchanged platform for the Corpus, at the moment, since it sits on a
generic library text-serving platform that will be upgraded separately.
Work still in progress:
Ongoing
correction and supplementation.
Identification
and regularization of taxonomic ‘binomials’.
Identification
of internal cross-references and implementation as links.
Identification
and unpacking of cited phrases and compounds.
Expansion
of the inconsistent lists of spellings.
With thanks to:
The
U.S. National Endowment for the Humanities
The
University of Michigan Library
Michigan’s
MED gift fund
Staff: Paul
Schaffner (editor, P.I.); John Latta and Mona Logarbo (editors); Robert E.
Lewis (MED chief editor emeritus; volunteer editor); Evan David, Sarah
Huttenlocher, and Alyssa Pierce (editorial assistants); Chris Powell
(eagle-eyed retrieval specialist); Bill Dueber, Gordon Leacock, and Tom
Burton-West (programmers); Ben Howell (interface designer); Bridget Burke
(interface developer); and Nabeela Jaffer (implementation project manager).
For a complete run of Newsletters before 2017 click on the
Resources tab.
Walter
D. Glanze, R.I.P.
Yvonne M. Lacy, the daughter of Walter D. Glanze, one of the founding members of the Dictionary Society of
North America, has informed us that he died last Wednesday, May 30, 2018 in New
York City at the age of 89. If you wish to send condolences, she can be reached
at ym.lacy.mls@gmail.com. The obituary
for Walter Glanze can be found here: http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/nytimes/obituary.aspx?page=lifestory&pid=189262915
The
Stanford Dictionary Lab
Sarah Ogilvie, Associate Editor of Dictionaries,member of
the Executive Board and the Publications Committee, announces her new
Dictionary Lab at Stanford https://dictionarylab.stanford.edu/.
Here is the About statement.
About
The Stanford Dictionary Lab is a research initiative that
applies qualitative and quantitative analysis to the study of dictionaries and
languages around the world. The Lab is open to Stanford students, professors,
and collaborators beyond. In the spirit of digital humanities, many of our
projects are collaborative and apply digital tools and methods (such as text
analysis, data visualization, network analysis, graph theory, and machine
learning) to dictionary data in order to ask new questions and create new
knowledge.
Research at the Lab focusses on three main areas: research
on the languages of the world by analyzing dictionary data; research on general
lexicography and lexicology relating to all languages; and research on the
history and creation of the Oxford English Dictionary. Often called
‘forensic dictionary
analysis’, this methodology combines statistical,
textual, contextual, and qualitative analyses to achieve a more comprehensive
understanding of language, and the making and reception of dictionaries.
We welcome collaborations on any language of the world, so
please get in touch with the Director, Dr Sarah
Ogilvie (sogilvie at stanford.edu), if you have an idea for a
collaborative project relating to the analysis of dictionaries and language.
A recent study at https://providrug.com/
found that, despite a common misconception, Modafinil
doesn’t act like amphetamines or methylphenidate (Ritalin). It should be noted
that methylphenidate does not belong to the class of amphetamines, but in some
aspects, it has a similar effect. At the same time, both methylphenidate and
amphetamines are used for substitution treatment in patients addicted to
cocaine.
The nominating committee is now full: Michael Hancher (thru
conference 2019), Connie Eble (thru conference 2019), Katy Isaacs (through
conference 2021), and Sarah Ogilvie (through conference 2021)
______________________________________________
Paean
to dictionaries
Thanks to Lise Winer for sending this paean to dictionaries.
A
Way with Words: Celebrating the Cordell Collection
Indiana State University has been celebrating what it calls
its “Sesquicentennial Era,” from 2015 through 2020. ISU’s earliest incarnation,
the Indiana State Normal School, was founded by the Indiana state legislature
in 1865 but its doors didn’t open until 1870. In the midst of its festivities,
on November 9, 2017, the university focused its attention on two jewels in its
crown, both connected to lexicography and DSNA: the Joseph S. Schick Lecture
Series and the Warren N. and Suzanne B. Cordell Collection of Dictionaries. On
that evening, more than 130 members of the ISU community and a smaller group of
DSNA representatives gathered in the Cunningham Memorial Library Events Area —
familiar to those who attended the DSNA (2009) or ICHLL (2016) meetings at
Indiana University — for a special event titled “A Way with Words.” DSNA was
the event’s primary external sponsor
Joseph S. Schick, who taught in the Department of English at
ISU for 30 years, endowed a lecture series on language, literature, and
lexicography before 1900. To date, more than 200 scholars from around the
Anglophone world have spoken in the series, including sometime DSNA members
John Algeo, Richard W. Bailey, F. G. Cassidy, Jack Lynch, Jesse Sheidlower, and
Allen Walker Read, who delivered the inaugural lecture in 1988. The Cordell
Collection was established with a gift of 453 early dictionaries from ISU
alumnus Warren N. Cordell in 1969. The collection now holds more than 30,000
volumes, as well as various archives and documents. As a tour guide for
sponsors of the event puts it, “World renowned, it is the largest collection of
its kind in the western hemisphere.” The collection spurred Edward Gates to
organize two conferences on dictionary history during the 1970s from which DSNA
was born (for more on which see my “The Dictionary Society of America: The
Early Years,” parts 1 and 2, in Dictionaries 35 and 38(1)). Many once
and future DSNA members — Dabney Bankert, Lisa Berglund, Monique Cormier,
Giovanni Iamartino, Rod McConchie, Linda Mitchell, Chris Mulhall, Mira
Podhajecka, Lindsay Russell, and John Taylor — have received grants to study in
the Cordell Collection.
As a benefit of sponsorship, DSNA had a table for eight at
the banquet that made up part of the evening’s program. Chairs at the table
were filled by Michael Adams, Traci Nagle, Kevin Rottet, Lindsay Russell,
Luanne and Mike von Schneidemesser, and Carly Bahler and Martin Maillot, two of
Kevin’s graduate students. Prior to the banquet, DSNA representatives were
given a special tour of the Cordell Collection and provided with the
full-color, forty-page guide to the tour and collection, which includes
“Remarks by Warren N. Cordell” — first published in Paul S. Koda’s A
Short-Title Catalogue of the Warren and Suzanne B. Cordell Collection of
Dictionaries 1475–1900 (1975) — and an annotated bibliography of the works
on display in the tour, among them incunabula and early printed dictionaries
and grammars of Balbi, Calepino, and Molina, as well as the newest addition to
the collection, Johannes Tortellius’ De Orthographia dictionum e Graecis
tractarum (1471), purchased partly with the event’s proceeds, including
DSNA’s sponsorship. (Copies of the guide are available from Cinda May, Chair of
Special Collections at the Cunningham Memorial Library — and DSNA member — at Cinda.May@indstate.edu.) DSNA
representatives were taken behind the scenes, into the closed stacks, for a
closer view of the collection.
After dinner, the assembled guests were treated to a
presentation by DSNA member Grant Barrett and Martha Barnette, co-hosts and
co-producers of A Way with Words, a popular public radio show about word
history, usage, and related matters. Questions and answers followed, full of
humor and high spirits. As we like to say, a good time was had by all —
unusually, this time, in the interest of lexicography. I’m tempted to write
that there’s no better way for DSNA to celebrate its historical, continuing
relationship with the Cordell Collection, but, really, there is: donate
materials or send gifts to support it, or use its materials, indeed, even apply
for a fellowship to study there intensively. Visit https://library.indstate.edu/rbsc/cordell/cordell-idx.html
and https://library.indstate.edu/rbsc/fellow.pdf.
The DSNA Professional Standards and Code of Conduct has been
officially established and can be read here:
DSNA
Professional Standards and Code of Conduct
Drafted August 1, 2017
Second Draft: September 26, 2017
Adopted by DSNA Executive Board: October 18, 2017
Professional Conduct and
Collegiality
Freedom of expression and vigorous debate are crucial to
scholarly exchange. DSNA strives to uphold these principles at all times, while
strongly valuing mutual respect and providing an environment for exchange free
of intimidation. We expect speakers and questioners at our meetings to
demonstrate civility at all times, even in the midst of disagreement.
As a Society, we recognize that lexicography and lexicology
are disciplines that have a complex, sometimes exclusionary, history. We
welcome new scholarship that challenges our presuppositions regarding our
field, while also upholding a commitment to excellence in scholarship and
research, and integrity in our work. The Society’s membership exhibits
substantial diversity in terms of profession, expertise, and interest. We
encourage the input of all our members, regardless of formal
qualification and experience, as we together advance the scholarly and public
understanding of lexicography and lexicology.
Nondiscrimination and Anti‐Harassment Standards
The DSNA is dedicated to providing a safe, hospitable, and
productive environment for everyone, regardless of race, ethnicity, religion,
disability, physical appearance, national origin, sex, sexual orientation,
gender identity, age, or employment status. Accordingly, the Society deplores
all harassment and is sensitive to the harm suffered by persons who experience
it. We expect those participating in DSNA meetings and events to treat others
with the utmost respect, and not to engage in behavior that is intimidating,
threatening, or harassing. This expectation applies to all involved, including
but not limited to our speakers, staff, volunteers, attendees and guests.
The DSNA prohibits harassment on any grounds, including
race, ethnicity, religion, disability, physical appearance, national origin,
sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, or employment status. Harassment
constitutes physical or verbal behavior that is not welcome by a member and/or
that is personally intimidating, hostile, offensive, coercive or threatening.
It may include such actions as: (1) verbal abuse; (2) degrading comments; (3)
the display of offensive objects or images outside of a scholarly context
(e.g., a presentation on the treatment of profanity in a dictionary would not
be considered offensive whereas the use of profanity directed at a fellow member
would be); (4) conduct or comments of a lewd or lascivious nature; and (5)
other conduct that the targeted individual (or group of individuals) might
reasonably find to be intimidating, hostile, offensive, coercive, or
threatening.
Reporting Mechanism
Harassment and unprofessional conduct, in any form, prevent
us from carrying out our mandate of fostering a spirit of collegiality and
support. Such conduct may jeopardize a member’s participation in DSNA events or
their membership. If an individual believes that she or he has experienced
harassment as outlined above at the Society’s meetings or events, the
individual is requested to report it immediately to a member of the Executive
Board and/or the President of the Societ
Steve Kleinedler, president of the DSNA, has passed on this
news about the American Heritage Dictionary, from a statement that
was released on February 1, 2018.
“With the continuing decline in consumer demand for print
dictionaries we have reduced our front-list plans steadily over the past
decade, and reorganized our staff in stages. Today, regretfully, we
eliminated two positions. In the spring, Executive Editor Steve
Kleinedler will transition to Editor at Large, working on a part-time basis. We will continue to
update the American Heritage and Webster’s New World databases, continue to
work with licensing partners, and continue to publish updated editions as the
market allows.” – Bruce Nichols, SVP and Publisher, Houghton Mifflin
Harcourt
The DSNA Newsletter is usually published
twice a year, in the Spring and Fall. The editor is David Jost. News of members
and other items of interest to our readers are welcome. Please send Newsletter correspondence,
such as items for publication, to the editor at dajebj@gmail.com.
Send Member News submissions to dsna.membernews@gmail.com.
You may also send submission for News on the website to David Jost.
Report of election of Officers and Board Members-at-Large
The Nominating Committee of the DSNA (Chair David Jost; Connie Eble, Michael Hancher) submitted the following ballot for 2017 and these are our new officers. A biography of each is given below. Steve Kleinedler, as present Vice-President/President-Elect, becomes President for 2017-2019. Stefan Dollinger and Lise Winer continue as Members-at-Large for 2017-2019.
Elizabeth Knowles began her career as a historical lexicographer at Oxford University Press in 1977, working as a library researcher for the second Supplement to the Oxford English Dictionary. She was subsequently a senior editor for a major revision of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary (4th edition, OUP 1993), when she was responsible for the dictionary’s historical research programme. She took over responsibility for Oxford’s quotations dictionaries in 1993, and has edited the last four editions of the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations (8th edition, 2014). Other editorial credits for OUP include What They Didn’t Say: A Book of Misquotations (2006) and How to Read a Word (2010). She has written and lectured on the history of dictionaries, and she served as editor of Dictionaries from 2010 to 2013. She is currently working on a study of quotations in the English language for Oxford University Press. She has been a Fellow of the Dictionary Society of North America since 2015.
Kory Stamper is an Associate Editor at Merriam-Webster. In her 19 years as a lexicographer, she’s worked on dozens of titles, including Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, Eleventh Edition, Merriam-Webster’s Advanced Learner’s English Dictionary, and the new Merriam-Webster Unabridged. In addition to defining, she writes for the M-W website (www.merriam-webster.com), appears in their popular “Ask the Editor” video series, and presents on language and lexicography at both national and international conferences. Kory received her bachelor’s degree in Medieval Studies (with an early language/literature focus) from Smith College in 1996. Her first book, Word By Word: The Secret Life of Dictionaries, was just released by Pantheon/Knopf, and she is working on a second nonfiction book about defining for Pantheon.
Peter Gilliver is an Associate Editor of the Oxford English Dictionary; he has been a member of the OED’s editorial staff since 1987. For much of that time he has also been researching and writing about the history of the project; his book The Making of the Oxford English Dictionary was published by OUP in 2016. He is also the co-author (with fellow lexicographers Jeremy Marshall and Edmund Weiner) of The Ring of Words: Tolkien and the Oxford English Dictionary (2006). He has been presenting papers on the history of the OED at the DSNA’s meetings since 2003, and has had several of these papers published in Dictionaries; he has also spoken and written widely elsewhere both on the history of the Dictionary and on Tolkien. He is a member of the Advisory Board of the LEME (Lexicons of Early Modern English) project.
Photo credit: Jean Pierre de Rosnay
Sarah Ogilvie is a linguist and lexicographer at Stanford University. She previously taught linguistics at Cambridge University (Alice Tong Tze Research Fellow at Lucy Cavendish College) and at the Australian National University (Director of the Australian National Dictionary Centre and Chief Editor of Oxford Dictionaries, Australia). As a practical lexicographer she has written both diachronic dictionaries (Editor at the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) responsible for World Englishes and words of non-European provenance) and synchronic dictionaries (she was Etymologist of the current Shorter Oxford Dictionary and has written several general desktop dictionaries in Britain and Australia, including thesauruses and children’s dictionaries). In addition, she works on endangered languages and wrote a bilingual dictionary and grammar of Morrobalama, an Aboriginal language of Australia. Technology is a large focus of her work and research and in 2012-2014, she worked on digital dictionaries and software for Amazon Kindle at Lab126, Amazon’s innovation lab in Silicon Valley. Sarah is originally from Australia where she studied for a BSc in Computer Science and Pure Mathematics at the University of Queensland and a MA in Linguistics at the Australian National University, before completing a doctorate in Linguistics at Oxford University. She is author of Words of the World: a global history of the Oxford English Dictionary (Cambridge University Press, 2013), and co-editor of The Concise Encyclopedia of the Language of the World (Elsevier, 2008) and Keeping Languages Alive: documentation, pedagogy, and revitalization (Cambridge University Press, 2014).
