Trademarking Situational Beefcake

Were you getting tired of those tricentennial portraits of Dr. Johnson? Here's some eye candy and news of a trademark application. Both a Las Vegas porn firm and a New Jersey entrepreneur have filed applications to secure the rights to "Jersey Shore" character Michael Sorrentino's nickname for his torso: The Situation. Check out the Smoking Gun: http://tinyurl.com/yjrfdu8.

Of course, Lexiphanes was buff, too. Boswell reports that when 28-year-old Johnson arrived in London, "Mr. Wilcox, the bookseller, on being informed by him that his intention was to get his livelihood as an authour, eyed his robust frame attentively, and with a significant look said, 'You had better bury a porter's knot.'" Perhaps Mr. Sorrentino will go on to pursue a career in lexicography.

Webster's back in Menifee schools (kind of) and other reflections on naughty dictionaries

The LA Times reports that Merriam's 10th is back in the fourth and fifth grade classrooms in Menifee County, but parents can restrict their children's access to the dictionaries. The school board says the process worked--um, because no parents attended the school board meeting to discuss the issue. So is this a victory for anti-censorship forces, or inertia? Read the whole story at http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-dictionary27-2010jan27,0,5566022.story.

If you're interested in banned books, visit the American Library Association's page highlighting "Banned Books Week" 2010, coming in October. http://tinyurl.com/yd55duu.

Of course, Samuel Johnson must have the final word on folks who hunt through dictionaries looking for the naughty bits. Though Henry Digby Best's account may be apocryphal, it's worth repeating:

Mrs. Digby told me that when she lived in London with her sister, Mrs. Brooke, they were every now and then honoured by the visits of Dr. Johnson. He called on them one day soon after the publication of his immortal dictionary. The two ladies paid him due compliments on the occasion. Amongst other topics of praise they very much commended the omission of all naughty words. 'What! my dears! then you have been looking for them?' said the moralist. The ladies, confused at being thus caught, dropped the subject of the dictionary.

Menifee school officials remove dictionary over term 'oral sex'

The Press-Enterprise of Riverside and San Bernardino counties in southern California is reporting that copies of Webster's 10th edition have been removed from Menifee school libraries following a parent's complaint about the inclusion of the term "oral sex." The dictionaries originally were purchased for fourth and fifth grade classrooms.

District spokeswoman Betty Cadmus said that this is the first time a book has been removed from classrooms throughout the district. The dictionaries will be reviewed: "It's hard to sit and read the dictionary, but we'll be looking to find other things of a graphic nature," Cadmus said. She explained that other dictionary entries defining human anatomy would probably not be cause for alarm.

Meanwhile, the newspaper reports, some parents are questioning the district's response and some school board members are asking why officials did not consult with them. "Censorship in the schools, really? Pretty soon the only dictionary in the school library will be the Bert and Ernie dictionary," said Emanuel Chavez, the parent of second- and sixth-grade students. "If the kids are exposed to it, it's up to the parents to explain it to them at their level."

For the complete story, visit http://tinyurl.com/y97cs8t.

Lexicom 2010: A workshop in Lexicography and Lexical Computing

Sue Atkins, Adam Kilgarriff and Michael Rundell of the Lexicography Master Class have issued a call for participants for this intensive five-day workshop, to be held at the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia, 7-11 June 2010. Seminars on theoretical issues will alternate with practical sessions at the computer. Topics to be covered include: corpus creation, corpus analysis, discovering word senses, recording contextual information, preparing word sketches, writing entries for dictionaries and lexicons, dictionary databases and writing systems, using web data, and the future of lexicography and lexical computing

Applications are invited from people with interests and experience in any of these areas. To register for Lexicom, go to http://nlp.fi.muni.cz/lexicom2010. Early registration is advised, as previous workshops have been oversubscribed. Further details, including a draft program and reports of past events can be found at http://www.lexmasterclass.com/. For information on on Ljubljana (how to get there, where to stay etc) visit http://www.trojina.si/lexicom2010

English Dictionaries in Global and Historical Context

The conference "English Dictionaries in Global and Historical Context" will meet 3-5 June 2010 at Queen's University, Kingston, Canada. The conference will ask: What intellectual and social impact have English and English-bilingual dictionaries had in the world from the era of the Latin-Anglo-Saxon glossary to the era of the collaboratively constructed and web-based Inuit Living Dictionary? To what extent did the manuscript and printed dictionaries of English from the 11th century to the 20th reflect and inform contemporaneous linguistic norms, literary movements and social mores, and how now, in the early 21st century, will the role of English as a lingua franca and the competition of burgeoning and irreverent user-compiled dictionaries affect or reshape the traditional dictionary?

The historical and cultural breadth of this conference will allow us to reconsider the role of English dictionaries today, in a world that is increasingly English-speaking and e-literate and yet digitally and economically stratified. Over 40 scholars from around the world will present papers, including keynote speakers Mark Abley (author of The Prodigal Tongue: Dispatches from the Future of English) and Srinivas Aravamudan (author of Guru English: South Asian Religion in A Cosmopolitan Language).

Registration for this meeting is now open: visit the conference's website at http://post.queensu.ca/~strathy/topics/dic_conf.html and for a list of speakers, check out http://post.queensu.ca/~strathy/content/dicprog.pdf. All those interested in dictionaries and the themes of this conference are welcome to register. Broad participation by academics, lexicographical professionals and community members will enrich our discussions.

Charles Homer Haskins Prize Lecture by William Labov

A press release: The American Council of Learned Societies (of which DSNA is a member) pleased to announce the publication of the 2009 Charles Homer Haskins Prize Lecture by William Labov. Entitled “A Life of Learning: Six People I Have Learned From,” the lecture is distinctive in both form and content.

Dr. Labov, professor of linguistics and director of the Linguistics Laboratory at the University of Pennsylvania, presents the voices and stories of six Americans who have enriched and transformed the English language. The lecture is presented in text with audio highlights at http://www.acls.org/publications/audio/labov/default.aspx?id=4462. An audio file of the complete lecture is also available.

As the 2009 Haskins Prize lecturer, Professor Labov joins a distinguished list of scholars (see http://www.acls.org/publications/haskins). Established in 1982 by former ACLS President John William Ward, the series honors the ACLS tradition of commitment to scholarship and teaching of the highest quality. The lecture is delivered at the ACLS Annual Meeting and subsequently published in the ACLS Occasional Paper series.

In her introduction at the lecture, ACLS President Pauline Yu said, “Professor Labov’s work exemplifies the qualities often found in the most enduring achievement of all scholarship: it is at once complex and rigorous, but also deeply consequential.” His research on nonstandard vernacular, most notably that of African-American children, counters the misguided theory that (in his words) “every natural utterance of the child [is] evidence of his mental inferiority and that the speech of working class people is merely a form of emotional expression, incapable or relating logical thought."

Professor Labov began his university studies in linguistics with “the belief that working people have a lot to say.” In his lecture he introduces us to six people he has, as he puts it, “met in the course of this work.” Though others might view them as research subjects, to Labov these individuals are teachers; their narratives and words live with him. It is our pleasure to bring their voices to a wider audience.

Early American "Rosetta Stone"

A fascinating article in National Geographic reports on attempts to decipher a slate found at the 400-year old site in Virginia. Researchers speculate that it may be a kind of lexicon, of English and Algonquian. The article includes a link to the interactive site on colonial Jamestown, one of the best historical sites on the web (that's your editor speaking, not National Geographic). Check it out: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/01/100113-jamestown-tablet-slate-american-rosetta-stone/