Dictionary Society of North America

Lexicography reading list on "The Reading Life"

2010-03-12T09:49:00.004-05:00

The Reading Life blog for 2 March 2010 recommends popular works on lexicography--all are mentioned in DSNA's reading list, I think, but the blog's compilation is usefully annotated. If you have any suggestions for works I could add to our list, drop me a line.

Ben Zimmer is the new "On Language" columnist

2010-03-12T09:41:00.003-05:00

Ben Zimmer, executive producer of the Visual Thesaurus and Vocabulary.com, and a longtime member of DSNA, has just been named the "On Language" columnist for The New York Times Magazine. He will be replacing William Safire, another DSNA member, who passed away last year. Beginning with the March 21 issue of the Magazine, Ben will be writing the column on a biweekly basis.

The Visual Thesausus reports that: "Ben's writing about language has also appeared in Slate, the Boston Globe, Forbes.com, and the linguistics blog Language Log. William Safire frequently called upon his linguistic expertise, once calling him "that etymological Inspector Javert." He filled in as "On Language" columnist in 2009 when Safire went on hiatus due to ill health, and after Safire's passing he wrote a touching tribute in the Magazine entitled, "The Maven, Nevermore."

Dictionaries via GoogleBooks

2010-03-01T12:48:00.001-05:00

Ben Zimmer has drawn my attention to Steven K. Baum's comprehensive list of the dictionaries available through GoogleBooks. You can access it directly at Interesting Schtoff at Google Books or via Language Hat.

MLA Call for Papers: Lexicography Literature

2010-02-24T12:07:00.003-05:00

Here's a proposed MLA session of lexicographical interest. The deadline looms!

Topic: Papers addressing fiction or poetry that involves dictionaries or their makers as an operating conceit. Please send 500-word abstracts by 1 March 2010, to Chris P. Pearce (cppearce@bu.edu).

New editor of Dictionaries appointed

2010-02-23T14:31:00.004-05:00

The Executive Board of DSNA is delighted to announce that Elizabeth Knowles has been appointed to a two-year term as editor of Dictionaries: The Journal of the Dictionary Society of North America. She succeeds William Frawley, who has edited the journal since 2006.

Elizabeth Knowles (pictured here with a learned friend) is a historical lexicographer who worked on the 4th edition of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary (1993), and is currently editor of the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations (7th edition, 2009). Her other editorial credits include What They Didn’t Say: A Book of Misquotations (2006), and the Little Oxford Dictionary of Proverbs (2009). She is currently working on a book on the historical language for Oxford University Press, to appear later this year.

AP Stylebook annoints "Great Recession"

2010-02-23T12:11:00.005-05:00

DSNA member Grant Barrett and DSNA vice president Orin Hargraves are quoted in today's Business Week, in a story entitled "‘Great Recession’ Gets Recognition as Entry in AP Stylebook." The article observes that "Barrett and some other lexicographers were skeptical about the timing of the inclusion, noting not only that the term has been used before for other economic downturns and also that even the Great Depression wasn’t widely used until years later. Still, they agreed this most recent period is deserving of additional recognition. 'It clearly is a shift in everyone’s perception of their financial and economic life,' said Orin Hargraves, a lexicographer who has consulted on the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Encyclopedia and is currently overseeing the new edition of the Scholastic Children’s Dictionary. 'Whether it’s a name that sticks, it’s too early to tell.'”
You can view the entire story here.

Dictionaries 30 (2009)

2010-02-22T15:18:00.003-05:00

DSNA members & subscribers: Dictionaries 30 (2009) was shipped on 12 February 2010. If you do not receive your copy within a reasonable period of time, please inform the DSNA office.

Living Tongues Institute

2010-02-22T08:37:00.002-05:00

Here's a story from Radio Free Europe describing the US nonprofit Living Tongues Institute, one of a handful of initiatives working to save the world's endangered languages. Experts predict that by the end of the century, half of the world's 6,700 languages will be extinct.

Ichishkiin Sinwit Yakama/Yakima Sahaptin Dictionary

2010-02-21T10:20:00.002-05:00

The Yakima Herald Republic has a story on a new Ichishkiin Sinwit Yakama/Yakima Sahaptin Dictionary, which will be released next month by the University of Washington Press. The 88-year-old co-author Virginia Beavert is one of only 200 or so remaining speakers of Sahaptin.

Sauce for the goose...

2010-02-17T13:27:00.002-05:00

I can't improve the Smoking Gun's treatment of the latest trademark news: "Following in the trailblazing footsteps of 'The Situation,' fellow Jersey Shore cast member Nicole "Snooki" Polizzi wants the federal government to issue a trademark for her nickname. According to the February 7 filing with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, the 22-year-old Polizzi is seeking to use the trademark for two separate commercial classes: 'Entertainment in the nature of personal appearances by a television personality,' and--in what will terrify fans of fine literature--'Printed matter, namely books.' ...Her application came a few days after TSG reported that "Jersey Shore" mook Michael Sorrentino had filed for a trademark for "The Situation," the nickname he has given his abdominal muscles.

If Beyonce can do it, why can't I?

2010-02-16T14:36:00.002-05:00

Humorist Alex Horne has a column in the Independent about his quest to place a word of his own coinage in the OED: http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/comedy/features/how-to-invent-a-word-1900477.html.

£834,350 for Names project

2010-02-10T08:44:00.003-05:00

A major new research project led by the University of the West of England (UWE, Bristol) is set to create the largest ever database of the UK’s family surnames. The database, which will contain the meanings and origins of up to 150,000 UK surnames, is to be made publicly available and will be of enormous interest to home genealogists, family historians, and anyone interested in learning more about family names. The project is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council.The research will be carried out by Professor Richard Coates at the Bristol Centre for Linguistics at UWE with erstwhile DSNA member Dr Patrick Hanks. For more information from the AHRC, visit http://www.ahrc.ac.uk/News/Latest/Pages/familynames.aspx.

(Yes, Frida Kahlo doesn't have much to do with UK family surnames, but what a great image! It's My parents, my grandparents, and me [1936].)

Trademarking Situational Beefcake

2010-02-03T12:14:00.006-05:00

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 buy 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

2010-01-27T10:36:00.007-05:00

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'

2010-01-22T12:18:00.004-05:00

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

2010-01-22T12:10:00.003-05:00

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

2010-01-20T11:32:00.004-05:00

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

2010-01-16T14:15:00.002-05:00

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"

2010-01-14T13:08:00.004-05:00

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/

"The gimmicky sideshow of the syntactic circus"

2010-01-09T11:37:00.005-05:00

What a great line! Dan Zak of the Washington Post has written a delightful article on this week's American Dialect Society meeting. He not only reports on the selection of the 2009 word of the year ("tweet") and word of the decade ("google") but also on Steve Kleinedler's new tattoo! Check out the debate--sadly, no illustration of Steve's embellishment--at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/08/AR2010010803692.html. You can also visit ADL's more sober account of the proceedings, over which ADS executive secretary Alan Metcalf and American Speech columnist Grant Barrett presided, at http://www.americandialect.org/.

More on "distracted driving"

2010-01-07T14:18:00.004-05:00

Citing the choice by Webster's New World College Dictionary of "distracted driving" as its word of the year, U.S. Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood has announced an initiative to eliminate the practice in 2010. According to LaHood, the phrase's "rapid intrusion into our national vocabulary shows what an epidemic distracted driving has become."

No word on what the government intends to do about "unfriending."

"The Dictionary in Print and in the Cloud" CFP

2010-01-06T15:02:00.003-05:00

DSNA President Michael Hancher has issued the following call for papers, for a proposed session at the Modern Language Association meeting in January 2011:

Soon the MLA will publish the following call for paper proposals for a Special Session: "'The Dictionary in Print and in the Cloud': Benedict Anderson's 'philological-lexicographic revolution' and after. Cultural standardization and fixity in the regime of print-capitalism; implications of fluid lexicographical practice and access online. Abstracts: March 15."

More fully stated (using more than the 35 words that the MLA allowed): In Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (1983) Benedict Anderson closely identified the standardizing effects of lexicography with what he called "print-capitalism," itself linked to "the origins of national consciousness." Anderson's schematic references to "the lexicographical revolution in Europe" invite exemplification and critique. Also, in recent decades the lexicographical revolution has moved from print to cyberspace and the cloud. What do projects like dictionary.com, Wiktionary, le-dictionnaire.com, and DWDS, as well as Google's "define:" function, imply about communities constructed by "the dictionary" online today? Abstracts of proposed 15- or 20-minute presentations on either topic or both are welcome by March 15; please send them to mailto:mh%40umn.edu. In March I'll organize a panel for the MLA program committee to consider. The committee reports its decisions in May. Given sufficient interest I may edit a group of such papers for publication; therefore I invite proposals also from people who will not attend the MLA convention.

Additional information about the proposed volume is available at
http://www.hastac.org/blogs/mh/cfp-dictionary-print-and-cloud.

Computational Linguistics 2010 - CFP

2010-01-06T14:56:00.003-05:00

The International Multiconference on Computer Science and Information Technology will hold its annual Computational Linguistics Applications Workshop 18-20 October 2010, in Wisła, Poland. Proposals for papers are due by 31 May 2010. For more information, visit http://www.imcsit.org/pg/289/231.

Holy Writ

2010-01-04T12:10:00.001-05:00

KINGSTON, N.Y., Jan. 3 (UPI) -- A judge in New York state took the oath of office with his hand placed on a dictionary rather than a book of scripture because officials could find no Bible.
The glitch, in a packed courtroom of the historic Ulster County Courthouse in Kingston, N.Y., provided "a light moment" in the swearing-in of Donald A. Williams as Ulster County judge, the Daily Freeman of Kingston reported Sunday. Williams said later he didn't mind using a dictionary instead of a Bible because the swearing-in Saturday was purely ceremonial. The former district attorney, a Republican, officially became the county judge Friday. U.S. government officials are not required to swear in on a Bible, but most do so as a demonstration of the binding nature of the promise. The act also adds solemnity to the ceremony. Most officials use their own family Bible.

Why doesn't the Times just outsource to DSNA?

2010-01-03T14:13:00.002-05:00

What with the excerpt from and review of Jack Lynch's Lexicographer's Dilemma and Ben Zimmer's column on Antonin Scalia's distaste for "choate," the New Year's eve edition of The New York Times should have been running a credit line for DSNA. (Actually, the print version of Ben's column wasn't published till today. You can check out the hubbub at www.nytimes.com.)