Dictionary Society of North America

"Nobody in their right minds starts at A": John Simpson retires

DSNA member John Simpson is retiring after 20 years as the chief editor of the Oxford English Dictionary.

Oxford University Press has announced his retirement from his post effective October 2013. John joined the OED editorial staff in 1976, and became co-editor with Edmund Weiner in 1985. He was appointed chief editor in 1993, the seventh OED editor since Sir James Murray’s appointment in 1879. Under John’s editorship, over 60,000 new words and meanings have been added to the OED.

For more than 35 years John has contributed to one of the world's largest and longest-running scholarly projects during a time of great change. During the 1980s the entire OED text, comprising the First Edition (1884-1928) and its Supplement (1972-86), was digitized as an integrated single text. This work laid the foundations for the publication of the twenty-volume Second Edition in 1989 and the launch of OED Online in 2000.

Effective 1 November 2013, Michael Proffitt, the current editorial project director, will serve as chief editor of OED, responsible for leading decision-making on style, policy, and strategy.  Philip Durkin, currently principal etymologist, will become eeputy chief editor alongside existing Deputy Chief Editor Edmund Weiner

My headline comes from an interview with John published in Time, which you can read here.

"The Last Lexicographers"

That's the sub-heading in the conclusion to an article from the 15 April 2013 Publisher's Weekly. Journalist Gwenda Bond concludes her article, "The Changing World of Reference," by interviewing DSNA President Orin Hargraves. Here's an extended quotation:

At Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, publisher Bruce Nichols agrees that the digital future for reference is bright. "Unlike with commercial fiction, it's not going to e-book so much as other forms," Nichols says. "Our print sales are still strong enough to merit new titles, but are declining. Electronic licensing is doing really well." ...

HMH also purchased Webster's New World reference titles and CliffsNotes from Wiley late last year. A major new edition of Webster's New World College Dictionary will be released next year, and the publisher is currently exploring options to expand upon the popularity of the CliffsNotes Web site, which brings in significant advertising revenue. Nichols is concerned, however, about the potential impact of one long-term trend in the field. The drop in profitability of print editions of dictionaries in particular has resulted in fewer on-staff positions for lexicographers throughout the reference world. What that could mean for the quality of dictionaries in the future is an open question.

Author and lexicographer Orin Hargraves, current president of the Dictionary Society of North America, agrees that it's a concern, though the effects of the decline aren't being felt just yet. "Many things a[r]e still drawing on legacy resources," he says. "When the time comes that they are truly crowdsourced, quality will decline. Very few people instinctively know how to write a good definition." But with the average age of English-language lexicographers "well over 40," fewer openings to train new lexicographers for, and perhaps 100 remaining in the world (which Hargraves believes is actually enough), it could well become a problem to find qualified, dedicated professionals to provide the dictionary content of tomorrow and ensure changes to the English language are accurately captured and quantified. 

"It's a dilemma," says Hargraves."Lexicography is a useful skill when you're putting together dictionaries. But what about if a day comes when no one is?"

 

Sequestration socks DARE

The Wisconsin State Journal is reporting that "editor Joan Houston Hall said she’s issued layoff notices, effective July 1, to the staff of the respected dictionary, which includes more than 60,000 words compiled by UW-Madison researchers during the past 48 years." Among the factors: A grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities came in at $50,000 less than expected due to the federal funding cuts known as sequestration, while private giving has slowed because of the recession, the Journal reports.

Editor Hall continues to seek funding support for DARE; a digital version of the dictionary will be published later this year by Harvard University Press.

DSNA 2013 Election results

The votes are in! Thank you to everyone who cast ballots (and filled out the survey). The constitutional amendments were approved and our slate of candidates has been elected. The election will be formally confirmed at the General Meeting of the Society in May. Congratulations to:

Luanne von Schneidemesser, Vice President 2013-2015; President 2015-2017

Rebecca Shapiro, Executive Secretary, 2013-2017

Ammon Shea and Peter A. Sokolowski, Board Members at Large, 2013-2017

Kretzschmar wins 2013 ACLS Digital Innovation Fellowship

DSNA member and 2013-DSNA meeting co-chair William Kretzschmar, a professor of English at the University of Georgia, is one of seven winners of the 2013 American Council of Learned Societies Digital Innovation Fellowship. His project is "Computer Simulation of Speech and Culture as a Complex System."

The ACLS press release explains: The seven fellows, who were selected from a very competitive pool of applications, will spend a year dedicated to a major scholarly project intended to advance digital humanistic scholarship in powerful new directions. The projects span disciplines, methodologies, and digital formats, but all engender innovative approaches to scholarly research and communication. Applications to the program were evaluated by a committee of scholars with wide-ranging expertise in the digital humanities. 2012-2013 marked the eighth year of the ACLS Digital Innovation Fellowship Program, generously funded by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

“The 2013 ACLS Digital Innovation Fellows are forging exciting pathways for scholarship in the humanities, providing widespread access to previously unavailable sources and creating tools to aid
scholars at all levels of study,” said ACLS Director of Fellowships Nicole Stahlmann. “From transforming traditional ideas of literary genre to modeling changes in regional speech patterns over time, the fellows are finding new ways to channel big data for greater humanistic understanding.”

The DSNA is a member of ACLS.

Peter Sokolowski on NPR's "Talk of the Nation"

National Public Radio picked up the Chronicle of Higher Education's story on digital dictionaries, and on 13 March 2013 "Talk of the Nation" host Neal Conan spoke with Merriam-Webster editor and DSNA member Peter Sokolowski about the phenomenon of "vocabulary events." You can read or listen to the story here.

In the Digital Era, Our Dictionaries Read Us

This long article, appearing in the 11 March 2013 Chronicle of Higher Education, offers a detailed survey of issues related to digital dictionaries; the idea for the article originated with the panel organized by DSNA Past President Michael Hancher at the 2013 MLA conference. The essay is a lively, detailed and thoughtful introduction to lexicography in the 21st century.  Author Jennifer Howard has interviewed many lexicographers and DSNA members, including Peter Sokolowski (left), Katherine Connor Martin, Ben Zimmer, Steve Kleinedler, Michael Rundell, Ingrid Goldstein, and Lisa Berglund.

DSNA Fellowship winner at 2013 Linguistics Institute

Congratulations to Erin Vobornik, winner of the DSNA Fellowship at the 2013 Linguistics Institute. Erin's BA is in French and she is currently in her second year of graduate school at Northern Illinois University. Erin writes, "My professional goals are to use my love of linguistics to help others. I am interested in dictionary compilation for under-represented languages. These dictionaries not only function as a corpus for other researchers, but also as a medium through which a language community can see its own language as important globally. This fellowship allows me to learn key skills that will help me achieve my goals and contribute to open-sharing of information."

The DSNA Fellowship supports the tuition of  a student enrolled in a DSNA-sponsored lexicography class at Linguistic Society of America's Summer Linguistic Institute. In 2013, the Linguistic Institute will be held at the University of Michigan. "Lexicography in Natural Language Processing" will be taught by DSNA president Orin Hargraves. For more information, visit the Linguistic Institute's snazzy website. Enrollment for the Summer Institute opens on March 15!

NPR interview on American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms

DSNA member and lexicographer Christine Ammer was interviewed on National Public Radio's "Morning Edition" today, about the more than 10,000 phrases defined in the new American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms. Here's a link to the website of WBFO in Buffalo (where DSNA hangs its hat); you can listen to the interview and check out some of the idioms that Ammer highlights in her discussion with radio host Renee Montagne.

Mien-English Dictionary published

The Sacramento Bee has a story today about DSNA member Herbert Purnell's recently published Mien-English dictionary; you may recall reading an excerpt from the lexicon in the "Reference Works in Progress" section of Dictionaries 28 (2009). According to the article in the Bee,  Purnell's dictionary is  "an 855-page compendium of more than 5,600 words, 28,000 phrases and 2,100 cultural notes laced with myths, poetry and ceremonies."

The Mien language initially survived because the people lived in an isolated area of Laos, but it did not have a written form. According to Purnell, "In 1982, 80 Mien leaders met in Portland, Ore., to create a new romanized, nonsectarian Mien script to help the Mien become more literate." 

The Mien-English dictionary took Purnell 26 years to complete--his next project is an English-Mien lexicon. For the entire story, click here.