Dictionary Society of North America

Trademarking Situational Beefcake

DSNAAdmin@gmail.com (Lisa Berglund, DSNA Executive Secretary) — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 17:14:00 +0000

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

DSNAAdmin@gmail.com (Lisa Berglund, DSNA Executive Secretary) — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 15:36:00 +0000

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'

DSNAAdmin@gmail.com (Lisa Berglund, DSNA Executive Secretary) — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 17:18:00 +0000

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

DSNAAdmin@gmail.com (Lisa Berglund, DSNA Executive Secretary) — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 17:10:00 +0000

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

DSNAAdmin@gmail.com (Lisa Berglund, DSNA Executive Secretary) — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 16:32:00 +0000

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

DSNAAdmin@gmail.com (Lisa Berglund, DSNA Executive Secretary) — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 19:15:00 +0000

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"

DSNAAdmin@gmail.com (Lisa Berglund, DSNA Executive Secretary) — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 18:08:00 +0000

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"

DSNAAdmin@gmail.com (Lisa Berglund, DSNA Executive Secretary) — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 16:37:00 +0000

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"

DSNAAdmin@gmail.com (Lisa Berglund, DSNA Executive Secretary) — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 19:18:00 +0000

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

DSNAAdmin@gmail.com (Lisa Berglund, DSNA Executive Secretary) — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 20:02:00 +0000

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

DSNAAdmin@gmail.com (Lisa Berglund, DSNA Executive Secretary) — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 19:56:00 +0000

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

DSNAAdmin@gmail.com (Lisa Berglund, DSNA Executive Secretary) — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 17:10:00 +0000

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?

DSNAAdmin@gmail.com (Lisa Berglund, DSNA Executive Secretary) — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 19:13:00 +0000

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.)

New lexicon of Louisiana French

DSNAAdmin@gmail.com (Lisa Berglund, DSNA Executive Secretary) — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 18:51:00 +0000

The Dictionary of Louisiana French: As Spoken in Cajun, Creole and American Indian Communities is an 892-page lexicon of Louisiana French that takes into account regional differences in the spoken language. The book has just been published by University Press of Mississippi; associate editor and Indiana University professor Kevin J. Rottet is a member of DSNA.

From the story in the Opelousas (Louisiana) Daily World: One of the side effects of the project was the affirmation of Louisiana French in its many forms to be a true and legitimate language, despite its deviations from modern standard French, assistant editor and University of Louisiana history professor Barry Ancelet said. "A very important thing to understand about this dictionary is that what many people frequently described or assumed were deformations, mispronunciations or misuses or slurring, when we start looking into them, very often it turned out to be a preservation of an old form," he said. "One of the things this process proved to us is that our French is very well-rooted and in some cases, has precise distinctions and precise meanings contemporary French has lost." You can read the whole story at http://tinyurl.com/yedjkup.

The stuff of art: from dictionaries to salt

DSNAAdmin@gmail.com (Lisa Berglund, DSNA Executive Secretary) — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 18:40:00 +0000

Award-winning photographer and sculptor Young Kim does cool stuff with portraits in salt but he started his career "grappling" (his word) with lexicons. Here's a profile from the Greensboro, North Carolina News & Record (the photo is from the Washington Post): http://tinyurl.com/y9axs82.

DSNAAdmin@gmail.com (Lisa Berglund, DSNA Executive Secretary) — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 18:04:00 +0000

Here, belatedly, is a link to the New York Times review of the new Romanian film “Police, Adjective” : "a story of law enforcement with a special interest in grammar. Its climactic scene is not a chase or a shootout, but rather a tense, suspenseful session of dictionary reading." You have to join to read Times stories but membership is free. (Credit the movie still to Marius Panduru/IFC Films.)

More Words of 2000-2009 -- dot.com flavored

DSNAAdmin@gmail.com (Lisa Berglund, DSNA Executive Secretary) — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 19:28:00 +0000

Catchword, a naming company (wow, what a concept), has identified the 10 biggest dot-com naming trends of the decade-- and their picks for best and worst examples. Check out the story at http://search.sys-con.com/node/1229917 or the full version at http://tinyurl.com/yamx72w. (The company has no relation to the DSNA singing group.)

DSNA office closed for winter break

DSNAAdmin@gmail.com (Lisa Berglund, DSNA Executive Secretary) — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 17:30:00 +0000

The office will be closed from 18 December 2009 until 25 January 2010, during winter break at Buffalo State College.

One last celebration of Johnson's tercentenary

DSNAAdmin@gmail.com (Lisa Berglund, DSNA Executive Secretary) — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 17:01:00 +0000

If you're attending the Modern Language Association conference in Philadelphia this month, why not attend session 179 on Monday, 28 December 2009. Arranged by the Discussion Group on Lexicography, the broad topic "Samuel Johnson’s Tercentenary" features three papers on aesthetics, Scottish printers and physics! The session will be at 10:15–11:30 a.m., in Independence Salon III, Philadelphia Marriott. For more info on the conference, visit http://www.mla.org/. (Dr. Johnson never visited Philadelphia. In one of Lillian de la Torre's "Dr. Sam: Johnson Detector" stories, however, he does meet Benjamin Franklin in London; in fact, Johnson impersonates Franklin to help the latter escape from British government agents.)

The Barona Inter-Tribal Dictionary

DSNAAdmin@gmail.com (Lisa Berglund, DSNA Executive Secretary) — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 16:18:00 +0000

The Barona Cultural Center and Museum in Lakeside, California is currently presenting an exhibit entitled "More Than Words: 'Iipay Aa Tiipay Aa Uumall, The Barona Inter-Tribal Dictionary." The exhibit highlights the first publication of Barona Museum Press, the 696-page Barona Inter-Tribal Dictionary. According to the museum's website, "The Barona people suffered severe language loss through the mission system, boarding schools, urbanization, and assimilation projects. This exhibition features the Museum programs dedicated to cultural preservation and revitalization including the new Language Preservation Program. The exhibition traces the history of the Pai branch of the Yman languages, and gives comparisons on Hokan language in a worldwide context." For more information on the exhibit, visit the San Diego Visitors Bureau at http://www.sandiego.org/event/Visitors/6369; the museum's website (under construction) is http://www.baronamuseum.org/. (The picture shows Barona Tribal Chairman Edwin “Thorpe” Romero, Barona Tribal Councilwoman Beth Glasco, Larry Echo Hawk of the BIA and Barona Tribal Councilmember Charles “Beaver” Curo.)

The Lexicographer's Dilemma

DSNAAdmin@gmail.com (Lisa Berglund, DSNA Executive Secretary) — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 18:51:00 +0000

Jack Lynch's new book on the prescriptivist v. descriptivist schools of language description, The Lexicographer's Dilemma, gets an enthusiastic review from the Washington Post: http://tinyurl.com/yj86rod. And it gets a positive mention from the Boston Globe, http://tinyurl.com/ybw2kck
in a listing of new language books for the holidays.

Hey! Quit shoving!

DSNAAdmin@gmail.com (Lisa Berglund, DSNA Executive Secretary) — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 20:35:00 +0000

The LA Times reported yesterday that "Google quietly rolls out Dictionary." See the story at http://tinyurl.com/yc5wo7h. And here's a link to the site itself: http://www.google.com/dictionary. It's getting a mite crowded in the lexicon shoppe.

Affect, Esurient, Bush and Perseverence (Perserverence? Perseverance? hmmm)

DSNAAdmin@gmail.com (Lisa Berglund, DSNA Executive Secretary) — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 17:06:00 +0000

Year-end tributes to popular words and neologisms continue with this press release from Dictionary.com: http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/dictionarycom-reveals-its-top-searched-words-of-2009-78208067.html. Listing the words that its users most often looked up in 2009, as well as gainers, losers and most often misspelled words, the release suggests that these searches reflect "insights and trends." My graduate students, however, point out that searches often reflect classroom assignments ("Don't ask me how to spell the word, Jimmy, look it up!").

So what are elementary school students studying these days? Monty Python's Flying Circus? Ben Zimmer's commentary today on the Visual Thesaurus (http://www.visualthesaurus.com/) includes a gratifying link to the Cheese Shop sketch--which, he notes, is the only reason most of us know the word "esurient" in the first place.

And the Word of the Year from Merriam-Webster...

DSNAAdmin@gmail.com (Lisa Berglund, DSNA Executive Secretary) — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 16:34:00 +0000

is admonish.

"Admonish shot to the top of the list three days after Rep. Joe Wilson's outburst during a speech made by President Obama, and it remained among our top lookups for weeks," said Peter A. Sokolowski, Merriam-Webster's Editor at Large. "When the House announced plans to 'admonish' Rep. Wilson, the word was understood to be technical or official, and it has been repeated often in coverage of recent contentious political issues. While this particular story wasn't very important in the context of a year's worth of news, it triggered enormous interest in this word." Visit http://www.merriam-webster.com/info/09words.htm for the rest of the story and the runners-up, including my favorite, "repose." I think of "repose" as Miss Congeniality.

New Oxford American Dictionary weighs in

DSNAAdmin@gmail.com (Lisa Berglund, DSNA Executive Secretary) — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 03:33:00 +0000

The Word of the Year festivities continue: The New Oxford American Dictionary has friended "unfriend." Check out their blog, which explains the selection process and offers a gloomy list of the runners-up: http://blog.oup.com/2009/11/unfriend/.