Ethnocentrism and the English Dictionary (Routledge Studies in the History of Linguistics, 3)

Ethnocentrism and the English Dictionary

As dictionary users, we tend to think of dictionaries as objective records of our language and as more or less natural artefacts of our linguistic life. Ethnocentrism and the English Dictionary challenges these assumptions by showing how English lexicography has evolved historically as a form of social and discursive practice through which the English dictionary has emerged as a key aspect of the social and political history of the English language. A theoretical, historical and empirical analysis shows how dictionaries have come to represent the English language in the world as a structure in which a linguistic and cultural periphery is known and described from the perspective of a centre corresponding to the place in which the dictionary is produced. Since most dictionaries of English are published in Britain or the United States, this has led to an ethnocentric representation of the language, in which knowledge is filtered through Anglo-American perspectives on English in the world. The book covers three main areas. Part one deals with theories of the dictionary and their relationship to theories of language. Part two presents a historical treatment of the evolution of English lexicography from its origins in the seventeenth century to the present day, focusing on the lexicographical treatment of the language in its relations to the world. Part three presents an empirical study of the most recent edition of the Oxford English Dictionary and its treatment of China (one of the most frequently mentioned countries in the dictionary) as a case study of ethnocentrism in action. This book will be essential reading for linguists, social and cultural historians or anybody with an interest in the relationship between language and culture. Phil Benson is an assistant professor of English at the University of Hong Kong. He has published widely in the areas of language studies and language learning.

Routledge Studies in the History of Linguistics Series editor: Talbot Taylor

1

Linguistics and the Third Reich Mother-tongue fascism, race and the science of language Christopher M. Hutton

2

Women, Language and Linguistics Three American stories from the first half of the twentieth century Julia S. Falk

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Ethnocentrism and the English Dictionary Phil Benson

Ethnocentrism and the English Dictionary Phil Benson

London and New York

First published 2001 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group This edition is published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2002. © 2001 Phil Benson All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Benson, Phil. Ethnocentrism and the English Dictionary/Phil Benson. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. English language–Lexicography–History. 2. English language– United States–Lexicography–History. 3. Ethnocentrism–Great Britain. 4. Ethnocentrism–United States. I. Title. PE1611 .B47 423’.028–dc21

2000 00-059138

ISBN 0–415–22074–2 (Print Edition) ISBN 0-203-20571-5 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-203-20574-X (Glassbook Format)

Contents

List of tables Acknowledgements List of abbreviations and dictionary names Introduction 1 Dictionaries and theories of language

vi vii viii 1 8

2 The semiotics of the dictionary

24

3 The centre–periphery metaphor in action

43

4 The monolingual English dictionary up to Johnson

61

5 From Johnson to the OED

83

6 The lexicography of English as an international language

105

7 China in the OED: the wordlist

132

8 China in the OED: associating words with China

144

9 China in the OED: definitions

163

10 China in the OED: quotations

178

11 Conclusion

205

Notes References Index

211 216 229

Tables

4.1 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4 8.1

Estimated number of entries in English dictionaries, 1600–1755 Lexico-semantic categories of words associated with China in the OED2 and the CollED3 Distribution of dates of first record for items associated with China in the OED2 Distribution of dates of most recent record for items associated with China in the OED2 Chinese sources of citations in the OED2 Uses of the words China and Chinese in OED2 definitions

74 135 138 139 141 145

Acknowledgements

The influences on this book are many. Among those whose comments and conversations have been especially valuable, I would like to mention Reinhart Hartmann, Anthony Cowie, Talbot Taylor, Susan Butler, Arthur Delbridge, Bruce Moore, Kingsley Bolton, Peter Grundy, Braj Kachru, Alastair Pennycook and three anonymous Routledge reviewers. Special thanks go to Hiroko Itakura, who has helped me in countless ways over the 10 years it has taken to complete the book. Extracts of definitions from The Oxford English Dictionary (2nd edition, 1989) are reprinted by permission of Oxford Univerity Press and are © Oxford Univerity Press 1989.

Abbreviations and dictionary names

The names of dictionaries published in the twentieth century are followed by an abbreviation and are listed under their abbreviations in the bibliography. These abbreviations are also used after the first appearance of the dictionary in the text. A number following an abbreviated dictionary name indicates the edition number. For example, OED2 refers to the second edition of the Oxford English Dictionary. In the course of writing this book I discovered that dictionary abbreviations can also be a matter of ethnocentrism. For example, the Dictionary of American English is typically DAE, while the Australian National Dictionary is typically AusND. I have chosen to use abbreviations for the names of regions that clearly distinguish those with the same initial letter: American is Am, Australian is Aus and African is Af. Dictionaries published before 1900 are normally referred to by the names of their compilers. I have followed this practice and listed them accordingly in a separate section of the bibliography.

Introduction

According to recent estimates, between 1.2 and 1.5 billion people, almost a quarter of the population of the world, can be counted as fluent or competent in the English language (Crystal, 1997). Whether as a first, second or foreign language, English plays a role in almost every urbanised region of the world. These are the bare facts of English as an international language, beneath which lie important issues of debate ranging across the various disciplines associated with the study of English. For some, the globalisation of English is in essence a continuation of Anglo-American imperialism within the cultural sphere; the English language is the Trojan horse of imperialism in the post-imperialist world. For others, English as an international language is a post-imperialist phenomenon sui generis, which promises to undermine the cultural authority of the old linguistic centres as the cultural products of new varieties of English come to enrich the language as a whole. A third position in the debate accepts the globalisation of English as a fact of the modern world and focuses on the need to reconceptualise and revise the ways in which we represent and study the English language for the post-imperialist world. Certainly, few scholars of the English language would now agree with the irredentist position advanced by British politician Enoch Powell in 1988: Others may speak and read English – more or less – but it is our language not theirs. It was made in England by the English and it remains our distinctive property, however widely it is used or learned.1 Many, perhaps the majority, would prefer to align themselves with the position advanced by McArthur in the preface to his Oxford Companion to the English Language: English is the possession of every individual and every community that in any way uses it, regardless of what any other individual or community may think about it. (McArthur, 1992: xvii)

2

Introduction

A problem remains, however. Both the English language as we know it and the disciplines associated with its study are historical products of an age in which Powell’s position was the norm. We may declare that English is the universal property of all of its users, but the ways in which we represent it within our disciplines may, nevertheless, be constrained by assumptions and practices that lead us to act as if it remained the property of its traditional linguistic centres. This book is concerned with a field of practice that has possibly been less subject to critique in the light of the globalisation of English than any other. Dictionaries are, in many respects, among the most taken-for-granted linguistic artefacts of the English-speaking world. Almost every literate English speaker owns one and consults it from time to time. For the learner of English, a good dictionary is almost a necessity. But because dictionaries are so eminently and transparently useful, we seem reluctant to criticise them except in regard to their usefulness. Yet the history of English lexicography is, in many respects, more closely intertwined with the history of English as a language of empire than that of any other field within the study of English. The practice of making English dictionaries for English-speaking and non-English-speaking readers stretches back 400 years and pre-dates the rise of English as an independent object of academic study by several hundred years. Two of the greatest landmarks in the history of the dictionary, Johnson’s A Dictionary of the English Language and Webster’s An American Dictionary of the English Language, were in their time widely regarded as monuments to their respective national versions of the language. The greatest landmark of all, the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), which was more or less explicitly a project of British imperialism concerned with the consolidation of English as the dominant language of the world, continues to set the standard for the modern English dictionary. And by the end of the twentieth century English lexicography has become an international industry with a structure that bears a remarkable similarity to the structure of the Englishspeaking empires in their heyday. None of this is to say that the modern English dictionary is the Trojan horse of a latter-day linguistic imperialism or that modern English lexicographers harbour imperialistic designs beneath their overtly internationalist aims. But it must also be acknowledged that lexicographers frequently underplay the possible ideological implications of the historical development of the dictionary. In a paper that is largely critical of the adequacy of British learner’s dictionaries to overseas markets, for example, the British lexicographer Janet Whitcut argues: Although it purports to describe a world language, any dictionary of English must in practice deal chiefly with the English of its own place of origin. This is only reasonable, and is obvious at all stages of the dictionary entry: in headword selection; probably in pronunciation; in the choice and differentiation of senses; and, most strikingly, in the use of examples. (Whitcut, 1995: 253)

Introduction

3

There are three possible objections to the argument that the dictionary’s focus on the language of its place of origin is ‘reasonable’. The first of these objections is that the reasonableness of the assumption must be set in the context of the fact that the vast majority of English dictionaries continue to be produced either in Britain and the United States or under the direction of British and US publishers. Moreover, economic obstacles to the successful independent production of dictionaries elsewhere in the world are such that few local publishers are prepared to risk the investment that the publication of a large competitive dictionary requires. In countries such as Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand, the Philippines, Singapore and South Africa, a local dictionary would not only have to contend with the relatively small size of the market, it would also need to compete against the products of its British and American rivals. Dictionaries dealing primarily with the English of Britain and the United States exercise, in effect, a stranglehold over the world market for the English dictionary. The second objection is that British and US dictionaries do not, in practice, openly deal primarily with the language of Britain and the United States. On the contrary, the versions of the language that they present to their readers are often assumed to be ‘comprehensive’ or ‘international’. When sold at home, the British or US dictionary is simply ‘the dictionary’. When sold overseas, although its users may well be aware of its geographical origins, the assumption is that they are getting an international version of the language, not simply a version of the language as it is used in Britain or the United States. Some of the more recent British dictionaries, in a rhetorical move designed to accommodate the view that a dictionary should be local to the country in which it is sold, even imply that they are local products when their contents are, in fact, substantially or entirely identical to those of editions sold at home. The successful marketing of a British or US dictionary overseas may also rely on the collusion of local users with an ideological assumption that British or US versions of English as an international language are the ‘authorised’ versions. Oxford University Press (OUP) dictionaries, for example, can only benefit from the popular and widespread assumption overseas that ‘good English’ is ‘Oxford English’. Certainly, international publicity material for OUP dictionaries does little to challenge this assumption, and indeed goes some way towards fostering it by emphasising the Oxford tradition of dictionary-making. The third, and perhaps the most important, objection is that any assumption concerning the reasonableness of existing practices within English lexicography implies that the English dictionary is a natural, rather than historically-specific, form for conveying information about a language to its users. Whitcut, it should be noted, in common with many other lexicographers, acknowledges that English dictionaries are ethnocentric works, but she also suggests that they are necessarily so. The current form of the dictionary is separated from the historical processes through which it has developed and emerged such that the scope of legitimate critique is restricted to what is possible within the current form. However, as Henri Béjoint observes,

4

Introduction Lexicography has obviously entered a phase of self-examination: we have begun to wonder why the dictionaries that we have inherited from previous generations are what they are, and whether they are adapted to our times.… The time seems to have come when those traditions should be questioned. (Béjoint, 1994: 2–3)

Asking fundamental questions about why dictionaries ‘are as they are’ necessarily involves asking questions about the historical contingency of the dictionary as a form for the representation of information about the English language. It also involves asking whether forms and practices that emerged in periods when an ethnocentric view of the language was the norm are adequate to a period in which such a view is subject to critique. In view of the often explicit internationalist orientation of the current generation of English dictionaries, the contention argued in this book that dictionaries are ethnocentric stands in need of clarification. The substance of the contention is not that dictionaries exhibit racism or prejudice against particular ethnic groups, although there is some evidence that dictionaries are occasionally ethnocentric in this sense of the word. Rather, the argument is that the English dictionary is a historically specific form of discourse embedded within broader discourses that represent knowledge of the world in terms of metaphors of centre and periphery. In this sense, ethnocentrism implies a set of structures that position one’s own culture as a centre for the production and distribution of knowledge of other cultures, which are to various degrees peripheral to it. Ethnocentrism in the dictionary is thus not simply a question of the content of the statements that the dictionary makes about the English language. It is equally a question of the structures that make those statements possible. Because the dictionary is a book about language, however, the discourse of the dictionary involves a particular interaction between content and structure. Centre–periphery metaphors are characteristic of the production and dissemination of Western knowledge in the fields of geography, natural science and social science and the processes of abstraction, classification and hierachisation on which they are typically based. One of the aims of this book is to demonstrate how the structures of the dictionary function as vehicle for the representation of the English language as an object with a clearly defined regional centre and periphery. But at the same time, there is a recognition that the dictionary incorporates other discourses such that centre–periphery views of the geographical, natural and social world are inextricably bound up with the centre–periphery view of the language. The modern dictionary is, in this sense, not simply a book about words, but also a book about the world viewed through the particular window of the word. Ethnocentrism in the dictionary thus becomes a question both of the representation of the language and of the representation of the world as it is inscribed within the structured version of the language that the dictionary presents to the user. Dictionaries are surrounded by myths of ‘objectivity’ and ‘authority’. Dictionaries objectify language and, in the process, objectify themselves, such that it

Introduction

5

becomes difficult for us to conceive of how the forms and structures of the dictionary could be anything other than they are. In particular, we are faced with a dominant paradigm for the practice of lexicography as a descriptive procedure for the identification and presentation of the ‘facts’ about a language. Investigation of ethnocentrism in the English dictionary therefore calls for procedures of deconstruction at three levels, which correspond to the three major sections of this book. The first section deals with the structures of the English dictionary at the theoretical level. It explores relationships between theories of the dictionary and theories of language and proposes that we view dictionaries in terms of semiotics and discourse, as representations of language rather than as descriptions of language ‘as it is’. It also explores in detail the ways in which the structures of the dictionary function as vehicles for the representation of language and knowledge in centre–periphery terms. The second section approaches the English dictionary from a historical perspective and outlines how the structures of the modern dictionary have evolved from the seventeenth century to the present day. The third section presents a detailed empirical analysis of the treatment of China in the second edition of the OED, published in 1989. This analysis aims to explore the ways in which ethnocentrism operates through the interaction of structure and content within one of the most influential dictionaries in the English-speaking world. Green (1996: 29) observes that there are probably more than 15,000 English dictionaries currently on the market. This study is, therefore, necessarily limited in its focus. First, it deals almost exclusively with the monolingual general English dictionary. In the modern age, the monolingual dictionary is perhaps the canonical form of the dictionary, but in historical terms it is a recent development. The first monolingual dictionaries of English were compiled in the early seventeenth century, a late beginning if we agree with Green that lexicography has a history of more than 4,000 years. The monolingual dictionary may also only be the canonical form for the native speaker of English. In spite of the success of the monolingual learner’s dictionary, it is likely that the majority of non-native speakers of English rely on bilingual or ‘bilingualised’ versions of monolingual dictionaries, which are not treated in any depth in this study. The notion of the ‘general’ dictionary is theoretically vague, but in this study it refers to dictionaries that aim to cover either the language as a whole or a representative sample of it. This distinguishes the general dictionary from the specialist dictionary, which is explicitly limited to a specialised field, but it should not be taken to imply that the general dictionary is not selective. Perhaps a better way of defining the general dictionary would be as one that aims to cover, to varying degrees of depth, the common words of the language. In this sense, the learner’s dictionary is just as much a general dictionary as the standard desk dictionary. Similarly, the OED is, in spite of its size and historical specialism, considered a general dictionary for the purposes of this study. A note may also be added on the choice of the treatment of China in the OED as a subject for detailed empirical investigation, which might at first seem to be an arbitrary, even ethnocentric, choice. The OED was conceived and

6

Introduction

compiled during the heyday of British imperialism. Although the second edition of the dictionary, used for this study, was published in 1989 and was considerably revised, a substantial proportion of the contents of the first edition remain. The OED is, therefore, a relatively easy target for an analysis of ethnocentrism in the English dictionary. Moreover, in view of both the circumstances of its compilation and its sheer size, the OED can hardly be considered representative of the English dictionary in general, either in Britain or the United States. Nevertheless, the OED retains a special importance within modern lexicography. It continues to be highly regarded by lexicographers, who often see it as an exemplar of the modern descriptive method. Beyond the field of lexicography also, the OED continues to set the standard for the English dictionary. Simon Winchester’s assessment of the contemporary relevance of the OED, for example, is by no means unusual: The book remains in all senses a truly monumental work – and with very little serious argument is still regarded as a paragon, the most definitive of all guides to the language that, for good and ill, has become the lingua franca of the civilized modern world. (Winchester, 1998: 25) To be sure, the imperialist origins and purposes of the dictionary are acknowledged, but it is as if this historical context should not be allowed to interfere with a true appreciation of the value of the scholarship contained within it. As Winchester again puts it: There is some occasional carping that the work reflects an elitist, male, British, Victorian tone. Yet even in the admission that, like so many achievements of the era, it did reflect a set of attitudes not wholly harmonic with those of prevalent at the end of the twentieth century, none seem to suggest that any other dictionary has ever come close, or will ever come close, to the achievement that it offers. (Winchester, 1998: 221) Perhaps most important of all, however, is the fact that the OED is not only in the process of transforming itself into a dictionary for the twenty-first century through the proposed publication of the New Oxford English Dictionary, but has also taken upon itself a particular role in relation to the coverage of English as an international language, described by one of its current editors as one of the two major policy questions for the new dictionary (Weiner, 1986). Within the OED, China is one of the best represented countries of the world in terms of mention in definitions and quotations. Indeed, China is mentioned more frequently than many countries in which English is used as a native or second language, reflecting the dictionary’s special concern with the Orient. One of the arguments that I will seek to develop in this study is that ethnocentrism in the English language is not necessarily a question of neglect of peripheral

Introduction

7

cultures or language varieties. On the contrary, ethnocentrism is often most apparent in the bringing of the periphery to light as a reflection of the knowledge of the centre. The OED’s extensive treatment of China, updated in the second edition along with other areas of interest, is particularly instructive in this respect. Although this treatment is not necessarily representative of the treatment of China and the world in other English dictionaries, it is nevertheless indicative of the mechanisms of ethnocentrism within the English dictionary in general and of the scope of the task that remains for lexicographers who aim at a truly internationalist lexicography.

1

Dictionaries and theories of language

The argument that English dictionaries are fundamentally ethnocentric rests on a view of the English dictionary as a representation of the English language organised in terms of metaphors of centre and periphery. The process of lexicographical representation, constrained by the rules and principles of lexicographical practice, leads not to the production of a direct reflection of the language ‘as it is’, but to the production of a version of the language, with definite form and shape. This version of the language both represents and conditions our conceptions of what the language is, what it is made of and the ways in which its component parts are related to each other. The notion of the dictionary as representation implies a theory of the dictionary based upon theories of semiotics, ideology and discourse that will be outlined in more detail in Chapters 2 and 3. First, however, it has to be acknowledged that dictionary-makers themselves do not typically view lexicography as a process of representation. For most modern lexicographers, lexicography is first and foremost a process of description and the rules and principles of lexicographical practice constrain the lexicographer to ‘accuracy’ and ‘objectivity’. Moreover, twentieth-century descriptivist lexicography defines itself as a response to the prescriptivist lexicography of earlier centuries. In contrast to the prescriptive lexicographer, who relies on intuition and arbitrary diktat, the descriptive lexicographer relies on evidence. In this sense, descriptivism is crucial to the self-image of modern lexicography as an endeavour in harmony with principles of scientific inquiry. We begin, therefore, by examining the nature of the assumptions on which descriptivist lexicography is based and their relationship to evolving theories of language.

The descriptivist paradigm Descriptivism has been described by Moon (1989) as the dominant paradigm for lexicography in the twentieth century. According to the descriptive principle the dictionary should tell the reader what the language is, not what it should be. The descriptive principle is also, in a sense, a moral one since it constrains lexicographers to record the ‘facts of the language’ accurately and without bias and without unjustifiably allowing their own opinions to come to the surface of the

Dictionaries and theories of language

9

dictionary. It places the lexicographer above the interests of factions who might wish to use the dictionary as a site for linguistic or ideological dispute. At the same time it allows the lexicographer to submerge his or her own authority within the authority of the dictionary as an objective record of the language. Descriptivism also prescribes a set of procedures governing good practice, enshrined in manuals of lexicography (e.g., Zgusta, 1971; Landau, 1989), which define modern lexicography as a profession rather than an art. Descriptivism does not, however, define the dictionary as a form. Indeed, up until the mid-nineteenth century, dictionaries were, with few exceptions, compiled by individuals with interests and careers beyond the field of lexicography, who routinely inserted their own opinions about the meanings and value of words and the ideas to which they referred. In the late eighteenth century in particular, the authority of the English dictionary lay precisely in the authority of its compiler to tell the user how the language should be used. Descriptivism as a lexicographical principle first emerges in Archbishop Trench’s (1857) address to the Philological Society, now taken to mark the origins of the OED, in which he proposed that the dictionary should be ‘an inventory of the language’ and the lexicographer ‘an historian … not a critic’. These succinct definitions of the dictionary and the lexicographer’s role in its compilation would eventually come to stand for the ideal of descriptive lexicography. Simpson (1990: 1961), coeditor of the second edition of the OED, has described Trench's address as a ‘manifesto for dictionary-makers’ and Gates (1992: 268) has described the OED itself as ‘a revolution in dictionary-making’. As a result of this revolution, Gates remarks, ‘the editors of today’s general monolingual dictionaries see their work as a compendium of facts about words, a scientific record of the language’ (1992: 265). The distinction between descriptivism and prescriptivism in lexicography, and the sharp break between the two phases implied in the idea that the OED was a revolution in dictionary-making, is misleading however. English dictionaries continue to prescribe both explicitly and implicitly. In his preface to OEDS3 (1982), for example, editor Robert Burchfield informs the reader that, on occasion, ‘[I] found myself adding my own opinions about the acceptability of certain words or meanings in educated use’. As Zgusta (1989: 76) points out, many modern dictionaries prescribe indirectly by employing usage notes such as ‘frequently rejected, particularly by teachers of English’ and in The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (AmHDEL, 1969), controversial matters of usage were settled by a panel of 100 writers and educators, whose opinions were reported in percentage form. The distinction between description and prescription is also one that tends to ignore the implications of the institutional authority that dictionaries often claim for themselves. For Taylor, descriptive statements of lexicographical meaning such as those given in the OED are not descriptions of facts, but rather statements of norms: To present normative statements of word meaning not as such, but rather as descriptions of some institutional state of affairs, amounts only to a deceptive

10 Dictionaries and theories of language way of attempting to enforce their normative authority: namely, by denying that their authority comes from any other source than a purported correspondence to the truth. (Taylor, 1990: 25) Both descriptive and prescriptive lexicographers purport to tell the truth about the meanings of words (and in practice their definitions rarely differ either in content or form). The difference between the two lies mainly in the ways in which this truth is conceptualised as fact or norm. Nevertheless the break between the prescriptive and descriptive dictionary is crucial to the self-image of the modern dictionary. The important distinction, however, lies not so much in whether the modern dictionary prescribes or not as in the basis on which it claims authority. As Sinclair, editor of Collins COBUILD English Language Dictionary (CCELD, 1987) (a dictionary that has claimed revolutionary status for itself in its use of corpus evidence), argues: Eventually, structural statement contains an element of what should be the case, which can contrast with what is the case. Prescriptive studies fall into disrepute only when they ignore or become detached from evidence. (Sinclair, 1991: 61) The authority of the descriptive dictionary thus rests upon the lexicographer’s examination and presentation of evidence. Descriptivism thus implies more than the abrogation of the lexicographer’s right to prescribe. The OED was not simply the first descriptive dictionary, it was also the first to locate its enterprise within the discourse of science. The eighteenth-century prescriptive lexicographers, it could be argued, were equally concerned with the description of the language, but they shared a conception of language as an object of description that was particular to their time. More important than the shift from prescription to description was the shift implicit within the idea of the OED to a conception of language as object that could be subjected to scientific inquiry. The conception of language underpinning descriptivist lexicography is illustrated in a definition of the dictionary, cited by Béjoint (1994: 9), from Zgusta’s influential Manual of Lexicography: A dictionary is a systematically arranged list of socialized linguistic forms compiled from the speech-habits of a given speech-community and commented on by the author in such a way that the qualified reader understands the meaning … of each separate form, and is informed of the relevant facts concerning the function of that form in the dictionary. (Zgusta, 1971: 17) The definition is as much a definition of a language as it is a definition of the dictionary. A language consists, in the terms of this definition, of a set of ‘socialized linguistic forms’ common to a ‘speech community’. It consists of

Dictionaries and theories of language

11

separate ‘forms’ with distinct ‘functions’. The dictionary itself is simply a description of the ‘relevant facts’ of the language. The point to note, however, is that the description of these facts is dependent upon the language being as it has been defined. If a language is, in fact, a far more fluid and diffuse object than it appears to be from the definition, the process of description becomes problematic. Zgusta’s definition of a language, however, is framed within theoretical assumptions about the nature of language that have been widely accepted in twentieth-century descriptive linguistics. The most important of these is the assumption that languages exist prior to, and independently of, their description – an assumption that is crucial to the constitution of language as an object of scientific inquiry. To this extent, Zgusta’s definition is supported by scientific linguistics. This raises important issues concerning the relationship between lexicography and linguistics, however, for the definition of language underlying the definition of the dictionary is essentially a definition of language as it appears in the form of the dictionary. Indeed, if Béjoint (1994: 25) is correct in his argument that ‘the lexis of a language has no concrete existence apart from the dictionary’, the notion of the dictionary as a description of the language ‘as it is’ may be based on a tautology. At the very least, we need to explore in greater depth the role of the dictionary in sustaining the conceptions of language on which it is based.

Dictionaries and the ontology of language In the preface to his book, The Language Myth, Harris (1981) calls the advent of scientific linguistics ‘one of the most revealing and disturbing episodes in the intellectual history of the twentieth century’. Harris’s critique of scientific linguistics forms part of a growing body of critical work that challenges the assumption that language is capable of objective description and views the practice of linguistics as a historically and culturally situated form of discourse (see, for example, Fairclough, 1989, 1992; Fowler, et al., 1979; Hodge and Kress, 1988; Kress and Hodge, 1979; Mey, 1985; Pêcheux, 1982; van Dijk, 1993; Wodak, 1989). The term critical discourse analysis is increasingly used to refer to this body of work. Although Harris does not describe himself as a critical linguist or discourse analyst, I will take his critique of scientific linguistics, together with that of Williams (1992), as representative of the philosophical premises underlying a critical approach to the ontology of language and its representation in linguistic and lexicographical work. In Harris’ view, scientific linguistics is subject to two fallacies, both of which have their roots in Aristotelian philosophy: the ‘telementational fallacy’ and the ‘determinacy fallacy’. The telementational fallacy lies in the assumption that linguistic communication is a matter of a sender encoding thought in the form of a message that a recipient decodes at the other end. The determinacy fallacy accounts for the possibility of such a form of communication by an assumption that words are arbitrary signs corresponding to thoughts that are a determinate

12 Dictionaries and theories of language reflection of objective reality. According to Harris, these two fallacies underpin a mythical account of language and communication: Individuals are able to exchange their thoughts by means of words because – and insofar as – they have come to understand and to adhere to a fixed public plan for doing so. The plan is based on recurrent instantiation of invariant items belonging to a set known to all members of the community. (Harris, 1981: 10) This ‘set of invariant items known to all members of the community’ can, of course, be recognised as the ‘socialized linguistic forms compiled from the speech habits of a given speech community’ in the definition of the dictionary offered by Zgusta. From the early seventeenth century to the mid-nineteenth century, a number of accounts of the ontology of language co-existed within European discourse. The biblical view, based on the Book of Genesis, that language was a gift of God and that all modern languages were descended from a single individual form persisted well into the nineteenth-century. Indeed this was a view to which Archbishop Trench himself subscribed at the time of his address to the Philological Society. In English discourse on language, the biblical view of language lent strength to the determinacy fallacy, for God had brought the beasts of the field and the fowl of the air before Adam ‘to see what he would call them’, and Adam had (somewhat ambiguously) ‘called them by their own names’ (Eco, 1999: 30). In the course of history, however, languages had diverged and the names attached to things no longer corresponded to the nature of the things themselves. Language had thus become a corrupt and imperfect reflection of reality and the task of language study was defined in terms of the search for the original language through the etymologies (or originals) of words. At the same time, in the work of empiricist and rationalist philosophers such as Bacon, Leibniz, Locke and the Port Royal Grammarians, language began to be seen not as a divine gift, but as the invention of men. According to Williams (1992: 21), Bacon held ‘that while language was the means of conveying thought between men, nevertheless the existing form of language was inadequate for this purpose’. Moreover, language represented an obstacle to reason. Similarly Leibniz held that existing language was inadequate for the purposes of reason and that there was a need for ‘a world-wide language involving a universal symbolization of thought, free from the vagueness and uncertainties of natural language’ (1992: 22). In his Essay on Human Understanding, Locke held that, although simple notions and words were guaranteed by their relationship to objective reality, complex notions compounded from them were not. The fact that communication was only partly guaranteed by the relationship of language to objective reality explained the possibility of linguistic misunderstanding and manipulation. Successful communication could, therefore, only be guaranteed by the rational metalinguistic efforts of the educated elite.

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For Williams, the problem of the relationship between language and thought was crucial to eighteenth-century notions of progress. As progress was predicated on the dual conception of social knowledge as cumulative and enabling, and knowledge was predicated on its expression through language, the imperfection of language was an obstacle to progress. Moreover, the idea of the imperfection of language was shared by both rationalist and biblical philosophies of language, although they disagreed on the route to its perfectibility. The relationship between language and reason thus became a key intellectual theme of eighteenth-century Europe, one that took on a political dimension in proposals to ‘fix’ the language in the form of the dictionary. The work of fixing the language in the form of the dictionary was carried out in France, Italy and Spain by the Academies. For political reasons, however, England was to have no academy and the work of fixing the language was left to private enterprise and ultimately to Johnson, whose Dictionary of the English Language (1755) was to come to represent, by acclaim rather than fiat, the standard for eighteenth-century English. Johnson’s dictionary will be considered in more detail in Chapter 4. For the moment we may note that his greatest achievements, although both were soon to be subject to severe criticism, were in the areas of definition and etymology. Pointing backwards and forwards at the same time, the dictionary had taken on the work of the search for the originals of words and, more importantly, the rational determination of meaning. Johnson’s dictionary was clearly an idealised representation of the language ‘as it should be’, not a description of the language ‘as it was’. The point to be emphasised, however, is that the dictionary had become the site in which conceptions of language could acquire semiotic form. Lexicography had entered a mutually supportive relationship with linguistic thought, in which philosophers of language provided the dictionary with conceptions of the language and the dictionary provided philosophers with representations of the language as it had been conceived. From the Aristotelian account of language, twentieth-century scientific linguistics eliminated the assumption that thought was a direct reflection of objective reality and replaced it with a notion of language as an independent system conditioning knowledge of the objective world. Using Harris’ terms, the ‘telementational fallacy’ was freed from the philosophical dualism of the ‘determinacy fallacy’. In the process, however, this fallacy was to lose little of its force. As Crowley (1989) has shown, the idea of the objectivity of language was current in late nineteenth-century England, but it has most often received attention in the form advanced by Saussure. According to Crowley, Saussure established that ‘the world and language are not distinct orders of being but belong to the same ontological order’ (1989: 30). What remains of the Aristotelian view of communication in the Saussurean view is the agreement of the speech community to use an arbitrarily determined set of signs. According to Saussure, however, a language appears to its users not as an agreement, but as an objective fact:

14 Dictionaries and theories of language In fact, no society has ever known its language to be anything other than something inherited from previous generations which it has no choice but to accept.… In any case, linguistic facts are rarely the object of criticism, every society being usually content with the language it has inherited. (Saussure, 1983: 72–3) In other words, the meanings of words are no longer guaranteed by the direct relationship between thought and the forms of the objectively given world. Instead they are guaranteed by the objectivity of the language system itself, in which words occupy, from the perspective of the language user, fixed and immutable positions. In the twentieth century, Saussurean notions of the objectivity of language provided firm ground for the rejection of prescriptivism and the rise of descriptive lexicography. Yet at the same time, the Saussurean conception of language itself rests in part upon a lexicographical metaphor for language, as Saussure recognised: A language as a collective phenomenon, takes the form of a totality of imprints in everyone’s brain, rather like a dictionary of which each individual has an identical copy. Thus it is something which is in each individual, but is nonetheless common to all. At the same time it is out of reach of any deliberate interference by individuals. (Saussure, 1983: 19) Here, the speech community is constituted by its possession of a metaphorical ‘dictionary of the mind’. But Saussure’s metaphor ultimately leads to tautology. On the one hand, lexicographers can only describe the structure of a language if language can be known. On the other hand, language can only be known once we have seen and grasped it in the externalised form of the dictionary. This tautology was recognised by the linguist-lexicographer Whitney, whose efforts to grasp and describe the reality of ‘a language’ could only be resolved by resort to its representation in the externalised form of the dictionary or grammar: No one can define, in the proper sense of that term, a language; for it is a great concrete institution, a body of usages prevailing in a particular community, and it can only be shown and described. You have it in its dictionary, you have it in its grammar; as also in the material and usages which never get into either dictionary or grammar; and you can trace the geographical limits within which it is used in all its varieties. (Whitney, 1875/1970: 157) The point here is not simply that linguists and lexicographers have on occasion used the dictionary as a metaphor for the objectivity of language. It is rather that there seems to be no other way of conceiving of that objectivity other than in terms of its description in some externalised metalinguistic form. It is in the

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sense that the practice of describing languages is both logically and historically prior to the conceptualisation of languages as objects that can be described, that dictionaries can be understood as representations of languages. The notion of a dictionary as a representation, rather than a description, of a language implies metalinguistic processes of objectification, in which the language is constructed as an object within the field of social knowledge. While the notion of metalinguistic representation does not necessarily deny the objective existence of languages, it does imply the impossibility of separating our knowledge of a language from the metalinguistic form in which that knowledge is represented. The assumption that languages are capable of objective description has been undermined in the late twentieth century, not only by critics of Saussurean linguistics such as Harris, but also by approaches that more generally call into question the idea that words have determinate meanings independently of their contexts of use. More than 50 years ago, Hjelmslev argued: The so-called lexical meanings in certain signs are nothing but artificially isolated contextual meanings, or artificial paraphrases of them. In absolute isolation no sign has any meaning; any sign meaning arises in a context, by which we mean a situational context or explicit context, it matters not which, since in an unlimited or productive text (a living language) we can always transform a situational into an explicit context. (Hjelmslev, 1943/1961: 45) This formulation of the problem of lexical meaning, which has largely informed the development of linguistic pragmatics, undermines the notion that the senses of words are determinate within the linguistic system (Mey, 1993: 139). Although intuition suggests that many words do indeed have determinate meanings independently of their contexts of use, attention has shifted towards the ways in which these meanings are socially constructed and appear and disappear in response to social and ideological change. Critical discourse analysis, and linguistic pragmatics more generally, thus views language less as an independent object for scientific investigation than as a facet of social and ideological relations. From this perspective, lexical meaning is both indeterminate and contextual and the central project of the dictionary – defining the meaning of words – is quite possibly irrelevant to the problem of understanding the nature of lexical meaning. Moreover, although dictionarymakers are aware of the relevance of critical and pragmatic perspectives to their work, they have yet to find a way of systematically absorbing these perspectives into the structure of the dictionary (see, for example, Zgusta, 1988). Mey is clearly sceptical of the dictionary’s function in defining lexical meaning: What a person is saying, and what this person means by what he or she says, is clearly an exclusive concern, not to say privilege, of that person; hence

16 Dictionaries and theories of language semantic rules only make sense outside of the context of actual language use (such as in a dictionary, or in fictitious examples). (Mey, 1993: 54–5; italics in original) However, simply to dismiss the relevance of the dictionary to the problem of lexical meaning would be to miss the point that, if the dictionary does not, and cannot, satisfactorily describe the meanings of words in an objective sense, it must be doing something else. It is to the problem of what the dictionary is actually doing when it purports to be describing the meaning of words that we will now turn.

Dictionaries and the determination of meaning The idea that the determination of the meanings of words is essentially a social phenomenon concerned with relations of ideology and power first emerged in the work of Vološinov (1973), whose major concern was the elaboration of a Marxist philosophy of language for the post-revolutionary Soviet Union. Vološinov described words as ideological signs, whose forms are conditioned by the social organisation of the participants in communication and by the immediate conditions of their interaction. For Vološinov, therefore: The meaning of a word is determined entirely by its context. In fact there are as many meanings of a word as there are contexts of its usage. (Vološinov, 1973: 21) Vološinov also criticised the assumption that words have meanings in and of themselves, and that certain aspects of the meaning of a word are more central than others. Asserting that ‘multiplicity of meaning is the constitutive feature of word’ (1973: 101), he argued that: Such discriminations as those between a word’s usual and occasional meanings, between its central and lateral meanings, between its denotation and connotation, etc., are fundamentally unsatisfactory. The basic tendency underlying all such discriminations – the tendency to ascribe greater value to the central, usual aspect of meaning, presupposing that that aspect really does exist and is stable – is completely fallacious. (Vološinov, 1973: 102; italics in original) Vološinov appears to object principally to the idea that words possess meaning as a function of their determinate relationship to a conceptual or objective reality, an objection now shared by critical and pragmatic approaches to language generally. His discussion of the processes by which words acquire the fixed, or ‘unitary’, meanings ascribed to them, however, goes considerably beyond this objection.

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According to Vološinov, words acquire unitary meaning in the course of social interaction, but only as a result of the ideological reduction of the ‘multiaccentuality’ of the sign. For Vološinov, this is largely a matter of power, as: The ruling class strives to impart a supraclass, eternal character to the ideological sign, to extinguish or drive inward the struggle between social value judgments which occurs in it, to make the sign uniaccentual. (Vološinov, 1973: 23) Words, therefore, become discrete units with determinate meanings through the suppression of semantic variability within contexts of ideological domination. Although the multiaccentuality of the sign is the linguistic norm, ideological domination is the social norm, such that: In the ordinary conditions of life, the contradiction embedded in every ideological sign cannot emerge fully because the ideological sign in an established dominant ideology is always somewhat reactionary and tries, as it were, to stabilize the preceding factor in the dialectical flux of the social generative process, so accentuating yesterday’s truth as to make it appear today’s. And that is what is responsible for the refracting and distorting peculiarity of the ideological sign within the dominant ideology. (Vološinov, 1973: 23–4) Vološinov’s analysis, therefore, involves a dual understanding of words and their meanings. On the one hand, words are subject to multiple and contradictory evaluations in the concrete conditions of interaction (‘multiplicity of meaning’). On the other hand, word-meanings are subject to homogenisation as the dominant ideology of the time strives towards universality (‘unitary meaning’). The reactionary character of the sign within the dominant ideology consists in its tendency to ‘look backwards’ towards established meanings and to reinforce the ideological status quo by ‘so accentuating yesterday’s truth as to make it appear today’s’. Among modern critical discourse analysts, Fairclough (1989, 1992) has developed the clearest formulation of the relationship between ideology and lexical meaning. Fairclough (1989: 88–9) emphasises that language is not just a vehicle for conveying different ideologies. Language itself is a ‘stake’ in social and ideological struggle. Taking up the common-sense notion that words ‘mean what they mean’, he argues that the meanings of words vary not only among dialects, but also ideologically. Taking the word ideology itself as his example, Fairclough suggests that ‘the variable meanings of ideology are not just randomly generated, but themselves correspond to different ideological positions, and have themselves been generated in the course of struggle between these positions’ (1989: 94). If the word ideology were one day to acquire a fixed and uncontested meaning, he suggests, this could only indicate that one ideological position had gained undisputed dominance. In this sense, the fixed or common-sense meanings of

18 Dictionaries and theories of language words are considered an effect of power, or the product of an ideological process of ‘naturalisation’, which Fairclough defines as the ‘closure’ or ‘restriction of the plenitude of potential meanings’. In more recent work, Fairclough discusses aspects of vocabulary in text, where he observes that: … it is of limited value to think of a language as having a vocabulary which is documented in ‘the’ dictionary, because there are a great many overlapping and competing vocabularies corresponding to different domains, institutions, practices, values, and perspectives. (Fairclough, 1992: 76) In preference to ‘vocabulary’, Fairclough proposes the terms ‘wording’ (from Mey, 1985), ‘lexicalisation’ and ‘signification’ as terms implying processes ‘which happen differently in different times for different groups of people’ (1992: 77).1 From both Vološinov and Fairclough comes an understanding of lexical meaning as inherently variable and contestable within contexts of social and ideological struggle. The case for the primacy of contextual meaning may appear overstated, given our intuition that the meanings of many common words are neither variable nor contested, and Fairclough (1989: 95) himself suggests that a word such as nose, in its anatomical sense, is unfavourable to his argument. He also observes, however, that even the meaning of such an seemingly straightforward word derives from meaning systems in which an apparently transparent relationship to the natural structure of the body is sustained by social systems of ‘expertise’. Fairclough’s conclusion is that fixed lexical meanings are a product of processes of ‘naturalisation’ to the extent that the arbitrariness of meaning systems is concealed, but not all fixed meanings are the outcome of ideological struggle. In unitary representations of the lexicon as a whole, however, one set of ideological positions is represented as an uncontested version of reality, or as a set of facts about the language and the world in which it works. Although Fairclough seems dismissive of the relevance of the dictionary to problems of lexical meaning, and Vološinov does not mention dictionaries at all, their work is suggestive of a perspective from which the dictionary’s role in ‘describing’ language can be understood as one of stabilising the lexicon and the ideological relations implicit within it. For most of the time, it appears that we are content to use words without worrying too much about what they mean, but at certain moments we are not, and at those moments we may turn to the dictionary. What we find there, however, are not the meanings of words themselves, which are far too complex and multifaceted to be accommodated within a dictionary entry as it is at present conceived, but unitary representations of those meanings, stripped of the ideological complexities that caused us to turn to the dictionary in the first place.

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Dictionaries and the reduction of variability to variety In discourses on the English language from the seventeenth century to the beginning of the twentieth century, the period in which the form of the monolingual English dictionary emerged and developed, unitary or invariant language was consistently presented as an ideal to which diversity and variability were opposed. Biblical philosophies of language rested on the notion of a single original language of which all subsequent languages were imperfect copies, and the empiricist and rationalist philosophies of Bacon and Locke saw variability in the use of words as signs of their imperfection. In the nineteenth century, comparative philology transformed the search for a biblical original into a search for a secular original for all modern languages and in the activities of the Philological Society a close connection was established between linguistic standardisation and the construction of a unitary history of the language. The English dictionary therefore evolved in the context of a persistent discursive opposition between unity and variability in language. This opposition first took the form of the elevation of the ‘educated’ speech of London and the southeast of England and the denigration of ‘barbarous’ regional, working-class and ‘criminal’ dialects (Grillo, 1989). Thus, by the early twentieth century, it had become quite natural for scholars of English to view the standardisation of language as a process involving both the homogenisation and elevation of the standard variety. The linguist-lexicographer Wyld, editor of The Universal Dictionary of the English Language (UDEL, 1932), argued, for example, in a text on the study of English: When one dialect obtains the dignity of becoming the channel of all that is worthiest in the national literature and the national civilization, the other less favoured dialects shrink into obscurity and insignificance. (Wyld, 1907: 358) Moreover, Wyld argued that ‘Standard English has an absolute superiority over any other dialect in the high degree of acoustic distinctness which it possesses, compared with the provincial or vulgar forms of English’ (1907: 357; italics in original). In respect to pronunciation, Wyld is suggesting, standard English is equivalent to ‘good English’ precisely because of the relative lack of variation in its forms that results from the fact that it is the product of conscious attention and refinement by its speakers. In nineteenth-century England, the homogeneity of the standard variety also set English apart from other languages of the world. As Trench argued: What can more clearly point out their native land and ours as having fulfilled a glorious past, as being destined for a glorious future, than that they should have acquired for themselves and for those who came after them a clear, a strong, a harmonious, a noble language? For all this bears witness to corresponding merits in those that speak it, to clearness of mental vision, to

20 Dictionaries and theories of language strength, to harmony, to nobleness in them who have gradually shaped and fashioned it to be the utterance of their inmost life and being. (Trench, 1881: 3) In the self-image of Victorian England, the capacity of the nation to homogenise and refine its standard language was in itself evidence of the fitness of the language for the purposes of Empire. Linguistic homogenisation was viewed as a sign of progress both within and for the English language. In the twentieth century, however, Saussurean linguistics radically changed the ways in which linguists were to come to look at variability within language. The Saussurean distinction between langue and parole was in essence an instrument of linguistic homogenisation, which instead of condemning variability in language, reduced it to order. Once parole is excluded from the realm of scientific study, variability is automatically excluded because langue is unitary by definition. The principles of scientific linguistics, however, also insisted that all forms of language have equal value in principle. Not only do they proscribe judgement on the value of linguistic forms (it now becomes ‘unscientific’ to consider speech forms as ‘civilised’ or ‘barbarous’), they also prescribe attention to the various ‘non-standard’ languages and dialects. In the Saussurean scheme, however, language variation can only be explained if each non-standard form is treated as a system in its own right. The inherent variability of language, which justifies the distinction between langue and parole, is thus reduced to a proliferation of distinct language ‘varieties’, each having its own invariant systematicity (Crowley, 1990). Two major accounts of language variety have developed on the basis of Saussurean assumptions about the objectivity of language, one anthropological and the other sociological. From the anthropological perspective, languages vary with culture and linguistic diversity is both a natural and functional expression of cultural identity and diversity. Lyons (1977: 250) expresses this notion within the mainstream of linguistic theory when he suggests that ‘the grammatical and lexical structure of different languages will tend to reflect the specific interests and attitudes of the cultures in which they operate’. In the literature on varieties of English around the world, this explanation of linguistic diversity has been extended to variation within the English language. As English spreads to new cultural environments, it is argued, it tends to adapt, or ‘acculturate’. Acculturation was offered as a primary explanation for lexical innovation in nineteenthcentury Australian English, for example, by Turner (1966: 39), who refers to ‘adaptation to new environment’, and by Ramson (1970: 39), who writes of the ‘inadequacy of the vocabulary in the new environment’. More recently, the terms ‘indigenisation’ (Moag, 1982) and ‘nativisation’ (Kachru, 1983) have been used within the World Englishes movement, where they refer to the adaptation of English to ‘non-native contexts of use’. The widespread assumption in the literature that international English is principally a matter of the emergence of new regional ‘varieties’ of English appears, therefore, to be a product of the anthropological variant of Saussurean linguistics.

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From a sociological perspective, language varies because speech communities are internally differentiated according to variables of social class, ethnicity, gender, and so on. Language variation arises from linguistic innovations that serve to establish social identities and differentiate social groups (see, for example, Scherer and Giles, 1979). The sociological perspective has been rather less influential in accounts of international English than the anthropological perspective. It provides support, however, for the notion that nationally or regionally based international varieties of English serve to express distinctive national or regional identities (e.g., Bloom, 1986, on Singaporean English; Bolton and Kwok, 1990, on Hong Kong English). It has also played a significant role in studies of internal differentiation within these varieties (e.g., Platt and Weber, 1980, on Singaporean English). These studies typically impose a sociolinguistic framework on the traditional notion of a regional dialect. Anthropological and sociological approaches to language variation both tend to reduce the inherent variability of language to language variety. Variety imposes order on variability and produces innumerable independent objects for scientific investigation within a single language. This process is especially apparent in the literature on World Englishes, which has tended to emphasise the identification, description and classification of regional and national varieties of English over the description of the fluidity of English as a language functioning across geographical and political boundaries. It is also apparent in the broad approach of twentieth-century English dictionaries to the international dimensions of English, which tends to adopt the concept of language variety uncritically in the form of national and regional labels. While language variation is now generally seen as ‘good’, there is at the same time a tendency to systematically reduce it to objectified and describable forms. Twentieth-century dictionaries are implicated in the objectification and homogenisation of language varieties in much the same way as their predecessors were implicated in the objectification and homogenisation of the English language as a whole. Anthropological and sociolinguistic accounts of language variation inherit from traditional and Saussurean theories of language the notion that it is the variability of language, rather than its unity, that needs to be explained. For Bakhtin (1981), however, variability, or ‘heteroglossia’, is a fundamental condition of language and it is the widespread assumption of its homogeneity and stability that stands in need of explanation. Bakhtin develops this idea in the context of a critique of the dominant language theories of his time: Unitary language constitutes the theoretical expression of the historical processes of linguistic unification and centralization, an expression of the centripetal forces of language. A unitary language is not something given [dan] but is always in essence posited [zadan] – and at every moment of its linguistic life it is opposed to the realities of heteroglossia. But at the same time it makes its real presence felt as a force for overcoming this heteroglossia, imposing specific limits to it, guaranteeing a certain maximum of mutual understanding and crystalizing into a real, although still relative, unity –

22 Dictionaries and theories of language the unity of the reigning conversational (everyday) and literary language, ‘correct language’. (Bakhtin, 1981: 270) Bakhtin argues that the preference for unitary language in language theory arises from and supports the historical tendency towards the unification of national languages in Europe. Bakhtin’s preference for ‘heteroglossia’, on the other hand, is a development of Vološinov’s understanding that the variability of language arises from the variable evaluation of the ideological sign by different social groups in different social contexts. The suppression of this variability as a function of the striving of dominant classes towards ideological universality is thus supported by theories of language that argue for the prior existence of unitary language systems. Vološinov argues: That system [of unitary language] is merely an abstraction arrived [sic] with a good deal of trouble and with a definite cognitive and practical focus of attention. The system of language is the product of deliberation on language, and deliberation of a kind by no means carried out by the consciousness of the native speaker himself and by no means carried out for the immediate purposes of speaking. (Vološinov, 1973: 67) In other words, language as a unitary system exists only by virtue of a metalinguistic discourse that is the province of the theorist. This is not to say that unitary language lacks objective reality, for it operates with real social force in the historical unification and standardisation of languages. But unitary language only achieves this objective reality as a social relationship or force operating within the field of social knowledge. As Bakhtin emphasises, the unitary, or ‘centripetal’ forces in the life of language ‘operate in the midst of heteroglossia’ (1981: 271), which is ‘not only a static invariant of linguistic life, but also what ensures its dynamics’ (1981: 272). Bakhtin’s view of language variation reverses the conventional opposition between homogeneity and heterogeneity and emphasises that homogeneity is not a ‘natural’ state of language, but the product of a discourse that evolved in the historical context of social and political centralisation in Europe. But if unitary language is also ‘real’, how is its ‘reality’ constituted within the field of social knowledge? Neither Vološinov nor Bakhtin comment on the dictionary, but Vološinov (1973: 80) does comment briefly on the importance of the ‘dictionary word’ to the ‘abstract objectivist’ (Saussurean) linguists of his time, their anxiety to give words meanings outside of contexts of use and their anxiety to create ‘the fiction of a single and actual object corresponding to the given word’. Recalling earlier comments on the mutually supportive relationship between linguistic theory and lexicographical practice, it is noteworthy that Vološinov also resorts to the metaphor of the ‘dictionary word’ in order to characterise the abstract, theoreticised and decontextualised sign that replaces the actual sign and strips it

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of its multiplicity of meaning. It is almost as if such a sign could not be conceived of had it not already been produced in the textual reality of the dictionary.

Conclusion The key argument that I have attempted to develop in this chapter is that the descriptive paradigm that currently dominates the lexicography of English rests upon a questionable assumption that the objectivity of language is such that it is capable of being described in the form of the dictionary. If dictionaries are not, in fact, transparent descriptions of the languages that they purport to describe, then they must be something else. My argument is that dictionaries are best thought of as representations of language, which implies that the language as it is recorded in the dictionary is something other than a simple reflection of the language ‘as it is’. This both opens up the possibility of investigating the process of lexicographical representation as a historically situated form of discourse and serves as a starting point for the contention that the English dictionary is a fundamentally ethnocentric form. For the making of a dictionary appears above all to be a process in which the multiplicity of meaning associated with the use of words in actual contexts of use is reduced to a unified system of form-meaning relationships. In order to understand the nature of this process more fully, we will now turn to a more detailed discussion of the notion of lexicography as a process of representation in semiotic, ideological and discursive terms.

2

The semiotics of the dictionary

One way of looking at the monolingual dictionary is to see it as a practical means of using the words of a language to convey explicit information about the forms and meanings of the words of the same language. Another is to see it as a historically situated form of discourse through which certain linguistic communities have come to represent their languages to themselves and others. The first view emphasises communication through a transparent linguistic code capable of conveying explicit and unambiguous meanings about itself. The second is semiotic in the sense that it requires us to ‘stand back’ from the dictionary in order to consider not only what it says about the forms and meanings of words, but also the meanings that can be construed about the nature of the language from the forms and functions of the dictionary itself. It implies that we should, in Fishman’s (1995: 34) words, see dictionaries ‘as both resultant of and constructive of their contexts’. The semiotics of the dictionary is the subject of a book-length study by ReyDebove (1971) and is an ever-present concern of modern French metalexicography. Béjoint (1994) has summarised many of the insights from the literature in French for the benefit of English readers. In the literature on British and American lexicography, however, only Ilson (1984: 80) has addressed semiotic issues directly, emphasising that ‘every lexicographic convention is meaningbearing’. In the context of this study, the semiotics of the dictionary serves as a theoretical starting point for a systematic analysis of the ways in which English dictionaries represent the English language as an object of social knowledge. The contention that English dictionaries are ethnocentric is also grounded in the idea of the centre–periphery metaphor as the semiotic organising principle of the dictionary and its representation of the English language. In this chapter, I will be concerned with four aspects of the semiotics of the dictionary: the dictionary as metalanguage; the dictionary as a sign for the language; ideology in the dictionary; and the dictionary as discourse.

The dictionary as metalanguage When we use language to refer to language, we are said to be using metalanguage. The possibility of metalanguage lies in the unique semiotic capacity of

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language to represent other semiotic systems, including itself (Halliday, 1978: 2). Metalanguage also constitutes the possibility of the monolingual dictionary as a text that speaks about the words of a language using the words of that language itself. In the literature on lexicography, metalanguage often refers to the special terms and symbols used in dictionaries (for labelling, cross-referencing, etc.) that are not part of everyday usage. In this book, however, I use the term in a more general sense that defines the monolingual dictionary as a representation of language. The concept of metalanguage is important in clarifying relationships between dictionary headwords and definitions on the one hand and the words and senses they refer to on the other. In dictionaries, headwords are, strictly speaking, not words but representations of words (metawords) and definitions are not senses but representations of senses (metasenses). Headwords function as metawords, for example, when they serve as an index to help users find the entries they are looking for or when they inform the reader of the spelling of a word. In the case of definitions, what is it at issue are not the senses of words themselves, but the particular information that the lexicographer wishes to convey to the user about the senses of headwords as metawords abstracted from their everyday contexts of use. In each case, the context of use of the dictionary metaword and metasense is the dictionary itself. Although the terminology is perhaps too awkward for practical use, the distinction between metawords and metasenses on the one hand and words and senses on the other is important because it points to the essentially deceptive nature of the notion of the monolingual dictionary. From a linguistic point of view, the monolingual English dictionary is one that explains ‘English words by English equivalents’ (Hulbert, 1968:16), but from a semiotic point of view there are at least two codes at issue, language and metalanguage, or perhaps more accurately one code functioning as two. The descriptivist paradigm for lexicography could, in a sense, be explained as a fallacy based on the assumption that the language described and the language used to describe it are essentially the same. The notion of the dictionary as a representation of language escapes this fallacy by drawing a clear distinction between the two. Thinking of the language of the dictionary as a metalanguage for the representation of language also opens up a space in which aspects of the dictionary such as the selection of headwords and the form and styles of definitions can be considered as options exercised by the lexicographer within the framework of a set of rules for lexicographical practice. Although the individual words comprising the metalanguage of the dictionary are more or less identical to those comprising the language represented, the ways in which they are used are not. Moreover, when considered as systems, the metalanguage of the dictionary and the language represented are distinct. In particular, the metalanguage of the dictionary invariably consists of a selection of the words that could potentially be said to belong to the language, which are, at least in principle, systematically connected to each other through definitional and cross-referential practices that are quite alien to everyday language use.

26 The semiotics of the dictionary

The dictionary as a sign for the language To describe the dictionary simply in terms of metalanguage would be too narrow, however, because metalanguage does not in itself account for the ‘order’ of the dictionary. Although they are occasionally described as such, dictionaries are not simply ‘archives’ or ‘containers’ for words. On the contrary, the dictionary is a highly structured form, which must communicate efficiently if it is to be of practical use. For Rey-Debove (1971), because dictionaries are consulted rather than read, their paragraphs are arranged systematically, or ‘coded’, so that users can easily find the information that they need. In addition to the alphabetical organisation of the wordlist, there is regularity in the arrangement of information within entries, so that users know what to expect when they look up a word. The consultation function, therefore, determines the two basic dimensions of the semiotic structure within the dictionary: ‘macrostructure’, which is more or less equivalent to the ‘vertical’ arrangement of the wordlist, and ‘microstructure’, which corresponds to the ‘horizontal’ arrangement of the individual dictionary entry. Although the basic structure of the dictionary has evolved to serve functions of reference, macrostructure and microstructure carry meaning in three ways. First, they constrain lexicographical practice and constitute the semiotic conditions under which conventional lexicographical assumptions are realised. For example, in order for linguistic descriptions to fit within the structural form of the dictionary, a number of assumptions must hold: ‘languages are composed of words’, ‘words are discrete units’, ‘word meanings are discrete’, ‘all words have meanings’, ‘words can be defined’, ‘the definition can substitute for the word’, and so on (Béjoint, 1994: 179 ff.). At the same time, the dictionary macrostructure and microstructure (fleshed out with metawords and metasenses) sustains the reality of these assumptions as ‘facts about language’. Second, the orderly representation of language as it appears in the dictionary ‘stands for’ (or perhaps more accurately ‘stands in place of ’) the disorder of language in use. Since the analytical distinction between metalanguage and language is not transparent to the user, the notion that the content of the dictionary is identical to the content of the language it represents easily arises. According to Landau (1989: 18), ‘it is widely believed that an unabridged dictionary includes all the words in the language’. Among British dictionaries, this belief is especially associated with the OED, of which Willinsky (1994: 13) writes that ‘it is still easy to mistake what we find in the dictionary as the entirety of the English language’. The idea that this view is mistaken should be treated with care, however, as it may be analytically misleading from a semiotic point of view to speak of the English language as if it had an objective existence prior to and separate from the processes of representation through which it is constituted as a social reality. As Whitney (1875/1970: 157) tells us, no one can define a language, ‘it can only be shown and described’. Or as Béjoint (1994: 25) puts it, ‘the lexis of a language has no concrete existence apart from the dictionary’. The order of macrostructure and microstructure within the dictionary, therefore,

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constitutes one of the principal representational frameworks through which a society is able to grasp and manipulate its own language. Third, the structural system of the dictionary, in conjunction with the social expectation that the dictionary’s coverage of the language will be exhaustive, lends meaning to presences and absences in dictionaries. Béjoint (1994: 24) states that ‘the dictionary represents the lexis of a language, or a determined portion of that language’, which must correspond to ‘an entity that is perceived as such by the average language user’. By comparing the contents of the wordlist with this ‘entity perceived as language’, users may draw inferences about the status of words. If a word is known but not found in the wordlist, the user may infer that ‘it does not belong to the lexis of the language, or even that, somehow, it does not exist’ (1994: 122). For Beaujot, exhaustiveness in the wordlist has no other function than to call attention to such absences: A quel besoin réel, sinon, répond ce souci d’enregistrer des mots régulièrement dérivés, parfaitement interprétables et utilisables, sinon celui de prévenir et contrôler l’usage que font de la langue les usagers?1 (Beaujot, 1989: 85) Within the orderliness of the macrostructure, presence in the wordlist functions as a sign of ‘inclusion’ and absence as a sign of ‘exclusion’. The boundary between inclusion and exclusion functions as a sign for the boundaries of the language. A clear example of this is found in the treatment of ‘foreign words’ in dictionaries. Based on criteria that are often quite arbitrary, English dictionaries routinely include some foreign words and exclude others. In doing so, they assimilate those that are included while confirming the ‘foreignness’ of those that are excluded. Through the basic semiotic of inclusion and exclusion, dictionaries define the boundaries of their own language in relation to others. Boulanger (1986) has made use of the semiotic notion of exclusion as a meaning-bearing device in his study of lexicographical ‘prohibitions’ (interdictions) in dictionaries. Regionalisms are one category of prohibition identified in dictionaries of French. According to Boulanger, words and senses from regions beyond the borders of France were systematically excluded from dictionaries until the mid-1970s, when items began to be introduced from Quebec, Belgium, Switzerland, and to a lesser extent, from francophone Africa. Boulanger also makes connections between the treatment of regional vocabulary and broader social and ideological issues. In this connection, he cites Collignon and Glatigny, who argue: … en écartant la plupart des termes régionaux, les dictionnaires participaient, avec la centralisation administrative, le développement de l’instruction publique et une certaine standardisation des genres de vie et formes d’activité, à l’unification du français sur la base du parler parisien.2 (Collignon and Glatigny, 1978: 85)

28 The semiotics of the dictionary The lexicographical practice of exclusion is thus linked to social and ideological practices beyond the dictionary. Presence and absence also function as signs within the dictionary microstructure, although here it is the presence of markers (descriptive labels, distinctive definitional features or departures from the lexicographical norm) that excludes and the absence of markers that includes. Béjoint (1994: 12) observes that the microstructure of the dictionary has become more rigid as dictionaries have evolved historically, so that meaning can be readily inferred from almost any irregularity. According to Béjoint, ‘information not explicitly given means “normal” information in any particular field’. Labels and other markers thus acquire their exclusionary force from their absence in most entries. The presence of a marker implies that the item is somehow different to the norm. Items may also be marked at the level of the macrostructure, when they are included arbitrarily or as examples of a class. Exclusion and marking are not quite the same thing, however. Exclusion is, in a sense, a crude mechanism, which runs counter to the descriptive principle of exhaustiveness and is largely uninformative. Partial exclusion, through marking at the level of the macrostructure or microstructure, is the more characteristic form within the modern dictionary, which serves not only to mark the boundaries of the language, but also to give ‘shape’ to the language through internal differentiation.

Ideology in the dictionary Among writers on English lexicography, Landau (1974, 1985, 1989) and Moon (1989) are known for their work on ideology in the dictionary, and in the literature in French (e.g., Beaujot, 1989; Boulanger, 1986; Buzon, 1979; Girardin, 1979; Rey and Delesalle, 1979) ideology is treated as one aspect of the semiotics of the dictionary. Although the distinction is not clear-cut, the literature on English dictionaries has tended to treat ideology in the dictionary as a deviation from the descriptivist principle, while work in the French tradition has tended to locate it within this principle itself. The literature on ideology in dictionaries has dealt extensively with issues of gender (Cowie, 1995; Fournier and Russell, 1992; Gershuny, 1974; Hennessy, 1994; Kaye, 1989; Moon, 1989; Whitcut, 1984), ethnicity (Burchfield, 1989; Willinsky, 1994) and politics (Creamer, 1986; Good, 1987; Kim, 1995; Moon, 1989; Sands, 1980–1; Schaeder, 1984; Wierzbicka, 1995). Although the international dimensions of languages have not been discussed in depth, they are mentioned by some (e.g., Boulanger, 1986; Beaujot, 1989) and international issues also emerge in the treatment of political vocabulary and ethnicity. According to Moon, dictionaries are ideological because they are written by individuals who cannot avoid expressing the views and prejudices of the social groups to which they belong: Dictionaries succeed only because of an act of faith on the part of their users, and that act of faith is dependent on those users believing their dic-

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tionaries both authoritative and beyond subjectivity. Yet dictionaries are records of the beliefs about a language of a very small subset of the users of that language, and it is impossible for lexicographers to avoid displaying their prejudices about language in the language that they choose to define and explain. (Moon, 1989: 158) Moreover, dictionaries are not simply imperfect because they are compiled by fallible human beings, they are inevitably written from some point of view. Thus, Moon argues that ‘there is no such thing as a politically neutral definition’ and that definitions at best convey the prevailing ideology of the society whose language is recorded (1989: 77). Landau (1989: 303) argues similarly, locating the sources of ideology in English dictionaries in the social origins and value systems of lexicographers, which cause them to produce definitions that generally represent ‘the views and prejudices of the established, well-educated, upper classes’. The problem of ideology in the dictionary is presented differently by Girardin: Les dictionnaires fournissent des informations conformément à un modèle socioculturel qui tend à gommer la diversité des cultures coexistant dans une société, de manière a privilégier la culture et l’idéologie des classes ou fractions dominantes (dites «cultivées»), «idéologie» étant pris au sens de conception du monde, sans pour autant être un «système conceptuelle».3 (Girardin, 1979: 84) In this formulation, dictionaries do not simply express the views of those who compile them. The form of the dictionary itself, and the ways in which it conveys information about language and the world, tend to suppress cultural diversity and privilege the dominant ideology within a society. From this point of view, ideology in the dictionary is not necessarily a deviation from the principles of descriptivist lexicography. Indeed, for Buzon, descriptivism itself is the main issue: C’est que le grand dictionnaire de langue et culture … se situe d’emblée dans le cadre de l’idéologie dominante, aidé en cela par l’alibi saussurien, le signe défini de façon telle que sa fonction idéologique se trouve soigneusement gommée, evacuée par ce qu’il faut bien appeler un objectivisme abstrait...4 (Buzon, 1979: 44) Referring to Vološinov’s conception of the word as ideological sign, discussed in Chapter 1, Buzon argues that it is through the suppression of the ideological character of words and their meanings that dictionaries reinforce the ideological status quo. In other words, dictionaries are ideological more because of what they are than because of what they say, or more precisely because what they are conditions what they can say.

30 The semiotics of the dictionary The distinction between these two basic approaches to ideology and the dictionary is an important one because so much of the literature in the field has tended to target dictionaries that appear to violate the descriptivist norm. Wierzbicka for example, makes the following observation in conclusion to her study of ideology in East German, Polish and Russian dictionaries of the communist period: Good lexicography is, above all, a search for truth, the truth about the meaning of words. But totalitarian and semi-totalitarian regimes fear the truth and seek to subordinate it to ideology and political expedience. Lexicography is no exception in this regard: it is subject to the same pressures as any other area of scholarly and public activity which may bring to light or record politically undesirable truths. (Wierzbicka, 1995: 194) By ‘good lexicography’, Wierzbicka evidently means descriptive lexicography. However, her formulation of the problem fails to recognise the historical and ideological contingency of the ‘truth’ about the meaning of words and that the notion of lexicography as a ‘search for truth’ is itself ideologically loaded. Other researchers have been more circumspect, pointing out that the recognition of ideology in the dictionaries of other cultures may sharpen perceptions of ideology in the dictionaries of one’s own. As Moon argues: It is difficult to detect the full extent of subjectivity and objectivity in the dictionaries of one’s own culture: it is easier to detect it in the dictionaries of past or foreign cultures. (Moon, 1989: 74) The overtly communist lexicography of the former German Democratic Republic, for example, has helped sharpen awareness of the ideological character of its descriptivist West German counterpart. Good (1987: 73) argues that when East German and West German definitions for words such as bourgeoisie are contrasted, the implication that the East German definitions are one-sided because they are based on Marxist-Leninist teachings is ‘too simplistic for words’. The West German definitions must ‘rest on some analysis of social structure, some criteria according to which classes are identifiable and distinguishable’. Schaeder also argues: Auch wenn die meisten Wörterbücher beteuern, ohne ideologische Vorbehalte zu sein, so beweist in manchen Fällen die Worterklärung das Gegenteil.5 (Schaeder, 1984: 88) The contrast between the overt propagandism of communist dictionaries and the objectivism of their non-communist counterparts, however, cannot be denied. The preface to the fourth volume of the East German Wörterbuch der

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deutschen Gegenwartssprache (WDG, 1974), for example, stated that the dictionary would henceforth ‘den gesamten Wortschatz konsequent auf der Grundlage der marxistisch-leninistischen Weltanschauung darstellen’.6 One is unlikely to find a West German dictionary, however, that explicitly claims to base its treatment of the lexicon on the ‘capitalist’ or ‘democratic’ world view. The distinction between the two types of lexicography is, therefore, in part a distinction between the explicit and implicit expression of ideological premises. Perhaps the most important distinction to be made between the East and West German dictionary in terms of ideology is that, whereas the former was compiled in a context of the expression of new ideological norms for its society, the latter was compiled in a context of relative ideological stability. The standard descriptive European and American dictionary, as Zgusta (1989: 76) puts it, functions to ‘stabilize the norm’. Both in linguistic and ideological terms, it exercises a conservative influence and in a sense advances the argument that the language ‘as it is’ is the language ‘as it should be’. In other contexts, however, the dictionary may serve different purposes. As Desmet, et al. (1990) have shown, the French Revolution of 1789 led to the publication of several explicitly political dictionaries in which ideological differences were fought out over the meanings of words. Nor are such dictionaries an historical anachronism. Kramarae and Treichler’s Feminist Dictionary (FD, 1985) is an example of a modern American dictionary that offers explicitly ideological definitions in an effort to point out the implicitly ideological character of the standard dictionary. It includes, for example, the following definition for dictionary: A dictionary is a word-book which collects somebody’s words into somebody’s book. Whose words are collected, how they are collected, and who collects them all influence what kind of book a given dictionary turns out to be and, in turn, whose purpose it can best serve. Though thousands of dictionaries exist for many different purposes, men have edited or written virtually all of them; and the words they have collected have, in large part, been from the speech or writing of men. Women’s invisibility as language producers is closely bound to the scholarly practices of dictionaryproducers. From a descriptivist point of view, Kramarae and Treichler’s dictionary is, of course, probably not a ‘dictionary’ at all. The point is, however, that the existence of such dictionaries highlights the historical contingency of the descriptive dictionary as the product of societies that feel themselves, perhaps unjustifiably, to be both linguistically and ideologically secure. Dictionaries are, for the most part, conservative in their approach to language. However, in contexts of ideological contestation or insecurity, a quite different kind of lexicography, one that is often in opposition to existing norms, may emerge. The question of the ideological interests represented within the descriptive dictionary is complex, however, because the compilers of dictionaries are in principle free of ideological motives that distinguish them from their readers.

32 The semiotics of the dictionary According to Moon (1989: 75) dictionaries present ‘the world-views of their lexicographers’ and the language is ‘discussed through the filter of these worldviews’. In this, she implies that the ideologies expressed in dictionaries are those of the lexicographers themselves. Landau (1989: 303), however, suggests that dictionaries express ‘the views and prejudices of the established, well-educated, upper classes’, even though lexicographers do not generally belong to these classes themselves. According to Landau, lexicographers produce dictionaries in conformity with a traditional expectation that the dictionary will disseminate a ‘cultivated’ form of expression. Lexicographers tend to be individuals who have acquired a respect for formal education and the values associated with it. Dictionaries, therefore, represent not only the language of the upper classes, but also the technico-scientific ‘educated’ world view that goes with it. They do so not because they are written by the upper classes but because they are produced under circumstances which call for lexicographers who are educated in, and generally accept, the values of their world. For dictionary editors, the descriptive role is sometimes interpreted in terms of a need to protect the middle ground against ideological extremism of any kind. Whitcut, for example, argues: But what we are describing as lexicographers is language itself, and it is our business to describe the language as it is. In my time I have had to resist pressure to distort or suppress the facts about language from bodies as diverse as the National Front (over the definition of racist), the hunting lobby (over blood sports), and a member of the Jewish Board of Guardians (over Jew). I cannot as a responsible lexicographer distort the facts to favour the feminist lobby either. (Whitcut, 1984: 142) Ideology in the descriptive dictionary is not, therefore, a deception foisted upon the unsuspecting dictionary user. Boulanger (1986: 116) argues that the ‘dominant ideology’ on which French dictionaries are based ‘reflects the opinions most commonly-held by French-speaking dictionary users’. Béjoint (1994: 137) makes a similar point, arguing that dictionary users ‘want their dictionaries to mirror the likes and dislikes of the society as a whole’. For Beaujot this function also allows the users of the dictionary to see themselves as belonging to ‘a certain elite’: Le dictionnaire fonctionne alors comme un signe de ralliement, un signe de reconnaissance: la possession d’un grand dictionnaire de langue ou sa consultation me permettent, par une relation quasi amoureuse, quasi narcissique (me reconnaître moi-même dans le regard de l’autre), de me reconnaître comme appartenant à un certain milieu, à une certaine élite (en toute simplicité et en toute modestie, bien sûr).7 (Beaujot, 1979: 44)

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In Beaujot’s sense, ideology in the dictionary is a matter of the definition and consolidation of a community unified by shared perspectives on the language. This community, however, does not necessarily include all the users of the language. Class, gender, ethnicity and political opinion are four of the factors that have been identified as determining the degree to which dictionary users are likely to recognise themselves in the dictionary. In the context of English as an international language, national and regional identities become equally important factors. The proximity of the reader to the cultural centre of the descriptive dictionary, which purports to describe the language ‘as it is’, becomes a question of the degree to which he or she is able to recognise herself as a member of the community to which the language belongs. Ideology in the English dictionary has largely been treated as a matter concerning the contents of the dictionary and the cultural perspectives conveyed through them. These perspectives, however, are also conveyed through semiotic structures that serve as a vehicle for the construction of the language as an object of particular dimensions and shape. The dimensions and shape of the language as it is represented in the descriptive dictionary legitimise the dominance of these perspectives by presenting them as facts about the language and its use. The representational function of the dictionary thus involves a particular interaction between content and structure. It is the argument of this book that the structures of the modern English dictionary are particularly adapted to the representation of the international dimensions of English in centre–periphery terms. The nature of this relationship between the dictionary and the language requires that we look more closely at the dictionary as a historically specific structure for the representation of knowledge, or as a form of discourse in the Foucauldian sense of the term.

The dictionary as discourse Foucault’s view of discourse involves the idea that social practice is conditioned by historically specific rules for the production and distribution of knowledge. These rules constitute the subjects and objects of social knowledge, the various disciplines into which social knowledge is divided and the ways in which knowledge is organised within them. The rules of discourse are produced within social practice, such that issues of power and control are intimately bound up with issues of knowledge. Philp (1985: 69) therefore suggests that describing a discourse involves asking questions such as ‘what rules permit certain statements to be made; what rules order these statements; what rules permit us to identify some statements as true and others as false; what rules govern the construction of a map, model or classificatory system’. Foucault’s concept of discourse has two major implications for the semiotics of the dictionary. First, it implies that the structures of the monolingual dictionary are functional, not only in the sense that they represent a particularly efficient way of conveying information about a language to its users. They are also functional in the sense that they represent a particular way of producing

34 The semiotics of the dictionary and distributing knowledge of language that is bound up with broader issues of social power and control. Second, it implies that the dictionary as a discourse on language cannot be considered independently of other discourses that contribute to our knowledge of the world and the social practices contingent upon it. From a Foucauldian perspective, the monolingual dictionary is not a ‘natural’ form for the representation of knowledge of language, but an historically specific form that needs be accounted for in terms of the broader relationships of power and control within which it emerged and developed. For Foucault, the investigation of discourse involves examination of the metaphorical nature of social practice. Our focus in relation to ethnocentrism in the English dictionary falls upon the metaphorical representation of systems of order in the dictionary and especially the operation of a centre–periphery metaphor as the organising principle within which order is constituted at the level of content and structure. This metaphor is apparent to varying degrees within the English dictionary from the seventeenth century to the present day, and takes on different forms and functions at different phases of its history. It reaches its height, however, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, a period in which the content and structure of the dictionary were closely allied with an imperialist view of the English language and the world. I will therefore use this period to illustrate how the dictionary as a discourse on language can be seen as a particular form of a more general mode of production and distribution of knowledge, exemplified here by nineteenth-century systems of social discipline, the cartography of the world and the study of the Orient. Foucault’s (1977) Discipline and Punish, an account of the discursive history of forms of social discipline in Europe from the eighteenth century onwards, is concerned with order in a different sense to the order of the dictionary. Nevertheless, parallels between Foucault’s description of the structures of ‘disciplinary space’ within the architecture of the nineteenth-century prison and the structures of the dictionary are apparent: Disciplinary space tends to be divided into as many sections as there are bodies of elements to be distributed. One must eliminate the effects of imprecise distributions, the uncontrolled disappearance of individuals, their diffuse circulation, their unusable and dangerous coagualation; it was a tactic of anti-desertion, anti-vagabondage, anti-concentration. Its aim was to establish presences and absences, to know where and how to locate individuals, to set up useful communications, to interrupt others, to be able at each moment to supervise the conduct of each individual, to assess it, to judge it, to calculate its qualities or merits. It was a procedure, therefore, aimed at knowing, mastering and using. Discipline organizes an analytical space. (Foucault, 1977: 143) Stripped of the words that make this a description of a system designed to deal with criminality, we are left with a series of statements that can readily be

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applied to the structure of the nineteenth-century dictionary as a system designed for ‘knowing, mastering and using’ language. The dictionary is indeed divided into as many sections as there are words to be distributed within it, it aims to eliminate the effects of imprecision and the disappearance of words, and it aims to establish presences and absences. Referring to the linguistic works of late eighteenth-century England, Burchfield (1989: 118) remarks that ‘what emerges from the books and dictionaries of the time is an orderly language’. Mengham goes further in describing the eighteenth-century dictionary as an instrument of social control: The lexicographer would determine what should be included in, and what should be excluded from, a body of knowledge that the pragmatic user of his work would learn to regard as the foundation of a national language and culture. The body of knowledge would be subject to stratification, thus helping to inculcate a sense of rank and respect for privilege identified by degrees of breadth of command over language-use. The dictionary could become an instrument of social control, dispensed indirectly and fostering assumptions that need not be insisted upon too forcibly. (Mengham, 1993: 112) Semiotic structures of order and control within the dictionary thus pre-date the nineteenth-century prison system. This is not to suggest that the prison system was in any sense modelled on the dictionary, yet it must be acknowledged that similar semiotic principles governed the evolution of these two very different fields of social practice. Moreover, in its day, the nineteenth-century prison was considered both scientific and progressive. The evolving structures of the dictionary were specific to the dictionary as a form for the representation of language. But at the same time they found their place within a broader progressive discourse concerned with the reduction of diversity, which stood for disorder both in the world of language and in the world of criminality, to understandable and manageable categories. In their different contexts, the semiotics of the dictionary and the semiotics of the prison system employed similar metaphorical structures of knowledge for similar purposes of control over their respective objects of attention. For Foucault (1977), the archetypal metaphor for the unity of knowledge and social control within nineteenth-century systems of social discipline was Bentham’s Panopticon, an architectural design that was under various guises to become the norm for the nineteenth-century prison. The Panopticon consisted of a central observation tower surrounded by a peripheral ring divided into individual cells, which opened on to the centre and were backlit by a high window to the outside which made each inhabitant clearly visible from the central observation point. For Foucault, the Panopticon is the perfect symbol of the role of knowledge in the exercise of power because it ‘arranges spatial unities that make it possible to see constantly and to recognise immediately’ (1977: 200). The Panopticon also works ‘to induce in the inmate a state of conscious and

36 The semiotics of the dictionary permanent visibility that assures automatic functioning of power’ (1977: 201). Within the Panopticon, knowledge in the specific nineteenth-century form of the isolation, illumination and surveillance of the individual, replaces physical punishment as the principle mechanism of social discipline. The architecture of the Panopticon is also important, however, as a symbol of the metaphorical positioning of subjects and objects of knowledge within nineteenth-century discourse. Within this architecture, the production and distribution of knowledge are located at the centre and the objects of the centre’s knowledge are arranged as a periphery. As the inhabitants of the periphery are unable to observe either the centre or each other, it is both their function and obligation simply to be known. Knowledge for the purposes of control is defined, in effect, as the centre’s knowledge of the periphery. The role of centre–periphery metaphors in the structuring of imperialist knowledge of the world is perhaps nowhere more graphically illustrated than in the field of cartography, a field that has already been subject to the kind of critical analysis applied to the dictionary in this book (Black, 1997; Edney, 1990, 1993; Harley, 1988, 1989; Wood, 1992). As Harley’s account suggests, the modern practice of cartography is, like the practice of lexicography, dominated by assumptions of scientificity and objectivity: From at least the seventeenth century onward, European map-makers have increasingly promoted a standard scientific model of knowledge and cognition. The object of mapping is to produce a ‘correct’ relational model of the terrain. Its assumptions are that the objects in the world to be mapped are real and objective, and that they enjoy an existence independent of the cartographer; that their reality can be expressed in mathematical terms; that systematic observation and measurement offer the only route to cartographic truth; and that this truth can be independently verified. (Harley, 1989: 4) Adopting a critical perspective based in part on the work of Foucault, Harley views cartography as a process of representation, subject to analytical procedures that involve ‘a search for metaphor and rhetoric in maps where previously scholars had found only measurement and topography’ (1989: 3). Harley’s critical project is also concerned with relationships between mapping and the exercise of power, which is seen as both external to the map, in the official control and use of maps for political, economic and military ends, and internal to the cartographic process: Power comes from the map and traverses the way maps are made. The key to this internal power is thus cartographic process. By this I mean the way maps are compiled and the categories of information selected; the way they are generalized, a set of rules for the abstraction of the landscape; the way the elements in the landscape are formed into hierarchies; and the way

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various rhetorical styles that also reproduce power are employed to represent the landscape. (Harley, 1989: 13) Central to the idea of cartography as an instrument of power is the notion of the map as the window through which the objective reality of the terrain is made visible as an object of social knowledge. Cartographers, according to Harley, ‘create a spatial panopticon’ (1989: 13). Centre–periphery metaphors have informed map-making in two major ways that are relevant to the concerns of this study. The first concerns what Harley (1989: 6) calls ‘the rule of ethnocentricity’ in the construction of world maps. From the Renaissance onwards, European maps of the world have used various forms of the Mercator projection, which have located Europe at the centre of the world. At the height of the British Empire, Mercator projections depicting the territory of the Empire in pink, emblazoned with images of Britannia seated on top of a globe accompanied by images of the people and landscapes of the imperial territories, became the norm for the British map of the world. Although other projections are now available, the Mercator projection with Europe at its centre remains the standard map found in British atlases. Observing that Mercator himself, who never produced a map of the world, would perhaps have been surprised at the symbolic importance that his projection was to acquire in later centuries, Harley argues that: … the simple fact that Europe is at the centre of the world on this projection, and that the area of the land masses are so distorted that two-thirds of the earth’s surface appears to lie in high latitudes, must have contributed much to a European sense of superiority. Indeed, insofar as the ‘white colonialist states’ appear on the map relatively larger than they are while ‘the colonies’ inhabited by coloured peoples are shown ‘too small’ suggests how it can be read and acted upon as a geopolitical prophecy. (Harley, 1988: 290) Harley points out that the practice of placing one’s own territory at the centre of maps of the known world stretches back into antiquity and is characteristic of many nations and cultures. His point is, however, that in the age of imperialism, this practice and its ideological implications were linked both to the notion of cartography as science and to European control of the world: ‘world maps, though increasingly drawn on mathematically defined projections, nevertheless gave a spiralling twist to the manifest destiny of European overseas conquest and colonisation’ (1988: 300). The centre–periphery metaphor within the map of the world legitimised the project of imperialism through an image of the world constructed within the progressive scientific discourse of cartography. The second example concerns the nineteenth-century mapping of India and the Great Trigonometrical Survey (Edney, 1993). The mapping of India was a project of the East India Company and proceeded, in principle,

38 The semiotics of the dictionary according to a plan whereby the entire territory would first be triangulated using the most advanced scientific surveying techniques of the day. Only when the territory had been neatly divided into conceptual triangles was the detailed work of topographical surveying to be carried out. In practice, however, due to the physical difficulties of completing the work of triangulation and the exigencies of controlling newly conquered regions, the topographical surveys were often carried out in advance of triangulation. Surveyors were among the first to be sent out to the newly acquired territories and their work included, in addition to topographical surveying, the enumeration of forests, mines, soils, manufacturing, commerce, taxation systems and populations. As Edney describes them, ‘surveyors were the point men of British imperialism’. Nevertheless, the Great Trigonometrical Survey, described by Edney as the pre-eminent scientific organisation within the East India Company for most of nineteenth century, was to enter the mythology of imperialist cartography. In spite of its evident lack of success, the East India Company continued to lavish funds upon the survey throughout several periods of financial crisis. The fact that it was never completed did not hinder the production of hastily and haphazardly compiled wall-maps, which were to come to symbolise ‘the European creation of a seemingly coherent and homogeneous political entity’ in India (1993: 65). For Edney, the mythology of the Great Trigonometrical Survey is explained in part by its importance to the project of the construction of India as an ‘imperial space’ and in part by its location within nineteenth-century discourses of cartography as science. In words reminiscent of Foucault’s (1977) description of the architecture of the nineteenth-century prison, Lord Hastings, Governor General of India, explained the system in 1817: There is no other solid basis on which accurate geography can so well be founded. The primary triangles thus spread over this vast country establish almost beyond error a multitude of points, and the spaces comprehended within these, when filled up by the details of subordinate surveyors, will afford … to the world, a map without a parallel, whether in the relation to its accuracy, to its extensiveness, or to the unity of the effort by which it will have been achieved. (Cited in Edney, 1993: 61) A territory neatly divided into triangles through a combination of scientific endeavour, efficient organisation and hard labour (characteristics of so many imperialist projects of the day) was clearly a territory subject to social and political control. However, Edney argues that the Great Trigonometrical Survey also contributed to ‘a conceptual image that consciously set the Europeans apart from the Indians they ruled’ (1993: 62–3). Trigonometrical surveying was the most advanced technique of its time, involving advanced trigonometry and calculus, and was thus a practical demonstration of the inadequacies of Indian geography. As Edney puts it:

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That the British made surveys was held as proof of the scientific rationality and liberalism of their rule when contrasted with the seemingly inadequate conceptions of space held by Indians. (Edney, 1993: 63) This conceptual image in turn produced a hierarchy within the practice of surveying: the director and principal surveyors were British military officers, while Anglo-Indians and English-educated Indians conducted the hard work of surveying and map compilation, and uneducated Indians were employed as labourers and guards. The Great Trigonometrical Survey thus became the ‘geographical panopticon with which the British could order, oversee and control India’ (1993: 65). It was above all the science of triangulation that symbolically isolated the parts of India, rendered them visible to the knowing European eye and at the same time unified them into a coherent whole. The construction of India as an object of imperialist discourse through the practice of cartography was not an isolated occurrence and, indeed, for Said (1991) it would merely be one instance of the broader construction of ‘the Orient’ as an object of nineteenth-century European discourse. Said’s Orientalism refers to a broad tradition of scholarship and imaginative writing from the eighteenth century onwards, which he describes as ‘a way of coming to terms with the Orient that is based on the Orient’s special place in European Western experience’ (1991: 1). For Said, the special role of the Orient in Western discourse concerns the ways in which ‘the Orient has helped to define Europe (or the West) as its contrasting image, idea, personality, experience’ (1991: 1–2) and the ways in which the West has ‘gained in strength and identity by setting itself off against the Orient as a sort of surrogate and underground self ’ (1991: 3). Said argues that both the Orient and the Occident are discursive constructions rather than objective geographical or cultural realities: I have begun with the assumption that the Orient is not an inert fact of nature. It is not merely there, just as the Occident itself is not just there either. We must take seriously Vico’s great observation that men make their own history, that what they can know is what they have made, and extend it to geography: as both geographical and cultural entities – to say nothing of historical entities – such locales as ‘Orient’ and ‘Occident’ are man-made. Therefore as much as the West itself, the Orient is an idea that has a history and a tradition of thought, imagery, and vocabulary that have given it reality and presence in and for the West.8 (Said, 1991: 4–5) The discursive construction of Orient and Occident is also, for Said, a product of the history of Western imperialism, a history which determines that the Orient can be represented by the Occident, but not the reverse. Said’s comment on Balfour’s 1910 speech to the House of Commons on ‘the problems with

40 The semiotics of the dictionary which we have to deal in Egypt’ points to the importance of knowledge of the Orient within the imperialist enterprise: Knowledge to Balfour means surveying a civilization from its origins to its prime to its decline – and of course, it means being able to do that. Knowledge means rising above immediacy, beyond self, into the foreign and distant. The object of such knowledge is inherently vulnerable to scrutiny; this object is a ‘fact’ which, if it develops, changes, or otherwise transforms itself in the way that civilizations frequently do, nevertheless is fundamentally, even ontologically stable. To have such knowledge of such a thing is to dominate it, to have authority over it. And authority here means for ‘us’ to deny autonomy to ‘it’ – the Oriental country – since we know it and it exists, in a sense, as we know it. (Said, 1991: 32; italics in original) For Said, therefore, knowledge and power are intertwined in imperialist scholarship in a particular way. The knowledge of the periphery produced by the centre was not only an instrument of power. It was also the source of the centre’s conception of itself as holding the authority to produce knowledge and exercise power on a world scale. In the nineteenth century, centre–periphery metaphors functioned as an organising principle for knowledge within a broad range of disciplines, where they legimitised both the social practices of imperialist control and the authority of the imperial centre to exercise that control. It was through the metaphor of an all-knowing centre and a known periphery that nineteenth-century imperialism was able to see itself as a project concerned less with the economic and the political than with the dissemination of the light of progressive science to the world. The New English Dictionary (NED, 1884–1928) (ultimately to become the OED) was explicitly conceptualised as a project of imperialism, a dictionary intended as a monument to the English language, which was, as Frederick Furnivall so directly put it in his call for readers issued in 1862, ‘to become the dominant speech of the world’. On its completion in 1928, the NED was to turn out to be, at least in terms of its size and scope, perhaps the single most impressive intellectual product of the imperialist age. The NED sought to establish a semiotic representation of the English language that would legitimise its status as the language of the centre of the world. Moreover, through its documentation of the language of the British Empire and the incorporation of numerous scientific entries, the dictionary established a version of the English language as the pre-eminent language through which the world was made known. In a famous passage from the General Explanations preceding the first published volume of the dictionary, Murray described the vocabulary of the English language itself in centre–periphery terms: That vast aggregate of words and phrases which constitutes the vocabulary of English-speaking men presents, to the mind that endeavours to grasp it as a definite whole, the aspect of one of those nebulous masses familiar to the

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astronomer, in which a clear and unmistakeable nucleus shades off on all sides, through zones of decreasing brightness, to a dim marginal film that seems to end nowhere, but to lose itself imperceptibly in the surrounding darkness.9 The English language, he argued, has ‘a well-defined centre but no discernible circumference’. Murray’s description of the language has often been quoted in the field of lexicography, where it has served as a organising metaphor for conceptions of ‘core’ and ‘peripheral’ vocabulary and as a rationalisation for policies of selection and prioritisation in the dictionary. Less readily recognised, however, is the extent to which Murray’s metaphor for the language drew upon parallel metaphors within nineteenth-century scientific discourse. The language was, for Murray, like ‘one of those nebulous masses familiar to the astronomer’ in which a bright nucleus shades off in an ever-darkening periphery: In its constitution it may be compared to one of those natural groups of the zoologist or botanist, wherein typical species forming the characteristic nucleus of the order are linked on every side to other species, in which the typical character is less and less distinctly apparent, until it fades away in an outer fringe of aberrant forms, which merge imperceptibly in various surrounding orders, and whose own position is ambiguous and uncertain. In Murray’s metaphor, the darkness and ambiguity of the periphery, in language as in the natural world, highlights the clarity of the centre. From a Foucauldian perspective, the nineteenth-century English dictionary, and the OED in particular, represents a particular unity between content and structure in discourse. Murray conceived of the English language in centre– periphery terms and the OED was to become, above all else, a representation of the English language, and of the world viewed through the eye of the English language, constructed in centre–periphery terms. More than this, the OED was a structure within which the language could be represented in those terms. It was in effect a lexical panopticon, within which the historical depth and geographical breadth of the language, and the world as it had been made known through the language, could be exposed for examination from the perspective of the linguistic centre. The OED certainly drew on structural metaphors for the representation of the language established by its lexicographical predecessors. The achievement of the dictionary was that it succeeded in inscribing these structural metaphors and the perspective on the language constructed through them within the discourse of scientific practice. In terms of both structure and perspective, the OED was particularly adapted to the representation of the language as a language of imperialism. At the same time, however, the dictionary established these structures and perspectives as the norm for the monolingual English dictionary. Before the OED, lexicography was essentially a matter of custom and practice as each lexicographer evaluated his predecessors’ works and built upon them. After the OED, lexicography was to

42 The semiotics of the dictionary become a matter of rules and procedures for the accurate and objective description of language that was less dependent on the skill of the individual compiler than upon the disciplined efforts of a team. The structured representation of the English language in centre–periphery terms was to become the norm not only for the age of imperialism, but also for the representation of English as an international language in the post-imperialist world.

Conclusion In this chapter I have explored the implications of work on the semiotics of the dictionary, ideology in the dictionary and Foucauldian discourse analysis for a theory of the dictionary as representation. Clearly, descriptive lexicographers do not believe that language as it appears in the dictionary is anything more than approximation of the reality of language in use. Yet it is implicit within the descriptive paradigm that progress in lexicography involves closer and closer approximation to this reality. The ideal of the dictionary as an accurate description of all the words of the language, to which the OED has to date come closest, is perhaps as absurd as Jorge Luis Borges’ (1964) fantasy of the map of the Empire drawn on the same scale and to the same level of detail as the Empire itself. By focusing on the accuracy of the dictionary’s representation of language, however, the descriptive paradigm excludes consideration of the ideological nature of the representational function within the dictionary, because, for all its imperfections, the dictionary can be no more than a description of a language ‘as it is’. A critical theory of the dictionary as discourse implies that languages cannot be described, they can only be represented. More than this, however, it implies that the ways in which lexicographical representations refract and distort the objectivity of language in use are themselves a legitimate object of inquiry. The notion of the dictionary as a discourse on language leads us in the direction of historical investigation into the origins and development of the structural forms of the dictionary and their relationship to the development of the language. In Chapters 4 to 6, we will therefore explore the historical evolution of these structural forms in greater depth. Before doing so, however, we will turn to a more detailed examination of the ways in which centre– periphery structures interact with ideological perspectives at various levels within the semiotic structure of the modern dictionary.

3

The centre–periphery metaphor in action

Dictionaries represent language in the semiotic form of a matrix, in which the axes correspond to the macrostructure and microstructure of the dictionary. The rows of the matrix contain the alphabetically ordered entries in the wordlist and its columns contain the categories of information typically found in each entry such as pronunciation, word class, descriptive label, senses, illustrative examples and etymology. This matrix structure, characteristic of modern European reference works from the encyclopedia to the telephone directory, is the characteristic semiotic device of discourses that construct their objects of knowledge through procedures of comparison, isolation and description. Centre–periphery structures are not immediately apparent in the semiotic organisation of the English dictionary. There is, however, a parallel between the ways in which European dictionaries represent their languages and the semiotic structure of the conventional European map of the world. The map of the world also represents the surface of the earth in the form of a matrix segmented by lines of longitude and latitude. Beneath the matrix lies a visual representation of the territories of the world organised in centre–periphery terms. Longitude and latitude are scientific constructs that enable any point on the surface of the earth to be identified and related to any other point. The conventional map of the world is based upon classificatory mechanisms designed to assist navigators to make use of the surface of the earth. The relative positions of the territories of the world as they are represented on this map, however, are the product of a historically specific application of this mechanism, which caused the zero meridian for the determination of degrees of longitude to pass through Greenwich in London.1 This application, essentially arbitrary from a scientific point of view, represented a particular intersection of ideology and science, in which a centre–periphery metaphor for the political and social structure of the Empire was inscribed within the scientific form of the map. Inscribed within this scientific form of representation, the centre–periphery metaphor itself became part of the normal structure of the map. In the dictionary also, centre–periphery metaphors operate beneath the level of the overt matrix structure. In order to represent a language in the form of a matrix, lexicographers must make two major assumptions about the nature of language. First, they must assume that languages are composed of uniquely

44 The centre–periphery metaphor in action identifiable words. Second, they must assume that each word in the language has a uniquely identifiable sense. The process of making a dictionary thus involves procedures of comparison and abstraction, leading to the isolation and description of unique word-meaning relations. The representation of the reality of a language according to these assumptions and procedures is, however, by no means a simple matter and the tendency in the historical evolution of the dictionary has been towards increasing structural complexity. At the level of the macrostructure, lexicographers continue to struggle with problems concerning the selection of words for the wordlist and the marking of their relative importance. At the level of the microstructure, they are faced with problems concerning definitional style, defining vocabulary, presentation of lexical and encyclopedic information and choice of illustrative examples. In solving these problems, lexicographers adopt procedures involving the reduction of data derived from heterogeneous social and cultural contexts of language use to abstract essential forms, which frequently involve decisions about the central and peripheral aspects of the lexicon and the meanings of words. Although centre–periphery metaphors are not immediately apparent in the surface matrix structure of the dictionary, they become apparent as soon as relationships between the elements in this structure and the contexts from which they are derived are subjected to analysis. Moreover, these metaphors become structural as soon as they become part of standard lexicographical practices for relating elements within the dictionary to each other and to their contexts of use. Centre–periphery structures are therefore most conveniently analysed in terms of four basic lexicographical procedures: the selection of words for the wordlist; descriptive labelling; definition; and the selection of illustrative examples.

The wordlist It is a principle of descriptivist lexicography that dictionaries should not evaluate words by including the ‘good’ and excluding the ‘bad’. Within the descriptivist paradigm, the ideal dictionary includes all of the words of a language and the exclusion of words for evaluative reasons represents a retrograde policy of prescription. Gates (1992), for example, defends the inclusion of taboo words in the larger American dictionaries (a policy that is still not entirely acceptable to sections of the dictionary-buying public) on the grounds that a dictionary is a ‘record of the language’. He also argues for ‘re-education of the public to realise that the publication of a word in a dictionary is not a seal of approval’ (1992: 276). Burchfield (1989: 111) defends the inclusion of racial epithets in the dictionary, arguing that dictionaries are subject to ‘a concerted attempt by various pressure-groups to force dictionary editors to give up recording the factual unpleasantness of our times, and to abandon the tradition of setting down the language as it is actually used, however disagreeable, regrettable, or uncongenial the use’. The desire to exclude words from the dictionary for

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evaluative reasons is seen as a product of a misconception on the part of the dictionary user that should be resisted by the descriptive lexicographer. Although these arguments are directed against prescriptive censorship, they are somewhat misleading because even the largest dictionaries routinely exclude large numbers of words if only for reasons of space. Policies of inclusion and exclusion, whether they are applied to individual words or classes of words, are rarely explicit but clearly reflect processes of evaluation and prioritisation. Boulanger (1986) argues that it follows from the proposition that the wordlist is structured according to an expectation of exhaustiveness that the inclusion or exclusion of a word is significant both for the status of the word and for the status of the object to which it refers. In relation to the expectation of exhaustiveness, inclusion is necessarily a ‘seal of approval’. The words included in the wordlist are those that unequivocally belong to the language represented – the core of the language. The words that are excluded are those whose membership of the language is somehow in doubt – the periphery. The possibilities for any given word are that it will be included in the wordlist, excluded from it or partially excluded. As we will see later in this chapter, words may be partially excluded from the wordlist when they are marked by descriptive labels or by the form of their definition. They are also partially excluded when they appear only as examples of their class. Discussing the treatment of ‘controversial vocabulary’ in the OED, for example, Burchfield states: The ‘judicial and regulative authority’ of the editor must be applied with firmness and consistency to avoid the inclusion of more than a reasonable number of items from some very large classes of words that straddle the border, leaving the remainder to be treated in separate period, regional, and subject dictionaries. (Burchfield, 1989: 104) In older and smaller dictionaries entire categories of words are routinely excluded, but the tendency in the large modern dictionary is to include samples from each category. Exclusion of a category of words places it beyond the boundaries of the language. Partial exclusion, however, draws the category marks into the language and at the same time defines it as peripheral to those that are more fully represented. Among the categories that ‘straddle the border’ of the language, Burchfield includes scientific and technical vocabulary, proper names, trademarks, examples of word play, and so on – categories that are peripheral to the language in a lexical sense. However, when the principle of sampling is applied to international vocabulary, words that form part of the everyday usage of regionally defined groups are defined as peripheral to the language itself. The procedure of sampling also defines a structure for international lexicography. The detailed description of regional vocabulary, according to Burchfield, is the job of the specialist lexicographer rather than the lexicographer of the language in general.

46 The centre–periphery metaphor in action Even when the prioritisation of items to be included in the wordlist is not overtly a regional matter, it may have regional implications. English dictionaries have always tended to privilege the language of print, and in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the literary language was given particular priority. Landau (1989: 21) argues that in the late twentieth century there is a preponderance of scientific and technical words in English dictionaries, which ‘mirrors the prevailing cultural view of our society that science and technology are of the highest importance’. Boulanger (1986: 11) also notes that while specialised and new vocabulary items are generally excluded from French dictionaries, there is an over-representation of items from the fields of computer science, medicine, biology, audio-visual and other state-of-the-art technologies. The centre of the language as it is represented in the wordlist of dictionaries is, therefore, a multidimensional construct, which privileges certain perspectives on the language and marginalises others. However, the prioritisation of the language of print, literature and technology also has regional implications in the context of English as an international language. The areas of the vocabulary of most concern to the English dictionary are often those that are also of most concern to the Anglo-American linguistic centre. In selecting words for the wordlist, lexicographers clearly begin from certain preconceptions of where the centre and periphery of the language lie. The conceptualisation of language in centre–periphery terms is, however, a metaphor derived from nineteenth-century discourse on language. In the relationship of the wordlist to the vocabulary of the language as a whole, this metaphor becomes a structural metaphor within the form of the dictionary. Moreover, although lexicographers may work with more general notions of centre and periphery in language, the representation of centre and periphery is principally the work of lexicographers themselves. For the dictionary user, the ultimate test of membership of the language is whether a word can be found in the dictionary or not.

Descriptive labelling Descriptive labels usually take the form of a short, highly codified piece of text placed before a definition in a dictionary entry. Although the literature on lexicography tends to treat labels as corresponding to particular varieties, registers and fields (see, for example, Kipfer, 1984; Landau, 1989), labels can also be viewed as semiotic devices that mark off these areas as distinct realities within a language. As Girardin puts it: Les indicateurs de «niveau de langue» signalent un écart par rapport à une norme lexicale qui n’est pas fondé linguistiquement mais socioculturellement. Ces indicateurs impliquent un jugement qui s’exerce par rapport à une langue standard qui, elle, est non marquée.2 (Girardin, 1979: 89)

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In this sense, descriptive labels carry a double meaning. They not only mark labelled items as peripheral to the norm, but also implicitly mark unlabelled items as belonging to the normative centre of the language. Unlabelled items are seen to be unlabelled by virtue of the labels attached to other items in the dictionary. In general, descriptive labels are applied only to a minority of the words and senses listed in dictionaries, although most words and senses are subject to usage restriction of some kind. Descriptive labels therefore represent a ‘judgement’ both on the items to which they are applied and on the categories to which they belong. In most British dictionaries, for example, words restricted to a field of activity such as soccer (corner kick, throw-in, etc.) are unlabelled and usage restriction is indicated by a definition indicating that that word is only used within that field. Items judged to be restricted to particular regions, on the other hand, are generally labelled as such. This implies that to use words restricted to those with an interest in soccer is to speak within the unlabelled norm. To use words restricted to those who live in a particular region, on the other hand, is to speak outside this norm. In other words, the labelling of regional vocabulary represents a judgement on its relationship to the norm. Moreover, as regional labels are among those frequently used in modern dictionaries, they are indicative of the particular importance of regional variation within the dictionary’s representation of the centre and periphery of the language. Although the semiotic form of the descriptive label tends to give the impression of precise demarcation among language varieties, there is little evidence of precision in their practical application. Hartmann (1983: 109), for example, points out that ‘there is to date no generally agreed framework for studying, classifying and describing language varieties and the contexts which determine them’. In an earlier paper, Hartmann argues: More often than not, usage [of labels in dictionaries] is steeped in folklore and tradition. Whether and how a particular instance is marked depends less on principles based on one or more of the linguistic approaches to language variety than on arbitrary decisions made by the lexicographer. (Hartmann, 1981: 267) Examining labels in three dictionaries (Webster’s Third New International Dictionary (W3NID, 1961), Collins English Dictionary (CollED1, 1979) and Chambers Universal Learners’ Dictionary (CULD, 1980)), Hartmann notes that none explicitly accounts for its use of labels within a framework of language variation. He also remarks on the ‘inconsistent, arbitrary and largely non-comparable’ use of the concepts behind labels (1981: 269). Delbridge (1987: 66) comments that dictionary users are beset by two ‘monstrous difficulties’ in regard to labelling: ‘one, uncertainty over the criteria by which labels are assigned in a particular dictionary and two, the lack of terminological consensus between dictionaries’. These comments suggest that labels rarely provide more than a rough approximation to the reality of language in use.

48 The centre–periphery metaphor in action In the context of English as an international language, perhaps the most significant aspect of descriptive labelling is the assumption that regional variation falls within the domain of usage restriction. Many of the labels used in dictionaries (formal, informal, colloquial, derogatory, jocular, sexist, etc.) have an advisory function and are intended to warn the reader that the labelled item does not belong to the normatively approved core of the language and that care should be taken in its use. The use of regional labels in dictionaries originates in the labelling of British dialect items as a warning to the reader who might wish to avoid them in cultivated usage. The incorporation of international regional labels within the same technology may be taken as an indication that these items should also be avoided in some vaguely defined, cultivated ‘international’ version of the language. In a study of the treatment of Belgian Dutch, Quebec French, and Austrian and Swiss German in standard dictionaries of Dutch, French and German, Willemyns (1990: 36) points out that ‘what may seem to be part of the vernacular from the central perspective may in fact belong to the regional standard in the peripheral regions under consideration’. Indiscriminate application of national and regional labels may imply, however, that varieties beyond the place of publication of the dictionary are themselves non-standard in relation to the unlabelled norm. The semiotic link between the regional label and the warning label is an important one, because advances in the lexicography of English as an international language have tended to take the form of the addition of an ever-increasing number of nationally and regionally labelled items to the wordlist. Although this development may be viewed as positive, the end result may be no more than a more systematic representation of the language as a centre–periphery structure, within which standard and nonstandard varieties are regionally defined.

Definition As we saw in Chapter 1, dictionary definitions are problematic from any perspective that begins with the primacy of contextual meaning, because the act of definition is in essence a restriction of the meaning potential of words. Fairclough (1992: 186) uses the term ‘meaning potential’ to refer to ‘the range of meanings conventionally associated with a word’. He argues: Dictionaries usually set out entries for words in ways which imply the following view of meaning potential: (i) meaning potential is stable; (ii) meaning potential is universal, in the sense of being common to all members of a speech community; (iii) meanings within a word’s meaning potential are discrete, that is, clearly demarcated from each other; and (iv) meanings within a word’s meaning potential are in a complementary ‘either/or’ relationship to each other, and are mutually exclusive. (Fairclough, 1992: 186)

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Dictionaries do not generally indicate contested or alternative meanings for words that are seen as corresponding to a single unit of sense. In constructing a definition of a word, the lexicographer is structurally constrained to adopt a single ideological perspective on its meaning, which becomes the central meaning of the word. It is primarily through the interaction between this constraint and decisions concerning definitional style, the defining vocabulary, and lexical and encyclopedic definition that the linguistic centre of the language is established as a position from which the periphery of the language is made known. Definitional style Dictionary definitions manifest ideological perspectives most directly when they are overtly evaluative. Moon (1989: 79 – based on Creamer, 1986) offers a number of examples of this type of definition from the Dictionary of Contemporary Chinese (DCC, 1979), including: democracy, democratic rights … refers to the rights enjoyed by the people to freely express their political opinions and participate in the government. Democracy has a class nature. Under a capitalist system, there are only bourgeoisie class democratic rights. In China, people enjoy real and extensive democracy. This entry, like many of its kind, incorporates a definition constructed from a Chinese communist perspective, which is overtly evaluative of the concept it defines. The definition is also constructed so that this perspective appears as the perspective of the dictionary itself. While definitions of this kind are rare in modern English dictionaries, they are not entirely absent and their presence may lead the user to draw inferences about non-evaluative definitions in other contexts. This is illustrated by the CollED3 definitions of holocaust and apartheid: holocaust … 2. the … the mass murder by the Nazis of the Jews of continental Europe between 1940 and 1945. apartheid … (in South Africa) the official government policy of racial segregation. The CollED3 definition of holocaust, like the DCC definition of democracy, is overtly evaluative and even goes so far as to condemn ‘the Nazis’ as ‘mass murderers’. As such it departs from the descriptive norm, but an evaluative definition seems justified in this case by the enormity and indefensibility of the event to which the word holocaust refers. In contrast, the definition of apartheid is distinctly nonevaluative under circumstances where some degree of evaluation might be expected. From the point of view of its victims, the South African government

50 The centre–periphery metaphor in action policy of apartheid was clearly a policy of oppression (perhaps amounting to mass murder), not a policy of segregation. Although the CollED3 definition of apartheid falls within the descriptive lexicographical norm, its definition of holocaust suggests that evaluation was an option that could have been exercised but was not. Burchfield (1989) discusses a number of instances in which definitions of words such as Jew, Palestinian, Arab, Pakistan, Turk, Asiatic, Muhammadan and Negro were not only potentially offensive, but actually led to protest on the part of members of the groups concerned. In 1924, for example, the Jewish Chronicle objected to the publication of unlabelled senses for the word Jew: ‘unscrupulous usurer or bargainer’ and ‘to cheat, overreach’ in OUP dictionaries. OUP dictionary publisher R.W. Chapman is said to have replied that ‘it is no part of the duty of a lexicographer to pass judgement on the justice or propriety of current usage’. H.W. Fowler, editor of the Pocket Oxford Dictionary (POD, 1927), wrote that ‘the real question is not whether a phrase is rude, but whether it is current’ (Burchfield, 1989: 110). OUP yielded to the request that these senses should be labelled as derogatory and in modern dictionaries definitions of this kind are normally accompanied by warning labels indicating that the usage is offensive or potentially offensive, After all, dictionary publishers have no commercial interest in offending their potential users. Important as the question of potential offence is, however, the more important issue is perhaps simply that such definitions are constructed from a perspective other than that of the group that they refer to. In effect, these groups are represented as objects peripheral to the knowledge of the dictionary. The representation of perspectives as central or peripheral within definitions is complex, however, and does not always appear in expected ways. In particular, it is often manifested in a greater degree of concern for the feelings of the peripheral group than for those of the group at the centre. Entries for nigger and whitey in the Longman Dictionary of the English Language (LDEL, 1984) illustrate this point: nigger … 1. a negro; broadly a member of any dark-skinned race – usu taken to be very offensive when used by whites, but may be neutral or even appreciative when used by blacks. whitey … often cap. derog a white man; also white society. In the entry for nigger, the warning information is explicit, strong and contained within the definition itself. In contrast, in the entry for whitey, the warning information is simply contained within the label derog. It appears in this case that the lexicographer is concerned to construct an entry for nigger that both avoids offence to black readers and advises white readers on usage. Much less effort is expended to avoid offence to white readers or to offer advice to black readers in the definition of whitey. Although black readers appear to fare better than white readers in the matter of potentially offensive definitions in this instance, this is

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only because they are the explicit object of the attention of the discourse of the dictionary. White readers, as assumed participants in this discourse, are placed outside the category of readers who might be offended by definitions of racial epithets that are applied to them. In recently published dictionaries, warning information is increasingly carried for words referring to women labelled as ‘offensive to women’ and ‘sexist’. Similar warning information is rarely carried for corresponding terms applied to men, suggesting that the cultural centre of the British and US dictionary, as it is revealed in the assumption of a shared perspective on the world in the style of definitions, is essentially that of the Anglo-American white male. Although explicit expression of opinion is anathema to descriptive lexicography, it is frequently found in English dictionaries, especially when the word at issue lies at some distance from the centre of the dictionary’s concerns. Consider the following definition of durian (a fruit well known in Southeast Asia, but not to my knowledge exported to Britain or the United States) in CollED3: durian… 1. a SE Asian bombaceous tree, Durio zibethinus, having edible oval fruits with a hard spiny rind. 2. the fruit of this tree, which has an offensive smell but a pleasant taste: supposedly an aphrodisiac The definition is evaluative of both the smell and taste of the durian. It also mentions, and calls into question, beliefs about its aphrodisiac qualities. In this case, evaluation is not a matter of politics or race, but simply one of invoking a cultural context for the definition. The use of evaluative adjectives and adverbs exoticises the durian and invokes a context in which the fruit and those who eat it are viewed as peripheral objects of knowledge. Although the definition mentions that the fruit is Southeast Asian in origin, the fact that it comes from a peripheral region of the English-using world is also evident in its vocabulary and style. Definitions of this kind, whether they are potentially offensive to the members of the culture to which they refer or not, play an important role in establishing the cultural centre of the dictionary as one from which knowledge of the periphery is constructed and made known. The defining vocabulary The cultural centre of the dictionary is also made manifest in the distinction between the vocabulary of the wordlist and the defining vocabulary. In principle, the defining vocabulary of the modern dictionary is smaller than the vocabulary of the wordlist and all items within it are themselves defined.3 In consequence, non-defining words are likely to appear in the text of the dictionary only once, on the occasion on which they are defined. Defining words appear more frequently, are more fully integrated into the metalinguistic systems of the dictionary and tend to be more strongly identified with the core of the language. The defining vocabulary is also, in a literal sense, the vocabulary through which the language and the world to which it refers are made known. Metaphorically, it

52 The centre–periphery metaphor in action stands at the centre of the dictionary and forms the eye through which the language and the world to which it refers are seen. In the learner’s dictionary, the defining vocabulary is often deliberately restricted to a fixed number of words. First applied in the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English (LDCE, 1978), the practice has been taken to an extreme in the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary (OALD5). The preface to the dictionary reports that: Another new feature is the introduction of a 3,500-word vocabulary within which definitions are written. The words in the list … were chosen principally according to their frequency in the language, as revealed by the corpus, but also as a ‘core’ vocabulary of real value to students of English. OALD5 has also broken new ground by printing a list of the defining vocabulary as an appendix to the dictionary and by indicating words used in definitions that fall outside the list by small capitals. Interestingly, this enables us to see that certain areas of the vocabulary are particularly difficult to define within the limits of the defining vocabulary. The definition for ejaculate, for example, reads: ejaculate … (of a man) to discharge SEMEN rapidly through the PENIS . A search for definitions of semen and penis leads to a chain of similar entries, all dependent on words outside the defining list (reproduction, sperm, urine, fertile, sterile, etc.). The effect is that we are able to identify the domain of sexual activity as one which, in terms of the selection of defining vocabulary, lies on the margins of the language. In general, the words of the defining vocabulary are identified with the standard or common words of the language. Specialist, non-standard and regional words are excluded from the defining vocabulary as a matter of course. This sets up a system of relationships between headwords and definitions for which Rey and Delesalle (1979: 22) use the term ‘pseudo-bilingual definition’. Rey and Delasalle give the example of ‘Pute: vulg. Prostituée’, which they contrast with the hypothetical, but improbable, ‘Prostituée: bourg. Pute’. In this case, the distinction is between registers of the language. However, international items are frequently defined in similar ways. The LDEL, for example, in common with many other British dictionaries, defines sidewalk and pavement as follows: sidewalk … N Am a pavement. pavement … chiefly Br a surfaced walk for pedestrians, esp at the side of a road. The principle of pseudo-bilingual definition dictates that, while the North American word can be defined as a synonym of the British term, the meaning of the British term must be explained in full in terms of other items from the

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defining vocabulary of which it forms part. The form of the two definitions reveals that the defining vocabulary of this dictionary is regionally restricted to terms current in Britain. The metaphorical centre of the dictionary is a British centre and the eye through which the language is seen is a British eye. Through the practice of pseudo-bilingual definition, the North American word is rendered peripheral in a double sense. First, it is excluded from the network of mutual definitions that binds the defining vocabulary together as the core of the language. Second, and perhaps more important, in contrast to pavement, the word sidewalk is not actually defined. It is simply treated as a synonym of its British equivalent and any specificity in its meaning or usage is ignored. Encyclopedic definition The distinction between the ‘dictionary’ (a book about words) and the ‘encyclopedia’ (a book about things) is clear-cut in principle, but not in practice. As McArthur (1986: 102) points out, the distinction did not become clear until the eighteenth century. Even now, the distinction is much clearer in British lexicography than it is in North America or France, where the encyclopedic dictionary is the norm. The distinction between knowledge of words and knowledge of the concepts and things they denote is thus historically and culturally specific and is in part a product of the dictionary as a discourse on ‘the language’ as an independent object of knowledge. Current British dictionaries are, however, ‘encyclopedic’ in at least three senses. First, many dictionaries include entries for place names and biographical entries in which no attempt is made to describe the ‘meaning’ of the headword and some, like CollED3, have imported the American principle of the encyclopedic dictionary into British lexicography. Second, all dictionaries add encyclopedic details to definitions of words. Third, all include definitions, especially for nouns, that are essentially encyclopedic in that they describe the concept or thing denoted by the word rather than the usage of the word itself. In many cases, this is unavoidable. As McArthur (1986: 104) puts it, lexicographers need to ‘reach out into the world to show what words do’, but at the same time they need to avoid turning the dictionary into ‘an open-ended review of the world and its contents’. Words are not, therefore, inherently lexical or encyclopedic from the point of view of their definition in the dictionary. On the contrary, the distinction is often a matter of the ways in which the lexicographer chooses to define the word. Encyclopedic definition is linked to ideology in the dictionary in two main ways. First, the cultural centre of the dictionary tends to be established through commentary on the denotata of words rather than through commentary on the usage of the words that name them (see, for example, the definitions of holocaust, apartheid and durian above). However, encyclopedic commentary is generally couched in the semiotic form of the definition of the word. Evaluations of people, things and concepts from the perspective of the centre are thus

54 The centre–periphery metaphor in action presented as facts about the language and are thereby less easily called into question. Second, lexicographers may choose to emphasise either the word or its denotatum in definitions. A class of words in the dictionary can thus appear either as a catalogue of words or as a catalogue of the names of things. Items remote from the cultural centre of the dictionary are more likely to appear as the names of things than as words in their own right. However, whether an item is perceived to be ‘encyclopedic’ or ‘lexical’ is largely a matter of perspective. Zgusta (1971: 253), for example, points out that although Red Guard tends to be treated encyclopedically in English dictionaries (cf. CollED3 – ‘Red Guard n. a member of a Chinese youth movement that attempted to effect the Cultural Revolution.’), it is not an encyclopedic item in Chinese. In CollED3, Red Guard is defined by reference to a specific historical event. A lexical treatment would require some attempt to convey the meanings of the term Red Guard in its cultural and historical contexts and from a Chinese perspective. When an item is defined encyclopedically it is placed beyond the network of lexical relations that define the language as one appropriate to particular cultural contexts. The treatment of items as ‘encyclopedic’, therefore, places them on the periphery of the language by excluding the perspectives within which they are meaningful as lexical items. When the words contributed to a language by its speakers in a particular region are primarily treated as encyclopedic items, they are isolated from each other and denied the status of a ‘variety’. The region is both excluded from participation in the formation of the language and treated as an object of the knowledge encoded within it. Definition and structure A dictionary definition is in principle a concise statement of the meaning of a word (or of a particular sense of a word) abstracted from any specific context of use. The dictionary microstructure reserves a slot for definitions, such that user may reasonably expect to find a definition of this kind for any word or application of a word. The problem of definition has taxed lexicographers from the earliest days of the dictionary, however, and in practice dictionaries frequently depart from the norm of definition. Adding evaluative commentary to a definition, stepping beyond the defining vocabulary, and encyclopedic definition are all examples of departures from the norm of lexical definition. The types of definition that mark items as peripheral are, therefore, characterised principally by the fact that they are not, in the strict sense of the word, dictionary definitions. By defining words within the norm, the lexicographer also ties them into the network of semantic relations among entries that makes the dictionary a cohesive text. If one of these words is removed from the dictionary, the network may be broken. In consequence, lexicographers pay greater attention to the definition of these words, because the cohesion of the dictionary is dependent upon them. A definition that departs from the norm is, therefore, indicative both

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of a relative lack of attention to the definition of the word and of its peripheral status within the structure of the dictionary. If a peripheral word is removed from the dictionary, the semantic cohesion of the dictionary will not be threatened. The issues of definition discussed in this section are thus issues of semiotic structure within the dictionary. The items within the matrix structure of the dictionary are made coherent through an intricate web of inter-related definitions that constitute the centre of the language, while the periphery is constituted by items that are connected to this web often by a single thread.

Illustrative text English dictionaries vary a great deal in the ways in which they select and use illustrative text. Johnson’s Dictionary of the English Language used literary quotations both to illustrate and define. In Richardson’s A New Dictionary of the English Language (1836), quotations formed the bulk of the text and definitions were minimal. The OED uses attributed quotations as a support for definitions in every entry. CollED3 and the LDEL include short non-attributed examples of usage for a relatively small number of items. Up to its fourth edition OALD, in common with other learner’s dictionaries, used non-attributed examples for a much larger number of entries. CCELD uses non-attributed illustrative examples, drawn from a corpus of authentic texts for most items and OALD5 has followed CCELD to some extent by replacing many invented examples from the previous edition with examples drawn from the British National Corpus. The use of illustrative text is not an obligatory feature of the dictionary, nor is there any standard method of preparing or using it. In relation to the semiotics of the dictionary, we need to consider both the role of illustrative text in the dictionary and the function of the underlying corpus of texts in the production of the dictionary. Attributed quotations in the OED are treated as the basis of definitions and, in principle, constrain them. In other dictionaries, non-attributed example phrases illustrate or clarify definitions and collocational patterns. The authentic examples in CCELD and other corpus-based dictionaries fall somewhere between these two functions since they are selected from a larger collection of examples on which the definition is supposed to be based. Allen (1986: 2) observes that ‘invented examples afford a dictionary compiler the best opportunity of a creative fling’. Similarly, the selection of attributed quotations offers an opportunity for creativity. Because of the latitude available to the lexicographer in their selection and the fact that both attributed and non-attributed quotations refer to the world beyond the word, illustrative examples have been identified as an important area within the literature on the ideology of the dictionary. Ideology in invented illustrative examples has been discussed mainly in the literature on sexism in the dictionary (Graham, 1974; Gershuny, 1974; Whitcut, 1984; Kaye, 1989), which focuses on the distribution of fictional male and female actors in dictionary examples and on the kinds of activities in which they are seen to be engaged. In a systematic study of invented illustrative sentences in

56 The centre–periphery metaphor in action the Random House Dictionary of the English Language (RHDEL, 1966), for example, Gershuny sampled 2,000 illustrative sentences from 900 entries and investigated the distribution of masculine and feminine nouns and pronouns and their use in subject, object and possessive positions. She also examined the occurrence of these words in conjunction with stereotypical categories such as ‘achievement’ (male) or ‘aesthetic’ (female). She found that the dictionary ‘tends to repeat stereotyped semantic associations for various masculine and feminine gender words, thus contributing to a cultural concept of each’ (1974: 167). Analyses of this kind have tended to show that the fictional world of the dictionary example is a male-centred world. If examples are illustrative of the real world contexts in which words work, they are also illustrative of the cultural perspective that stands at the centre of the dictionary. Illustrative examples have also been a particular focus of attention in dictionary reform. In the first edition of LDCE, edited by Janet Whitcut, examples were constructed so as to avoid sex stereotyping, reflecting the editor’s view that ‘in the present antisexist climate of opinion it is presumably the responsibility of the lexicographer, especially when writing for the young or even for the foreign learner, not to reinforce, as they say, sexist stereotypes’ (Whitcut, 1984: 142). In school dictionaries produced for local markets overseas, it is by now routine for examples to be adapted to the local context. As Whitcut (1995) shows, ‘the family has three cars’ (Heinemann New Zealand Dictionary – HNZD, 1979) and ‘I have seven cows and my father has ten cows’ (Longman Primary Dictionary – LPD, 1982), as illustrations of the word have, belong to quite different ideological worlds. Efforts to reform dictionary examples are thus indicative of awareness among some dictionary editors of the ways in which dictionary text can exclude readers from the discourse of the dictionary. The tendency in the modern dictionary is to move away from invented examples towards examples that are illustrative not only of usage, but also of an underlying corpus of texts. The use of authentic examples frees the lexicographer from responsibility for the construction of the example, but not for its selection. Willinsky (1994) also suggests that quotations acquire prestige from their inclusion in a dictionary such as the OED, because they become part of the defining corpus of the language, even though they may add little to the definition of the words they define. Willinsky shows that many OED quotations do not define, or even help clarify the definition, raising a question mark over their function. He also shows that the most recent edition of the dictionary, OED2, harbours a number of quotations, some from modern and highly respectable sources, which negatively stereotype Jews. Fournier and Russell (1992: 15) have also observed a gap between definitions and quotations in the OED2, resulting from the fact that the updating of quotations has lagged behind the updating of definitions. They note that OED2 has a revised non-sexist definition for female, but that this is supported by historical quotations that ‘depict a being who is unremittingly a demonic sex-object lacking the capacity for higher (religious) reasoning, and doomed to be controlled by men’.

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The selection and construction of the corpus from which quotations or authentic examples are drawn also has an ideological significance. One of the developments in the English dictionary over the last 400 years has been the increasing formalisation of the notion of the dictionary corpus. Johnson’s dictionary is often said to be the first to have been based on a corpus of texts, although the principle of selection was simply the authors of whom Johnson approved and whose books were to hand. The OED used a similar method, although the institution of the ‘reading programme’ led to a corpus that was both larger and broader than that used by Johnson. In the late twentieth century, the use of computer-analysable corpora has become almost mandatory in British lexicography. The evolution of the dictionary corpus has also involved a gradual development of the idea that the texts within it in should be representative of the language in use, rather than a selection of texts of which the lexicographer approves, and that analysis should be systematic rather than arbitrary. The use of a corpus places the dictionary and the work of the lexicographer at one remove from the language ‘as it is’. The corpus-based dictionary is not, in effect, a description of words as they are used in the language, but a description of the words as they are used in the underlying corpus. In particular, the words selected for the wordlist and their definitions are constrained by the limitations of the corpus. Analysis of the composition of the dictionary corpora can therefore lead to a better understanding of the construct on which the dictionary’s semiotic representation of a language is based. Willinsky’s (1994) statistical analyses, for example, point to the overwhelming presence in the OED2 of quotations from a small number of British authors and poets, whose works have a doubtful value in clarifying either the meaning or history of words. He also points to a number of important lacunae in the reading programme: the documents of the fifteenthcentury Chancery court, the nineteenth-century working-class press and the entire body of women writers across the centuries (1994: 177 ff.). Moon (1989) observes that the citation of authorities from a corpus adds to the authority of the dictionary by giving it something to describe. But referring to the corpora on which W3NID and the OED are based, she comments: Now all these corpora are condemned as elitist. Middle class corpora can only lead to analyses of middle class language, and the status of dictionaries as authorities on the language is even more questionable. Middle class views on language are dominant, and written language is dominant over spoken. (Moon, 1989: 68) The trend in corpus-based lexicography is now towards the corpus that is representative of the language as a whole. In the modern dictionary this often leads to the identification of the corpus with the language itself. The dust jacket of CCELD1, for example, carried the slogan, ‘Helping learners with real English’. Corpus-based lexicography and the inclusion of samples from corpora as illustrative examples, therefore, contribute to the impression that the dictionary is, in fact, describing the language ‘as it is’. However large the corpus may be,

58 The centre–periphery metaphor in action however, it is still a sample of the language and some principle of selection of texts must be at work. Several recent editions of British learner’s dictionaries have made use of the British National Corpus, which in spite of efforts to represent a wide range of registers and varieties, is explicitly a British corpus. Although the extent to which these dictionaries are actually based on systematic analysis of this corpus is open to question, it is clear that in these dictionaries at least there is a growing identification of ‘real’ English with British English. Within the semiotics of the dictionary, illustrative examples, whether invented or drawn from a corpus, are indicative of the textual and cultural frameworks within which the dictionary’s version of the language operates. They define what the dictionary sees as typical textual and cultural contexts of use and help to establish positions of centre and periphery within the language and the world. The following are a sample of illustrative sentences including the words China and Chinese from CCELD1 and OALD4: change … He was shaken by the changes that had taken place since he left China else … The experience of China was unlike anything else that had ever happened to me day … I’d like to go to China some day evidence … In China we saw evidence everywhere that a real effort was being made to promote tourism (CCELD1) flirt … I am flirting with the idea of getting a job in China go … She has gone to China laugh … Don’t laugh, but I’ve decided to teach myself Chinese make little of sth. … It’s in Chinese – I can make little of it (OALD4) There are in all 96 references to China in illustrative examples in CCELD1 and 46 in OALD4. Typically China appears as a place to which people go, or would like to go, and Chinese as a language that people learn, or more often fail to

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learn. Although the examples in the OALD4 are invented and those in CCELD1 are drawn from a corpus, the pattern in both dictionaries is remarkably similar. China, the Chinese people and the Chinese language function as examples of the exotic. Although both dictionaries are aimed at Chinese learners of English (among other overseas learners), Chinese users of English are able to see themselves as objects of English discourse, but never as its subjects. It is possible, however, that studies of ideology in dictionary examples have over-emphasised the significance of illustrative text. Certainly, examples and quotations tend to represent a culturally loaded view of the world, but at the same time they are less central to the dictionary’s representation of the language than the wordlist, descriptive labels and definitions. The facts about the world presented in dictionary examples are not presented as facts about the language and, for this reason, are perhaps more easily negotiated by the reader. Nevertheless, examples and quotations give the reader a glimpse into the version of the language and its contexts of use that the dictionary seeks to describe. In British dictionaries, this is clearly a language centred on the British speaker, who, like the dictionary itself, views the language and the world in centre–periphery terms.

Conclusion In this chapter, I have attempted to demonstrate how centre–periphery structures operate at various levels of the dictionary. These structures originate in discourses which tend to organise knowledge of the English language and the world in centre–periphery terms. They are encoded in the selection and labelling of headwords and in the contents of definitions and illustrative examples. They also serve to constitute the coherence of the dictionary as something more than an unconnected list of isolated words and senses. A dictionary is not simply a list of words, it is also a representation of a language as an object in the world. It is at the point where the dictionary begins to construct the language as a coherent and contextualised object of knowledge that centre–periphery metaphors come into play and become a part of the structure of the dictionary itself. That the English dictionary represents English as an international language as a centre–periphery is a matter of ideology. Most modern British dictionaries include a definition of the English language couched in explicitly anglocentric terms: English … the language that is spoken by people who live in Great Britain and Ireland, the United States, Canada, Australia, and many other countries. (CCELD1) English … the language of England, used in Britain, most countries in the British Commonwealth, the USA and some other countries. (OALD5)

60 The centre–periphery metaphor in action English … the Germanic language of the people of Britain, the USA, and most Commonwealth countries. (LDEL) These definitions take little account of the statistics of English as an international language. If we rank in order the nations of the world in terms of estimates of users of English as a first or second language in excess of 10 million, for example, we come up with the following list: the United States, the United Kingdom, Nigeria, India, the Philippines, Canada, Australia (based on statistics in Crystal, 1997: 57–60). If we were to include users of English as a foreign language, whose numbers are notoriously difficult to estimate, a different ranking might occur. The point is, however, that English dictionaries not only define English in ethnocentric terms, they also construct representations of the language in conformity with that definition. The fact that they are able to do so is a matter of the interaction between ideology and structure. The structures of the English dictionary appear to have evolved in ways that facilitate the representation of the language in centre–periphery terms. Indeed, although the locations of centre and periphery can be shifted, it is difficult to see how the language could be represented in any other way within the constraints provided by these structures. The present form of the English dictionary is the product of a specific history, in which ideologies of the language and its role in the world constantly interact with the evolution of the forms and structures through which the language is represented. In the following chapters, we will turn to a more detailed examination of the evolution of centre–periphery structures within the monolingual English dictionary in their historical and ideological contexts.

4

The monolingual English dictionary up to Johnson

The history of the English dictionary has been thoroughly explored in several works (see, for example, Starnes and Noyes, 1946/1991; McArthur, 1986; Green, 1996). Green’s study is both rich in textual and biographical detail and in its treatment of the social contexts in which the English dictionary has developed; McArthur’s work is particularly valuable in that it locates the history of the dictionary within the more general historical development of reference science. It is not my intention to provide a more detailed or authoritative version of this history in this book. Instead, I wish to focus on an issue that has yet to be adequately treated in histories of the dictionary: the relationship between the history of the English dictionary and the history of the English language. My argument will be that dictionaries have played a much greater role in the construction of the English language as an object of social and linguistic knowledge than is typically acknowledged. The history of the language is in many respects the history of the language as it has been represented in the form of the dictionary. The history of the English dictionary, I will argue, is thus the history of a particular form of representation in which interaction between content and structure is both conditioned by and productive of the discursive contexts in which it has developed.

Dictionaries and the history of the language It is readily assumed that the English language must have a history of some kind. However, as we have argued that a language can only be made known through its metalinguistic and semiotic representation, we might equally argue that the history of the language is inseparable from its representation in the works of linguistic historians. Moreover, the nature of this history is conditioned by the current forms of its representation, such that it invariably appears as an account of the processes that have caused the language to be as it is today. The history of the language both explains and justifies current representations of the language as representations of objective fact. Leith (1996: 95) observes that ‘the most familiar story of the English language, as told by linguistic historians, was mainly constructed in the nineteenth century, and … draws particularly on nineteenthcentury ideas of national identity’. This story is typically the story of the

62 The monolingual English dictionary standard language. As Harris (1988) has shown, however, ‘standard English’ is itself essentially a nineteenth-century idea, which achieved an ideal form of representation in the OED. In the OED and in the history of the language more generally, the standardisation of the language became less a process concerned with discourse on language than one that occurred more or less naturally within the language itself. The importance of the history of the English language within the field of English studies has undoubtedly diminished in the twentieth century. But histories of English continue to be produced and often reproduce nineteenthcentury assumptions about the identity of the language with its standardised forms. Blake’s (1996) history of the language is radical in a number of respects, especially in its periodisation, but in others is highly representative of the characteristic approach to its subject matter. It is, like most of its predecessors, ethnocentric in regard both to the geography and history of the language. Beginning with the question of what ‘English’ means, Blake argues: To most people today ‘English’ indicates the variety of the language known as Standard English – a variety characterised by the written form which is highly regulated. If one was seeking to learn English today, the appropriate goal would be to aim at a mastery of this variety. Consequently, a history of the English language might be thought to explain how Standard English arose and has developed since then. (Blake, 1996: 1) The assumption that most people consider English to be Standard English is remarkable in itself. More remarkable still, however, is an implicit assumption, which only becomes apparent as we read on, that ‘Standard English’ is equivalent to the standard language of England. Blake goes on to explain that in addition to Standard English there are also many other varieties, including the rural and urban dialects of England, the English of Wales, Scotland and Ireland, Standard American and regional varieties within the United States, varieties in the former British colonies and English as a world ‘lingua franca’ for commerce and science. For reasons that are not fully explained, Blake states that his history of the language: … cannot contain details of the history of all the varieties which generally go under the umbrella description of English today. For the most part it must focus on the development of that variety known as Standard English, though it must look outside that variety from time to time, if for no other reason than that other varieties have had some influence on the standard. But one should not expect to find in a book of this sort detailed information about the Somerset dialect or of the New Zealand variety of English except in so far as they impinge on the nature and status of Standard British English itself. (Blake, 1996: 4)

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It is of course the right of any author to limit the scope of his study. The point of interest, however, is that Blake, like many historians of the English language, does not simply propose a history of Standard British English. He also arranges regional and international varieties into a hierarchy that justifies the treatment of the history of Standard British English as the history of the English language itself. The identification of the English language with its standard British variety is a geographical form of ethnocentrism shared by British histories of the language and British dictionaries. Ethnocentrism also has a temporal dimension, however, which consists in the projection of the categories of the present onto the past. In ethnocentric histories, the past is seen as a series of events that inexorably lead up to the present. It is the present that explains the past, rather than the past that explains the present. Harris (1988) observes that the OED’s first entry for the term ‘standard English’ was accompanied by a single quotation from the proposals for the dictionary itself. Subsequently, OED2 added an earlier quotation from 1836 and Bailey (1991: 3) claims, without supporting citations, that the word was applied to prestige varieties of languages from the early eighteenth century on. The notion of a standard language clearly carries with it connotations of prestige and the process of standardisation involves the selection of a prestige variety, its refinement and homogenisation, and its dissemination beyond the confines of the group to which it originally belonged. The emergence of a standard is thus a development that belongs to the domain of discourse on language. The history of a standard language is not, therefore, a natural history of the evolution of linguistic forms, but one that involves explication of the discursive processes through which the standard emerges as social reality. For Blake, however, Standard English necessarily has a longer history than the history of its name. Addressing the question of when English ‘began’, he states that: It is probably impossible to answer that question with any accuracy, though we might date the beginning of English from the establishment of the first standard language in England. (Blake, 1996: 3) According to Blake, this occurs in the ninth century during the reign of Alfred. Before this date we have a ‘prehistory of English’. Later, a West Saxon standard prevailed and from the Norman Conquest to the middle of the thirteenth century, ‘we enter a period which has no concept of a standard English’. This is followed by an ‘interregnum’ during which ‘the concept of Englishness remained alive’ and ‘the foundation for the re-creation of a standard existed, even though there was no standard at the time’ (1996: 10). From 1400 onwards, ‘the idea that there should be a single form of ‘‘English’’ based upon the language of London and its environs became predominant’ (1996: 11). In the absence of historical evidence that the word ‘standard’ was used in relation to English before the eighteenth century, we are forced to conclude that Blake is using the word loosely in this account. More importantly he separates the use of the term from the

64 The monolingual English dictionary historical context in which the process of standardisation became a reality within the sociology of the language. We have no particular reason to believe that nineteenth- and twentieth-century concerns with standardisation were concerns of earlier centuries. For example, it is clear that eighteenth-century discourses on language were less concerned with standardisation in its nineteenth- and twentieth-century senses than with ‘fixing’ the language or protecting it from change. Projecting the present-day notion of a Standard English onto the languages of the past suggests, however, that this notion has a long history within the language and that the linguistic developments of the past were, in a teleological sense, directed towards the present. A problem that Blake acknowledges is the fact that at each historical stage both the content and the social base of the ‘standard’ are different. Moreover, although each historical standard is assumed to have been the standard for the region now known as England, it is far from clear that they functioned as standards much beyond the regions in which they were used. These are recurring problems in the history of English. The earliest OED quotation for Standard English, in an anonymous work published in 1836, advances much the same argument as Blake in identifying the English language with the standard form of its time: Within the English pale the matter is sufficiently clear; all agree in calling our standard form of speech the English language, and all provincial deviations from it – at least all that assume a distinct specific character – dialects. The anonymous author goes on to suggest that in the fourteenth century ‘Standard English’ was best spoken in Kent and Surrey, a suggestion which, as Bailey (1991: 4) comments, is ‘not supported by modern scholarship nor one those medieval English speakers would have recognized themselves’. The projection of the notion of the standard language onto the past is thus a procedure that goes on in advance of the evidence. It is, moreover, a necessary procedure if English is to have a unified history. The problem of establishing historical continuity is one of selecting a form of English within each period of history, from the myriad forms available, that can be linked to earlier and later forms. The solution is to locate a particular form of the language from each period at the centre of the language and to relegate others to the periphery, so that the history of the language becomes a history of the natural development of this central form. This discussion of the discursive construction of the history of the English language has two implications in the context of the history of the English dictionary. Modern dictionaries, like the history of English, tend to represent the standard form of the language as if it were the language itself. The dictionary headword is taken to be the canonical form of the word, the development of which the linguistic historian seeks to explain in phonetic, orthographic and semantic terms. The development of the dictionary as a representation of the standard language is, however, an historical development that itself stands in need of explanation.

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A second implication that is of particular relevance to the historical treatment of the early English dictionary concerns the date at which English began. Blake (1996), like other recent linguistic historians, has tended to force the historical continuity of the English language backwards in time. If we accept that the history of Standard English dates back to the ninth century, we must also accept that it pre-dates the English dictionary by several centuries. If, on the other hand, we date its origins much later, for example in the fifteenth century, we are likely to acknowledge a much greater role for the dictionary in the process of standardisation. Since the history of the language is conceptually bound up with the history of its standardisation, we are also likely to acknowledge a role for the dictionary in the construction of the language itself.

The origins of the monolingual English dictionary Historians of the dictionary have identified Cawdrey’s Table Alphabeticall (1604) as the first dictionary to explain English words in English. Milestones along the road to the monolingual dictionary include the Promptorium parvulorum clericorum, attributed to Geoffrey the Grammarian and published at the end of the fifteenth century, although probably compiled 50 years earlier (Green, 1996: 39). The Promptorium was the first dictionary to be based on an English wordlist and its compiler placed English synonyms and explanations before the Latin translations. The English in question was the compiler’s native East Anglia dialect as there was no national standard at the time. Thomas Elyot’s Dictionary of Syr T.E., Knyght (1538) was the first to use the word ‘dictionary’ in its title and is notable for its use of later lexicographical methods. Although it was essentially a scholarly Latin-English dictionary, Elyot’s work was also a patriotic enterprise, supported by and dedicated to Henry VIII, concerned with the codification of English. Elyot’s preface was also the first to proclaim the dictionary as a compendium of knowledge contained within the English language. His dictionary was, he claimed: … a generall collection by the order of letters of all notable countrays, cities, mountains, and ryuers, with theyr true descriptions, boundes, the names and natures of sundry beastes, foules, serpentes, and fysshes: the declaration of a great number of herbes, trees, fruites, gummes, precyouse stones and metalles, whiche before me were neuer of any man (that I can here of ) declared and sette forthe in englyshe … The monolingual dictionary was also preceded by several vernacular bilingual dictionaries, of which the most important were John Palsgrave’s Lesclaircissement de la langue françoyse (1530), designed to help the English learn French, and William Salesbury’s A Dictionary in Englyshe and Welshe (1547), designed to help the Welsh learn English. As Green (1996: 76) succinctly points out, until the beginning of the seventeenth century there were no English dictionaries because, at least in the world of

66 The monolingual English dictionary scholarship, ‘there was still no English’. The possibility of the English dictionary was thus predicated on the existence of a language that could be called ‘English’. Historians of the dictionary have identified a number of factors contributing to its rise in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, including the rise of vernacular English as the language of the court and official documents, the technological development of print and the rise of a print culture, the unification and consolidation of the English national state and the emergence of England as a power in the world. Combined with these factors was the growing complexity of the language, manifested especially in its absorption of Latinate vocabulary and grammar, and the sociolinguistic differentiation within the population of English speakers that followed upon it. A factor that has received less attention, however, is the discursive construction of ‘the English language’ as an object that required representation in the form of the dictionary. Although commentary on English speech and its regional forms is found in English writing from the thirteenth century onwards, it is not until the sixteenth century that this becomes a commentary on the English language itself. This commentary was, moreover, for the first time framed within a debate over the improvement of the language, a debate made possible by the rise of philosophical humanism, which judged language to be the product of human activity rather than an immutable gift of God. Thus, several years after the publication of The Book named the Governor (1531), Elyot wrote that Henry VIII, having received the book, perceived his intention ‘to augment our English tongue, wherby men should as well express most abundantly the thing that they conceive in their hearts (wherefore language was ordained), having words apt for the purpose, as also interpret out of Greek, Latin, or any other tongue into English as sufficiently as out of any one of the said tongues into another’.1 Elyot was an enthusiastic neologiser, who saw the assimilation of Latin and Greek words as one route to linguistic improvement. Others disagreed, however, believing that the language was best preserved in the existing state of its highest forms. In 1580, William Bullokar commented: … whereas men be of opinion, that our language is at this present time in perfect and sensible vse: my opinion is, that it is the great goodnes of God, if the same be now staied in that perfectnes, which may continue as long as letters shal endure … (Bullokar, 1580/1966) The debate over the use of ‘hard’, or ‘inkhorn’, words was to become a key theme of seventeenth-century debate on the language, but there appears to have been little question that improvement implied uniformity. Palsgrave, in the preface to his translation of The Comedy of Acolastus (1540/1937: 10), also dedicated to Henry VIII, expressed the hope that his book would help the speech of his subjects to ‘waxe vniforme, throughe out all your graces domnynions’ and contribute towards making the English tongue ‘remayne more stedy and parmanent in his endurance’. And Puttenham (1584/1936: 145), in an oft-cited

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passage from The Arte of English Poesie, concluded a discussion of the merits of various social and regional forms of speech by recommending as the language for the poet ‘the vsual speach of the Court, and that of London and the shires lying about London within lx. myles, and not much above’. Puttenham’s recommendation, it is worth noting, is based in part on an observation that ‘herein we are already ruled by th’English Dictionaries and other bookes written by learned men’. Although still unknown in its monolingual form, the dictionary had already for Puttenham acquired a standardising force. In reading discussions on the improvement of the English language in the sixteenth century, it is easy to lose sight of what is perhaps the most significant feature of the debate: that the English language was becoming an object of discourse that was capable of discussion. In Puttenham, for example, there is a sense that the concept of English as a ‘language’ needed to be argued and explained: Speech is not naturall to man sauing for his onely habilitie to speake.… But after a speach is fully fashioned to the common vnderstanding, and accepted by consent of a whole countrey and nati™, it is called a language, and receaueth none allowed alteration, but by extraordinary occasions by little and little, as it were insenibly bringing in of many corrupti™s that creepe along with the time.… Then when I say language, I meane the speach wherein the Poet or maker writeth be it Greeke or Latine, or as our case is the vulgar English, and when it is peculiar vnto a countrey it is called the mother speech of that people: the Greekes term it Idioma: so is ours at this day the Norman English. (Puttenham, 1584/1936: 143–4) For Puttenham, ‘speech’ becomes ‘a language’ through the ‘consent’ of the nation, in other words through a discourse in which the language is constituted as something particular to the nation. It is, moreover, no accident that among those who played a leading role in this discourse were individuals such as Elyot, Bullokar2 and Palsgrave, who were also inclined towards grammar and lexicography as fields in which the forms of ‘the language’ could be represented for all to see. The late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries were also a period of intense colonial activity. The publication of Cawdrey’s Table Aphabeticall in 1604 followed Drake’s first voyages to the West Indies by 34 years and his circumnavigation of the globe by 27 years. The Gambia had been settled in 1588 and the East India Company chartered in 1600. Three years after its publication, the first permanent English settlement was established in North America at Jamestown and 2 years later 12,000 English and Scots Protestants settled in Ulster. The linguistic contact involved in these early overseas enterprises had little immediate impact on the English language and the contents of Cawdrey’s dictionary give little indication that they were even taking place. However, colonialism also subjected the English language to the gaze of its European competitors, a gaze that was internalised in the writings of English commentators. The Elizabethan

68 The monolingual English dictionary national ideology of England as the ‘Protestant island fortress’ led to an intellectual climate of linguistic consolidation and improvement ‘in which English could seek to equal if not surpass the achievements of the prestigious Romance languages of Europe, particularly French’ (Howatt, 1984: 75). And, as Leith and Graddol (1996: 151) observe, any European state desiring autonomy needed to have its grammar of the ‘national language’. Early linguistic reference works not only served internal pedagogical purposes, they could also be seen as ‘symbolic of the dignity of English by other Europeans’. In 1599, Samuel Daniel, in his poem Musophilus, also foresaw a future for English as a language of the world: And who in time knowes whither we may vent The treasure of our tongue, to what strange shores This gaine of our best glorie shal be sent, T’inrich vnknowling Nations with our stores? What worlds in th’yet vnformed Occident May come refin’d with th’accents that are ours? And in 1582, Richard Mulcaster, grammarian and advocate of English language education, envisioned a ‘perfit English dictionarie’: It were a thing verie praiseworthie in my opinion, and no less profitable then praiseworthie, if som one well-learned and as laborious a man, wold gather all the words which we vse in our English tung, whether naturall or incorporate, out of all professions, as well learned or not, into one dictionarie, and besides the right writing, which is incident to the Alphabete, wold open vnto varieties therein, both their naturall force, and their proper vse: that by his honest trauell we might be as able to iudge of our own tung, which we haue by rote, as we ar of others, which we learn by rule. (Mulcaster, 1582) It was not until the nineteenth century that Daniel’s and Mulcaster’s visions of the language and the dictionary would begin to approximate to reality3. At the beginning of the seventeenth century, English was far from being the dominant language of the world and the dictionary was far from being a representation of ‘all the words’ of the language. Nevertheless Daniel was able to imagine English as a language with a destiny in the world and Mulcaster was able to imagine the dictionary as a work that would enable the English to judge their own language as if it were a language other than their own. Both are indicative of the beginnings of a reflexive discourse in which the language is viewed and judged as if from the outside. In this sense, the English language as a discursive construct, it might be argued, was from its inception dependent upon its conceptualisation as a language in the world. The monolingual English dictionary thus emerged in a context in which bilingual lexicography was already well established and had begun the task of

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delineating the boundaries of the language, establishing its relations to its neighbours and representing it as a vehicle for knowledge of the world. The earliest monolingual dictionaries had a specific purpose however: to explain the ‘hard words’ of the language to the linguistically insecure. Cawdrey’s Table Alphabeticall, for example, was intended for ‘the benefit and help of Ladies, gentlewomen, or any other unskilful persons’ while Cockeram’s English Dictionarie (1623) was directed at ‘Ladies and Gentlewomen, Clarks, Merchants, young Schollers, Strangers, Travellers, and all such as desire to know the plenty of the English’. The problem that the hard word dictionaries addressed was simply that the English language had become socially divisive and, in its high form, difficult for many of its users to understand. Blount’s Glossographia (1656), for example, had the simple aim of helping its users to ‘understand what they read’. It was no part of the intention of these early dictionary-makers to represent the English language in a comprehensive way. The earliest monolingual dictionaries fell far short of Mulcaster’s vision of the dictionary. They did not ‘gather all the words’ of the language, nor did they attempt to describe the language as a whole. The dictionaries of Cawdrey, Bullokar, Cockeram, Blount and their successors were guided by pedagogical goals. Nevertheless, they established the principle that the English language could be represented for its users not only in the form of the bilingual dictionary or in the abstractions of scholarly discourse on the language, but also in the semiotic form of a list of words and their definitions.

Pseudo-bilingualism in early monolingual dictionaries of English Early English dictionaries did not describe the English language, in the modern lexicographical sense of the word, for three reasons: they covered only a small portion of the known vocabulary; they excluded most of the common words of the language; and in some cases they included many words coined by the compiler himself. They also had as much in common with their bilingual predecessors as they did with their monolingual successors. Hulbert (1968: 16) suggests that ‘dictionaries which explained English words by English equivalents could not derive directly from the bilingual ones’. However, the early monolingual dictionaries tended to inflate their wordlists by anglicising items from the wordlists of Latin-English dictionaries. They also borrowed definitions of Latin words from earlier dictionaries to apply to their anglicised equivalents. Aside from the genealogical link with the bilingual dictionary, these dictionaries had a quasi-bilingual function. They translated items from the high code of the day into a code more readily accessible to their readers. This high code was, moreover, in respect to its difficulties, only one step removed from the high Latin code of earlier centuries. The historical dividing line between the bilingual and monolingual English dictionaries may therefore have been less clear in the context of its time than it appears today.

70 The monolingual English dictionary According to statistics drawn from the Chronological English Dictionary (ChronED, 1970) by Görlach (1991: 137), the 60 years from 1570 to 1630 were peak years for neologisation in English. In the context of these changes, Osselton (1990: 1950) describes the seventeenth-century dictionary as ‘a prop to the linguistically insecure, baffled by the highly heterogeneous vocabulary of their native language’. For the mass of the people to be baffled by their own language implies a severe, if temporary, diglossia, within which the monolingual dictionary found its niche in the downward (social) and outward (regional) spread of the high code. Thus, McArthur describes early dictionary compilers as being not recorders of usage, but ‘active participators in the process of transferring the word-store of Latin wholesale into their own language’. Their aims are described in social terms: These men possessed, it would appear, one consistent trait: they sought (in both the spirit of both Renaissance and Reformation) to broaden the base of the educated Elect. Their works were for the non-scholarly, for the wives of the gentry and the bourgeoisie, for merchants and artisans and other aspirants to elegance, education and power. They offered access to the new high English to many who felt discontented with the old low variety. (McArthur, 1986: 87) When seventeenth-century dictionary compilers were not engaged in neologisation themselves, they spread the neologisms of other writers by explaining them to the ‘semi-educated’ (Osselton, 1990: 1949) and as these neologisms passed from dictionary to dictionary they became more firmly embedded in the conventional metalinguistic account of the language. We may also question whether early monolingual dictionaries really ‘explained English words by English equivalents’. Their wordlists contained an ever-increasing number of ‘hard words’ defined by words which would have been more familiar to their users, but definitions tended to take the form of single-word equivalents rather than explanations of meaning. An interesting example of the bilingual principle applied to the early monolingual dictionary is found in Cockeram’s three-part dictionary, which was subtitled ‘An Interpreter of Hard English Words’. In addition to the conventional hard word dictionary, Cockeram also included a volume listing ‘vulgar words’ with equivalents appropriate to ‘more refined and elegant speech’. His dictionary was, in effect, a two-way translation dictionary for a single language. The single-word equivalent belongs to the tradition of the bilingual definition, and for this reason the typical entry in early monolingual dictionaries may best be described as ‘pseudobilingual’. The early monolingual English dictionary lacked many of the qualities expected of a modern dictionary. In particular, it was far from being a representation of the language as a coherent object describable in its own terms. It was, however, from its inception, a mechanism for the structured representation of the language through the manipulation of its codes: high and low, Latinate

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and Anglo-Saxon. At the heart of this mechanism was the technique of the pseudo-bilingual definition, which articulated relationships between codes as relationships between the wordlist and its defining vocabulary. The technique of pseudo-bilingual definition also allowed the dictionary to find its pedagogical niche as linguistic mediator between the ‘educated’ and the ‘uneducated’. This point is worth emphasising because pseudo-bilingual definition remains important to the articulation of the relationships between centre and periphery in the modern dictionary. Early dictionaries did not represent the language in centre–periphery terms. However, as the dictionary evolved hard words were shifted to the periphery of the dictionary where they were joined first by dialect and cant and later by internationalisms. The common words of the language, that had functioned only as the defining vocabulary in the early dictionary, joined the wordlist to form the centre of the language. The relationship between core and periphery in the dictionary became, and remains, a pseudo-bilingual relationship as peripheral terms were essentially translated into their core equivalents.

Branding in early English dictionaries A second technique developed in early dictionaries, with implications for centre– periphery structures in the modern dictionary, was the practice of ‘branding’ words considered unsuitable for general use with symbols such as the dagger (†) or asterisk (*). Branding is the subject of a detailed study by Osselton (1958), who observes that the practice began with Phillips’ New World of English Words (1658) and ended with Martin’s Lingua Britannica Reformata (1749). In the seventeenth century the branded words mainly represented the excesses of neologism. In the eighteenth century attention turned to dialect and ‘low’ words, but by this time the practice of branding had begun to die out. Branding was, in Osselton’s words, ‘a method which came to nothing’ (1958: 6). It can, however, be seen as a precursor to the practice of labelling routinely applied to dialect and international items in the modern dictionary. Phillips stated in the preface to the first edition of his dictionary that he had omitted from the wordlist a number of words ‘so monstrously barbarous and insufferable that they are not fit to be mentioned’. He also wrote that the dictionary contained some words that he would not recommend, but which nevertheless stood in need of explanation. Of these, he wrote: I have set my mark upon them, that he who studies a natural and unaffected stile may take notice of them, either in discourse or in writing. In Phillips, therefore, we have the earliest example of exclusion and partial exclusion of words from the wordlist of an English dictionary used as a means of conveying the compiler’s attitude towards them. The goals of early English lexicographers were not simply pedagogical. They also sought to impose their own influence on the shape of the developing language, whether by pushing

72 The monolingual English dictionary forward or holding back the pace of neologisation. Phillips was the first to find the means to exercise this influence through the structure of the dictionary itself. Not only was he the first to use branding as a semiotic device, he was also the first to discuss what he had excluded from the dictionary. The force of both techniques was unequivocally condemnatory, but they were of necessity crude mechanisms. Phillips’ preface mentions and condemns only one excluded item (suicide), assuming perhaps that the reader would interpret the exclusion of similar neologisms accordingly. For branded words, the brand was the sole sign of condemnation and the number of branded items was less than 200 out of a total of approximately 11,000. In later editions of Phillips’ dictionary the number of branded words increased. With the addition of an appendix of ‘such affected and Barbarous words as are advis’d to be cautiously or not at all us’d’ to the fourth edition (1678), Phillips introduced the supplementary wordlist as a new means of partially excluding words from the wordlist of the dictionary, a technique that has subsequently been used for lists of regional words. Branding continues in Kersey’s revision of Phillips (1706), expanded to approximately 38,000 headwords, and in his own Dictionarium Anglo-Britannicum (1708). In Bailey’s Universal Etymological English Dictionary (1727), the technique of branding took on an extra dimension as, for the first and last time in an English dictionary, the compiler chose to systematically divide the wordlist into items that were approved (*) or to be avoided (†).4 The technique is of interest for it suggests that the dictionary had not yet reached the stage where the simple inclusion of a word in the wordlist could be taken as a sign of approval. The use of the asterisk to mark approval removed any uncertainty in the mind of the reader. The technique could also be interpreted in the light of growing concern for ‘completeness’ in the dictionary, which reflected an awareness that the wordlist now represented an entity that needed to be placed in some kind of ordered relationship to the language from which it was drawn. Although the technique of marking approval was short-lived, it represents a stage in the evolution of the dictionary as a sign for the language. It is at this point that the dictionary first lays claim to the right to construct the lexicon of the language as an internally differentiated object. At the same time, systematic use of overt differentiating markers suggested a lack of confidence in the readers’ acceptance of this claim. Soon, the use of markers of approval and disapproval would become redundant as the dictionary’s right to stand for the language became recognised as the norm. The main object of branding in late seventeenth-century and early eighteenth-century dictionaries was affectation in language, which was seen as a danger to the unlettered imitator of authors who adopted high-flown styles. Although Phillips was responsible for the first branding of an internationalism (the Urdu word bangue: ‘a pleasant drink used in the Eastern countreys’) in his third edition of 1671, this appears to have been the exception rather than the rule. Regional dialect was hardly significant as an object of branding at first, although it was to become so in the branded volume of Bailey’s dictionary, in which Osselton (1958: 101) estimates that approximately 550 items are

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condemned for being dialect, obsolete or low. Since the demise of branding in the mid-eighteenth century, symbols have re-emerged in the dictionary from time to time and the use of descriptive labels has become widespread. Osselton argues that the purpose of labelling in the descriptive dictionary is to ‘record’ rather than ‘warn’, although he also recognises that the distinction is problematic because readers may interpret descriptive signs as normative signs. Nevertheless, Osselton, referring to the use of an asterisk to mark items of US English in the fourth edition of the Concise Oxford Dictionary (COD4, 1952), insists that ‘even though the majority of his readers may discriminate against words prefixed by this sign, it remains descriptive: the prejudices of his readers are not to be blamed upon the compiler’ (1958: 120). Although we may accept that branding represents a ‘unique authoritarian stage in the development of the dictionary’ (1958: 121), Osselton’s view may underestimate the extent to which dictionary conventions rely upon the inferential powers of their readers. It does not seem entirely unreasonable to suggest that branding in dictionaries died out because it became redundant for readers who were capable of drawing their own evaluative conclusions from non-evaluative labels.

The complete English dictionary The most evident trend in the evolution of the history of the English dictionary in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries is the rapid increase in the size of the wordlist. Table 4.1 (based on estimates in Green, 1996; Osselton, 1990; and Starnes and Noyes, 1946/1991) shows the approximate number of headwords in several of the major English dictionaries of the period. The growth of the wordlist was in part a cumulative process. The number of words increased steadily as each new dictionary absorbed the contents of its predecessors and added a little more. For dictionary publishers, the size of the wordlist was also a selling point in a competitive market. The emphasis on size, however, reflected a particular view of the dictionary’s relationship to the language. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the ‘copiousness’ of English, which involved notions of the size of its vocabulary, its openness to new words and its fitness for the expression of any idea, was considered a quality that distinguished it from its European neighbours. By steadily increasing the size of the wordlist, dictionary-makers reflected the copiousness of the language in the copiousness of their dictionaries. Indeed, in the title of one important dictionary of the period, Gouldman’s Copious Dictionary in Three Parts (1664), this quality of the language becomes a quality of the dictionary itself. As the size of the dictionary increased, it began to take on the task of representing the best qualities of the language. In the mid-seventeenth century, for the first time the dictionary becomes a representation, albeit a fairly crude one, of the language as it was conceived at the time. The development of this relationship between the dictionary and the language is also apparent in the titles of dictionaries, the ways in which dictionary prefaces described the English language and in the growing importance of etymology.

74 The monolingual English dictionary Table 4.1 Estimated number of entries in English dictionaries, 1600–1755 Dictionary Cawdrey (1604) Bullokar (1616) Phillips (1658) Coles (1676) Phillips/Kersey (1706) Bailey (1721) Bailey (1730) Bailey (1736) Martin (1749) Johnson (1755)

No of entries 2,560 5,000 11,000 25,000 38,000 40,000 48,000 65,000 24,500 40,000

Up to the last decade of the seventeenth century, dictionary titles (if they were not in Latin) typically began with the indefinite article, a or an: for example, Cawdrey’s A Table Alphabeticall, Bullokar’s An English Expositor and Coles’ An English Dictionary (1676). Cockeram’s The English Dictionarie was the exception to the rule, but the indefinite article was used in its subtitle, An Interpreter of Hard English Words. Seventeenth-century dictionaries also tended to describe the object of their attentions as ‘English words’ (e.g., Phillips’ The New World of English Words) rather than ‘the English language’, reflecting the fact that they were concerned with the explanation of individual words rather than the representation of the vocabulary of the language as a coherent entity. In the eighteenth century, dictionaries began to call themselves ‘the dictionary’: for example, Bailey’s retitled The Universal Etymological English Dictionary (1727) and Wesley’s The Complete English Dictionary (1753). Johnson’s A Dictionary of the English Language (1755), although it declined the use of the definite article for itself, was the first dictionary to use ‘the English language’ in its title, a phrase that was soon to become the norm in Kenrick’s A New Dictionary of the English Language (1773), Ash’s The New and Complete Dictionary of the English Language (1775), Sheridan’s A General Dictionary of the English Language (1780) and Walker’s A Critical Pronouncing Dictionary and Expositor of the English Language (1791). Although these changes in dictionary titles do not necessarily reflect changes in the contents of dictionaries, they are evidence that the dictionary was coming to see itself as the legitimate bearer of the right to represent ‘the language’ in textual form. Reference to size in the titles of dictionaries first appears in two EnglishLatin Latin-English dictionaries, Gouldman’s A Copious Dictionary in Three Parts (1664) and Holyoake’s A Large Dictionary in Three Parts (1677). The first reference to completeness comes in J.K.’s A New English Dictionary (1702), subtitled A compleat collection of the most proper and significant words, commonly used in the language. This was elaborated upon in Bailey’s Dictionarium Britannicum (1730), subtitled A more compleat universal etymological English dictionary than any extant, and in the patently exaggerated claims of Barlow’s subtitle, Containing a copious explanation of all the words in the English language. The concern with completeness is also evident in dictionary definitions of the word ‘dictionary’ as ‘a collection of all the

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words of a language’, which first appears in Kersey’s Dictionarium AngloBritannicum (1708) and later in Bailey’s Universal Etymological English Dictionary (1721) and Dictionarium Britannicum (1730) (Hayashi, 1978: 90). As the size of the dictionary grew, so did the notion that it was representative of the language as a whole. At the same time as they magnified the role of their dictionaries, dictionary compilers also began to glorify the language that was the object of their labours (Hayashi, 1987: 96–7). Thus, Phillips (1658) wrote that he was persuaded that English ‘gives not place to any Modern Language, spoken in Europe’ and Kersey (1708) described English as ‘so superlatively Eminent, even above most other European languages, for its copiousness, Elegancy, variety of Phrases, and other admirable Beauties’. These were, of course, routine expressions of the linguistic nationalism of the time. Of particular interest, however, is the way in which dictionary prefaces began to describe the language in terms that were characteristic of the form that it took in the dictionary itself. Bailey, in his preface to the second edition of the Dictionarium Britannicum (1736) described the qualities of English at length: As to the Qualities of the present English Tongue, it is allow’d to be the closest, most chaste and reserv’d in its Diction of all the Modern Languages; and also the most just and severe in its Ornaments, and also the honestest, most open and undesigning: it will not bear double Meanings, nor can it palliate or hide Nonsense; bad sense and good English being inconsistent. Characteristically, Bailey described English as a language that was competitive on the world stage. More interesting are his metaphors, in which the qualities of the language are intertwined with the form of its representation in the dictionary. Honesty, absence of double meanings and intolerance of nonsense were the supreme characteristics of the English language, not as it was, but as it appeared in the idealised and structured form of the dictionary. From Blount’s Glossographia (1656) onwards, the larger dictionaries typically included etymologies and the last quarter of the seventeenth century saw the publication of two important etymological dictionaries, Skinner’s Etymologicon Linguae Anglicanae (1671) and the anonymously compiled Gazophylacium Anglicanum (1689). As early dictionary definitions of the word etymology show, for the lexicographer of the time, ‘to trace the development of the meaning of a word from its origin is to explain the true sense of the word in question’ (Hayashi, 1978: 53). This conception of the relationship between meaning and etymology was rooted in a widespread acceptance of the biblical account of the origin of languages, according to which all languages descended from a single original model.5 Etymology gave the English language a history that could be traced back to the origins of language, a point made by Blount in his spurious etymology of the word babble:

76 The monolingual English dictionary … to Bable or babble, to twattle or speak confusedly, which word Bable Verstegan urges as a proof that our old Saxon Language is as ancient as the Tower of Babel. The dictionary was the natural site for the representation of etymologies and, fanciful as most etymologies were until the advent of the comparative method in the nineteenth century, they played an important role in establishing the privileged position of the dictionary as the work in which the history of the language was worked out. Etymology also played an important role in the evolution of the dictionary as a work that defined the central or essential words of the language, because words were increasingly seen as belonging to the language only to the extent that they possessed etymology. Thus according to Osselton (1958: 166), Johnson, whose dictionary was far more selective than its predecessors, ‘frequently rejects as “cant” words whose origins he could not discover, and “lack of etymology” was a slur equally affecting cant, fashionable slang, local technical terms, colloquialisms generally and dialect proper’. Although the size of the wordlist increased steadily in the first 150 years of the dictionary, it is important to note that within this development lay a changing conception of the dictionary’s role in relation to the language. The watershed in this development was J.K.’s New English Dictionary (1702), which was noteworthy not only as the first dictionary to aim to include ‘the bulk of the English language’ (Starnes and Noyes, 1991: 70), but also as the first to deliberately exclude many words that had appeared in earlier dictionaries.6 In his preface, J.K. criticised Coles (1676) for including words from foreign languages and from Old English that were ‘never used in English’ as well as ‘others that are peculiar to distinct Counties of England, Scotland, or Ireland, and never us’d or understood any where else’. He also criticised his predecessors for including ‘very few of the genuine and common significant Words of the English tongue’, stating that his own collection contained ‘all the most proper and significant English Words, that are now commonly us’d either in Speech, or in the familiar way of Writing Letters, omitting at the same time, such as are obsolete, barbarous, foreign or peculiar to the several Counties of England … ’.7 J.K.’s dictionary was thus not only the first to describe itself as ‘complete’. It was also the first to express the notion of completeness in the form of a particular representation of the language as a whole. J.K. and his successors deliberately excluded words that readers would not understand and included common words that would be well known to any reader with the consequence that by the mid-eighteenth century the number of words in the wordlists of major dictionaries began to decline. This practice was alien both to the bilingual dictionary,8 which began from the premise that no word in the language translated would necessarily be known, and to the hard word dictionary, which was oriented towards helping semi-literate readers who could be assumed to have little difficulty with the common words of the language. Although never clearly justified or explained in terms of the goals of the dictionary, the practice of selecting words by beginning with the known and

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moving outwards towards the unknown was to become the norm. In a practical sense, the dictionary remained oriented towards the explanation of the correct use of words, but at the same time, and almost imperceptibly, it became more directly oriented towards the representation of the language as a structured object of knowledge. The dictionary was no longer simply ‘large’ or ‘copious’. It was ‘complete’ in the sense that it represented the essential core of the language. This conception of completeness heralded a new concern with whether words belonged to the language or not, manifested not only in the treatment of etymology, but also in the treatment of dialect.

Regional dialect in dictionaries up to Johnson Regional dialect words were first included in a dictionary in Skinner’s Etymologicon, whose definitions were in Latin and whose material was largely self-collected and confined to Lincolnshire (Wakelin, 1987). A more widely acknowledged early source is Coles’ English Dictionary (1676), in which the dialect material was principally based on John Ray’s Collection of English Words not Generally used (1674). Wakelin (1987: 158) points out that early interest in regional dialects was only tenuously linked to lexicography. The study of dialect in the seventeenth century was motivated by antiquarian interest in the Anglo-Saxon roots of English and formed an aspect of nationalist discourse on language which located the strength of the English language less in its imported refinements than in its Anglo-Saxon word stock. The study of Anglo-Saxon language and culture was also associated with Puritanism, which celebrated the Anglo-Saxon period as a golden age of freedom from the Norman yoke. Puritan discourse on the merits of dialect also reflected the broad social base of the movement and its vision of English as a national language capable of uniting all English people in the eyes of God (Leith, 1996). Ray’s (1674) collection is worthy of note both as the first example of an English dialect dictionary and as the first example of an English dictionary to question the ideological norm (Gladstone, 1991). Ray was principally a botanist and natural philosopher, whose scientific work was intimately bound up with his religious and political views. He began work on his dialect collection only after he had been proscribed as tutor at Cambridge University following the Restoration. Deprived of financial security, Ray turned to several like-minded patrons for support of his dialect-collecting activities. Ray's dictionary was the result of his field trips and of the efforts of several collaborators, whose work continued throughout the latter part of the century, leading to the publication of a considerably expanded second edition in 1691. The first edition was published by Thomas Burrell, a prosperous Sussex farmer and former student of Ray’s, and dedicated not to royalty but to his patron and confidant Peter Courthope, an ironmaster. For Ray, dialect was an aspect of the natural history of the localities in which they were rooted and it is clear that he and his collaborators took dialect words seriously, not as curiosities but as elements of a code rooted in the lives of the common people. His compilation of compact and comparable lists from

78 The monolingual English dictionary different regions also represented dialect as a unified code. For Gladstone, Ray’s collection raised important questions about the nature of authority in the language, as the dialect speaker became the authority who spoke through the dictionary compiler: The republican questioning of authority – that is to say, standard authority – is implicit in this work. It is an implicitly oppositional code. (Gladstone, 1991: 121) Although Ray was a radical, not a revolutionary, who placed the scientific importance of his work above its political importance, his dictionary nevertheless stood in opposition to the prevailing conception of the role of the dictionary in its time. Ray’s collection had a lasting importance for English lexicography, since it was to become the source of much of the dialect material recorded in Kersey’s and Bailey’s dictionaries and in the OED. According to Osselton (1992: 107), dialect items comprised 3.25 per cent of the headwords in Coles and 1.11 per cent of those in Bailey (1721). Like branding, dialect largely disappeared from the English dictionary with Johnson, but its absence was only temporary. Numerous collections of dialect words were published from the late eighteenth century onwards, culminating in the publication of the English Dialect Dictionary (EDD) (1898–1905). Many items from the EDD were incorporated into the OED and regional dialect continues to appear in late twentieth-century dictionaries. Osselton (1992), for example, estimates that dialect words comprised 0.56 per cent of the CollED2 (1986), 0.17 per cent of the COD7 (1990) and 2.41 per cent of Chambers English Dictionary (ChamED7, 1988). Regional dialect is, therefore, an ever-present feature of the dictionary from the late seventeenth century onwards and its continued presence needs to be explained in the light of the progressive identification of the English dictionary with the standard language. Osselton remarks that, in his Address to the Reader, Ray gave three reasons for the publication of his collection: … first, that he knew of nothing that had already been done of the same kind; second that he thought it might be of help to travellers in the Northern counties; and third, because the words ‘may also afford some diversion to the curious, and give them the occasion of making many considerable remarks’ (Osselton, 1958: 167) Subsequent compilers of general dictionaries failed to offer such cogent reasons for introducing large quantities of Ray’s material into their own work. It is likely that dialect was, at least initially, simply a convenient source from which to expand the wordlist. Some may have shared Ray’s political concerns with the sources of authority in the language. In the late seventeenth century, scholarly opinion on the relationship of dialect to the language was divided. For some

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regional dialect represented a window on the Anglo-Saxon origins of the language, while for others it was mere ‘barbarism’. A knowledge of dialect was of practical use for parsons posted to the country and in the collection of tithes. From the first stages of its introduction into the dictionary, however, regional dialect was represented as something other than the language proper. From the outset, dialect items were marked within the structure of the dictionary in a variety of ways. In Skinner’s dictionary, for example, headword and definition were separated by specifications of usage restriction such as ‘vox toti Septrionali Angliae communis’, ‘vox agro Lincoln’, ‘vox agro Linc. usitatissima’, ‘vox teste Somnero Occidentali Angliae praesertim agro Somerset’. In Coles (following Ray), headword and definition were separated by abbreviations of the names of counties (Lanc., Nf., Li., etc.) and regions (No., E., etc.). In Kersey’s Dictionarium Anglo-Britannicum the abbreviations were parenthesised and in Bailey (1721) they appeared after the definition. Dialect items were thus the first object of the descriptive label as a technique distinct from the brand. Labelled entries also took on a pseudo-bilingual form in which the headword was dialectal and the definition non-dialectal (e.g., Coles: ‘Crawly-mawly, Nf. pretty well’). Such entries were interleaved with the older form of pseudo-bilingual entry in which the headword was ‘hard’ and the definition ‘common’. In consequence, once regional dialect had entered the dictionary, the common defining words of the language became identified with a non-dialectal core through which both the ‘hard’ and ‘dialect’ words of the language could be made known. The reader of the dictionary was implicitly a non-dialect speaker, or at the very least a dialect speaker who did not care to be associated too closely with his or her regional dialect in cultivated speech and writing. Several other aspects of the early treatment of dialect are noteworthy. First, there was an early ambiguity between lexical and encyclopedic definition of dialect words. Did Kersey’s ‘Snag … In Sussex, a snail’, for example, mean that snag was the Sussex word for snail or that there was a particular kind of snail found in Sussex that was called a snag?9 Second, many dialect entries were clearly encyclopedic, such as Kersey’s kipe: … a Basket made of Osiers, broader at Bottom, and narrow’d by Degrees to the Top, but left open at both Ends; which is used for taking of Fish, particularly at Otmore in Oxford-shire, where this manner of Fishing is called Kiping, and going to Kipe. This definition amounted to an encyclopedic description with a little usage information tagged on at the end. Third, the geographical categories used did not necessarily correspond to clearly identified linguistic boundaries. As Osselton (1992: 110) observes, even some 300 years after their first inclusion in general dictionaries, the basic research on the distribution of even the commonest dialect words has yet to be carried out. Fourth, and partly as a result of their inability to place dialect items accurately, lexicographers tended to rely on vague labels such as ‘country’ or ‘dialect’. Lastly, there was a tendency to conflate regional dialect

80 The monolingual English dictionary with social dialect, and with colloquial usage more generally, such that the ‘dialect’ label was to become in Osselton’s words ‘as much a social/educational discriminator as a vague indicator of regional use’. It was mainly through the representation of regional dialect that the notion of a linguistic centre and its periphery first appeared in the dictionary. The inclusion of dialect in early dictionaries, however, was dependent upon open policies of inclusion that were to change radically in the early eighteenth century as the focus of the dictionaries’ attention shifted to the literary language. As we have seen, J.K.’s New English Dictionary excluded words ‘such as are obsolete, barbarous, foreign or peculiar to the several Counties of England’ and in Bailey’s Universal Etymological English Dictionary some 550 words were branded as dialect, cant or low. But in neither case was dialect picked out for special treatment. Rather, it was only one of a number of categories of words deemed not to belong to the language proper. The tendency to conflate regional dialect with other questionable linguistic categories in the dictionary thus begins in the early eighteenth century, and can be seen as functional in terms of the consolidation of an unquestionable lexical core of the language. The keyword was ‘barbarous’, which was to become for a period the catch-all term for any doubtful category of words. The term was certainly condemnatory, but more importantly it signified an alienation from the core of the language within which further discrimination was redundant. The fact that words were almost carelessly assigned to vague categories such as ‘dialect’, ‘cant’ and ‘low’ only confirmed their alienation. Ray’s collection marked the beginnings of a dialect-collecting tradition that generated a number of dialect dictionaries in the course of the eighteenth century. According to Gladstone, however, there was a crucial difference between Ray’s work and that of his successors: Ray (and his circle of collectors locally affiliated by cultural accommodation or deep knowledge) saw the dialect repertory as an includable lexicon. Many other lexicographers viewed the forms of self-expression of these locally hallowed regional codes through prurient or disdainful filters. These codes were seen by the ‘denial’ school as forms of excludable English. (Gladstone, 1991: 126) For the dictionary, regional dialect was to become as much a part of an alien linguistic world as the cant of the criminal underworld, which was also the subject of considerable specialist lexicographical activity in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. When regional dialect was finally brought under the lexicographical control of the monumental EDD at the end of the nineteenth century, the dialect dictionary had become, as Green (1996: 176) describes it, no more than ‘a repository of a dying lexicon’. In spite of J.K.’s stated commitment to its exclusion, dialect remained prominent in early eighteenth-century dictionaries, including Kersey’s own Dictionarium Anglo-Britannicum. Johnson’s Dictionary of the English Language, however, signalled a radically new approach to dialect. In Johnson’s Plan (1747), there was no mention

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of dialect and, although he proposed that barbarous words ‘may be branded with some note of infamy, as they are carefully to be eradicated wherever they are found’ (1747: 189), in the dictionary itself he dispenses with brands and labels altogether in favour of a more discursive definitional style. Johnson is said to have excluded from his dictionary provincialisms, Scots words and words from the colonies (Görlach, 1985), and he is also known not to have included established native American words such as skunk, squaw, moccasin, and loon (Burchfield, 1989: 119). Burchfield also cites Johnson’s description of American English as ‘a tract of corruption’ in a review of Lewis Evan’s Map and Account of the Middle Colonies in America as indicative of his attitude towards the colonial English of his day. As Wakelin (1987: 166) observes, however, Johnson did include some items of regional vocabulary, including: glaver … to flatter, to wheedle.… It is still retained in Scotland.… A low word kirk … A church. An old word yet retained in Scotland tole … (This seems to be some barbarous provincial word.) To train; to draw by degrees. In his treatment of dialect, Johnson replaced brands and labels with discursive comments, which often contain (in conjunction with the words ‘provincial’ or ‘dialect’) words such as ‘barbarous’, ‘cant’, ‘corrupt’, ‘erroneous’, ‘false’, ‘improper’, ‘inelegant’, ‘low’, ‘ludicrous’, ‘mistaken’, ‘vitious’ and ‘vulgar’ (Hayashi, 1978: 102). Dialect words were, moreover, only included if they were recorded in the context of the literary language and only if they were found in literary works that were a century or more old. Dialect words were not included in Johnson’s dictionary for their own sake, but largely as a foil for his construction of the literary language, within which dialect was subject to criticism and even scorn. The distinction between regional dialect and ‘barbarous’ words was blurred (note that tole in Johnson is not ‘provincial’ or ‘barbarous’, but both at the same time). And as dialect became less visible in the semiotic structure of the dictionary than it had previously been, the literary core of the language came to the fore. The treatment of dialect in Johnson’s dictionary is, however, only a marginal aspect of its significance for the relationship between the dictionary and the language. It was, nevertheless, an indicator of the degree to which the language as it appeared in the dictionary by the mid-eighteenth century had been divorced from the language ‘as it was’.

Conclusion The publication of Johnson’s dictionary marked a new stage in the history of the English dictionary. The earliest monolingual English dictionaries arose within a

82 The monolingual English dictionary specific historical context of linguistic and sociolinguistic instability, which allowed for the transition from the bilingual to the monolingual form. By the mid-eighteenth century, however, the linguistic and sociolinguistic situation had stabilised, at least to the extent that the hard word dictionary had become largely redundant. Nevertheless, the monolingual form had both survived and prospered. The early history of the English dictionary is thus one of the development of structures and techniques for the representation of a language in its own terms. In the seventeenth century these structures and techniques evolved in the context of debates on the nature of the English language, yet it is probably unjustified to suggest that the representations of the language found in the dictionary exercised any great influence on the course of these debates. With Johnson, however, the dictionary begins to take on a leading role not only in contemporary discourse on the English language, but also in the construction of the language as an object of discourse. Having evolved as a structure within which the words of the language and their inter-relationships could in principle be accommodated, observed and manipulated, the history of the dictionary became a part of the history of the language itself.

5

From Johnson to the OED

By the mid-eighteenth century, the monolingual dictionary had evolved into a structure within which the English language could be represented as a centre– periphery structure. The technique of pseudo-bilingual definition had developed from the bilingual definition and branding and labelling had appeared as mechanisms of partial exclusion from the wordlist. The principle that the dictionary should attempt to cover ‘all the words of the language’ had been established in conjunction with the principle that some categories of words should nevertheless be excluded. Regional dialect had already been identified as one of the categories to be excluded, partially excluded or relegated to the realm of specialist lexicography. Commentators had also begun to recognise the potential of the dictionary to influence the direction of the language. But until the publication of Johnson’s Dictionary of the English Language in 1755, no existing dictionary had seemed adequate to the task. By the middle of the eighteenth century, scholarly criticism of the inadequacies of English dictionaries had become severe. Moreover, the lack of an adequate dictionary was seen as a problem for the language itself. The principal historical significance of Johnson’s dictionary was, therefore, the authority that it obtained over the course of the half-century following its publication. As Johnson acknowledged, the dictionary was far from perfect, but for the first time in the history of English lexicography a dictionary had been produced that was widely accepted by the educated elite as authoritative both in relation to the language and in relation to other dictionaries. Johnson’s dictionary heralded an era, which is perhaps not yet complete, in which the version of the language as it was represented in the most authoritative dictionary of the day, however imperfect that representation might be, was identified with the language itself. At the same time it heralded an era in which dictionaries themselves were hierarchised and assigned roles that corresponded to these versions of the language. In the two centuries that separated the publication of Johnson’s dictionary from that of the OED, the scholarly and commercial practice of English lexicography itself evolved structures corresponding to the structure of the language as it was represented in the dictionary. These structures largely determine the distribution of lexicographical activity in relation to English as an international language today.

84 From Johnson to the OED

Fixing the language The idea that the dictionary could play a role in the consolidation and improvement of a national language was by no means a uniquely English idea. By the end of the seventeenth century, Italy, France and Spain each had their Academy and a dictionary that drew its authority from its sponsorship by the state. But in England, lexicography had developed as a private scholarly and commercial activity so that even the best dictionaries could not be called authoritative in the same political sense. In the late sixteenth century, Mulcaster had called for a dictionary of ‘all the words of the language’ and similar calls for an authoritative dictionary continue to be recorded throughout the seventeenth century. Dryden, in 1693, even linked the fate of the English language itself to the production of such a dictionary: We have yet no English prosodia, not so much a tolerable dictionary, or a grammar; so that our language is in a manner barbarous; … I rather fear a declination of the language, than hope for an advancement of it in the present age. (Cited in Wells, 1973: 39) As Eagleton (1984: 14) observes, in the eighteenth century, literature and literary criticism became the key location for the cementing of a bourgeois identity, or ‘the cementing of a new power bloc at the level of the sign’. In the early part of the century, the intellectual urge for linguistic codification transformed itself into a politically conservative urge to ‘fix’ the language, or protect it from corruption and change. Jonathan Swift’s A Proposal for Correcting, Improving and Ascertaining the English Tongue of 1712 was notable not only for its suggestion that England too should have its academy. In suggesting that the proposed academicians would ‘find many words that deserve to be utterly thrown out of our language, many more to be corrected, and perhaps not a few long since antiquated, which ought to be restored on account of their energy and sound’, Swift indicated the degree to which the English language was now seen as an object susceptible to manipulation and control. In the absence of a state-sponsored academy, however, the task of fixing the language fell upon the dictionary. In the years leading up to the publication of Johnson’s dictionary, Thomas Addison, Alexander Pope, William Warbuton, Ambrose Phillips and many others lamented the absence of ‘a good dictionary’ which would, in Warbuton’s cartographic metaphor, be a ‘Chart or Compass, to guide us through this wide sea of Words’ (Green, 1996: 215).1 The first published dictionary to respond to the call was Benjamin Martin’s Lingua Britannica Reformata (1749). In the preface to his dictionary, Martin denounced his predecessors in characteristic terms, describing the history of the dictionary to date as ‘so far from anything of a progressive improvement, that it is manifestly retrograde, and sinks from its low apex, from bad to very bad indeed’. He also described the ‘pretence of fixing a standard to the purity and perfection of any language’ as ‘utterly impertinent and vain’. Martin’s dictionary

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did, however, prove itself to be both a dictionary of a new kind and one that in many ways matched the standardising purpose in its conception, if not in its execution. First, its wordlist of approximately 24,500 was considerably smaller than those of its predecessors. For the first time, the sheer size of the dictionary did not form part of its claim to pre-eminence. Second, the compilation of the dictionary followed a plan, systematically set out in its preface. Third, Martin evolved and followed a systematic approach to definition and the division and ordering of senses, which was for Starnes and Noyes (1991: 152) ‘the outstanding innovation of Martin’. Above all, Martin’s innovations reflected the birth of concern with the dictionary as a systematically ordered, self-contained world. Although his wordlist was far more selective than that of any of his predecessors, his approach to aspects of the dictionary microstructure transformed his selection into a more systematic representation of the English language than any before him had achieved or wished to achieve. Important as its contribution to the development of lexicographical method was, in retrospect Martin’s dictionary appears only as a prelude to Johnson’s larger work, which stands more squarely within the project of fixing the language. In his Plan for the dictionary, Johnson had placed the proposed work firmly within this project, and in 1754, a year before the publication of the dictionary, Lord Chesterfield wrote: During our free and open trade, many words and expressions have been imported, adopted, and naturalized from other languages, which have greatly enriched our own.… The time for discrimination seems to be now come. Toleration, adoption and naturalization, have run their lengths. Good order and authority are now necessary. (The World, 28 November 1754) In his preface to the dictionary, however, Johnson was to suggest that the lexicographer should be ‘derided’, who ‘shall imagine that his dictionary can embalm his language, and secure it from corruption and decay’. Johnson’s ‘change of heart’ has entered the lore of the history of English lexicography, where it principally serves as a reminder to the moral that the lexicographer can do no more than record and describe the language around him. For Green (1996: 231), Johnson is to be admired for ‘admitting his mistake’ and for ‘echoing a growing belief among lexicographers who, unlike the high-flown theorists of academe, actually worked on dictionaries’. To emphasise Johnson’s acknowledgement of the futility of any attempt to fix the standard of language in use through the dictionary is, however, to underestimate the extent to which he succeeded in fixing the language as it was to be represented in the dictionary in centuries to come. Johnson assimilated many of the lexicographical innovations of his predecessors, including Martin, and the abiding importance of his dictionary lies in part in his success in integrating these innovations within a coherent account of the language. The truly distinctive feature of his dictionary was its use of literary

86 From Johnson to the OED citations to support definitions, a technique borrowed from the Academy dictionaries of Italy and France. Johnson found his sources in the body of published work by the ‘best writers’ of English from Philip Sydney, who died in 1588, to Alexander Pope, who died a decade before the publication of the dictionary. To be sure, he was selective in his choice of texts and less than systematic in their analysis. Johnson is also known to have truncated and altered quotations to suit his purposes. But the significance of his innovation was that for the first time the language represented in the dictionary was something other than the language itself – a corpus of texts that stood between the disorder of English in its everyday contexts of use and the English of the dictionary. Johnson found in his selected texts an idealised and refined version of English that stood for the language at its best. Although Johnson’s dictionary, at approximately 40,000 entries, was larger than Martin’s, it remained somewhat smaller than some of its predecessors. The idea that the dictionary should attempt to represent the language to its fullest extent was decisively, if temporarily, halted and replaced by the idea that dictionary should represent the core of words that incontrovertibly belonged to the language by virtue of their history of refinement in the works of the great writers of the age. Johnson’s dictionary was also a politically conservative work. For Mengham (1993: 113–4), his choice of texts represents ‘a hierarchy among the branches of knowledge in which revealed religion is given an importance far greater than the achievements of human reason’. The dictionary reinforces the political status quo and ‘its technical criteria are designed to exclude insubordination, dissent, subversion – everything that offers to destabilise verbal meanings and social values’. It was also a politically complex work, for as DeMaria (1989: 71) puts it, in contrast to the ‘explicitly ideological or tendentious’ dictionaries and encylopedias written before and after it, in Johnson’s dictionary ‘disparate opinions are displayed as parts of a single definition, and they are reconciled in the overall presentation of a unified language’. For modern lexicographers all this points to the essential weakness of Johnson’s dictionary. His definitions are far from objective or descriptive in the modern sense. Yet this is perhaps to miss the essential point that having constructed his version of the language and exposed it to public view, Johnson made it susceptible to the kinds of discourse that he displayed in his own definitions. Sledd and Kolb make a number of interesting points about Johnson’s theory of language as it was expressed in his Plan for the dictionary: Words, he says, are signs of ideas, imposed by man, not by God, and hence arbitrary and governed by custom. On the other hand, some usages remain barbarous and improper, whatever custom may be and whoever may be cited as authority for them, and here etymology may be rightly invoked to determine propriety; for although every language as a whole is arbitrary, its native structure should not be weakened or distorted by unwise innovation.… Linguistic change, which is often ‘corruption’ will go on, but the good lexicographer will do his stoic best to direct it and to root out the less

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firmly planted ‘improprieties and absurdities’; for the ideal language should be stable, regular, and slow to change. (Sledd and Kolb, 1955: 26–7) Johnson may not have believed that the dictionary could prevent linguistic change. But he did believe that change and diversity were sources of corruption in language and that rational discourse on the forms and meanings of words could delay the process of decay. This view was modern in the context of its times and was supported by Locke’s rationalist doctrines of linguistic improvement. Definition was the key to rational metalinguistic discourse. As Johnson put it in a formulation remarkably prescient of modern critical work, definition was ‘the only way whereby the meaning of words can be known, without leaving room for contest about it’ (italics in original). And definition, of course, finds its natural home in the dictionary. In order for rational discourse on English words to take place, the language also had to be represented coherently in a form in which it was stripped of its synchronic and diachronic diversity. As Johnson developed it, the dictionary thus became a vehicle for linguistic refinement. The semiotic coherence of the dictionary became the instrument through which a particular version of the language – homogeneous, elevated and centred on the refined usage of the English cultural and linguistic elite – could be separated from the disorder of language in use. The centre of the language as it was represented in the dictionary was the vocabulary of the elite. The everyday speech of the common man or woman appeared only in the margins as a reminder that the refined language was ever under threat. The dictionary also became the instrument through which the history of the language became the history of this central version of the language. As it was represented in Johnson’s citations, the history of the English language appeared as a history of refinement that justified the privileged status of the intellectual elite of the London coffee houses as guardians of the language. Johnson’s dictionary, it is worth recalling, retailed at £4.10s and sold fewer than 4,000 copies in its first 10 years. Even the octavo abridgement, published in 1756 at 10 shillings, sold only 40,000 copies over 30 years (Green, 1996: 227–8). Johnson’s version of the language was in the first instance a version designed for the elite. By most accounts, Johnson’s dictionary dominated English lexicography for more than a century after its publication. Hulbert (1968: 21) states that it was ‘at once successful, and for seventy-five years, in one format or another, it was the unquestioned standard of usage’ and Murray began his Oxford Romanes Lecture of June 1900 by observing that for many people Johnson’s dictionary was ‘the Dictionary’. Although Murray’s observation was merely a prelude to his announcement of a new pretender to the crown, Johnson’s work remains respected to this day. Crystal (1987: 109) states that ‘its influence on subsequent lexicography was unequalled’, while Winchester (1998: 89) describes it as ‘a portrait of the language of the day in all its majesty, beauty, and marvellous confusion’. The fact that Johnson’s was not, in fact, a portrait of the language of

88 From Johnson to the OED day, but an idealised construction largely based on pre-Restoration literary works, often escapes modern evaluators of its worth. The success of Johnson’s dictionary, however, can be ascribed to Johnson’s achievement in producing a stable version of the English language for public consumption. The literate public of late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century England, it seems, craved order in language as in society. But the authority that Johnson’s dictionary achieved signified more than this. It also established a hierarchy within lexicography, whereby the dictionary that most successfully represented the cultural centre of the language served as the authority and central reference point for the dictionaries that followed. The success of Johnson’s dictionary heralds the era in which the ‘great’ dictionary of the day becomes the centre of the language itself and the history of the language becomes intertwined with the history of the dictionary. From the mid-eighteenth century onwards, the history of lexicography is in many ways the history of its various branches, punctuated by two great events – the publication of Webster’s American Dictionary of the English Language and of the OED. In most historical accounts, new general monolingual dictionaries are of little significance. In Britain, Ash’s New and Complete Dictionary of the English Language (1775), Richardson’s A New Dictionary of the English Language (1836), Ogilvie’s The Imperial Dictionary of the English Language (1850), Boag’s The Imperial Lexicon of the English Language (1852–3) and Clarke’s A New and Comprehensive Dictionary of the English Language (1855) were all innovative works, but they seem only to mark time until the appearance of the OED. The authority of Johnson’s dictionary was such that, in retrospect, the significant developments of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries appear to take place only in the gaps that it left open. One significant gap that Johnson left unfilled was pronunciation. Neglected in Johnson’s work, pronunciation became an object of lexicographical activity in its own right, notably in the form of Sheridan’s A General Dictionary of the English Language (1780) and Walker’s A Critical Pronouncing Dictionary and Expositor of the English Language (1791), both essentially pronouncing dictionaries that served as a supplement to Johnson’s work. In the late eighteenth-century pronouncing dictionary, linguistic centralisation reached its lexicographical pinnacle. Walker’s dictionary, for example, offered in its subtitle ‘rules to be observed by the natives of Scotland, Ireland and London, for avoiding their respective peculiarities’. According to Hulbert (1968: 24), the popularity of his dictionary was as great as that of Johnson’s, and his work finally eclipsed Sheridan’s because of the argument that Sheridan, as an Irishman, could not be so authoritative an arbiter of English pronunciation as Walker. In largely ignoring everyday speech and writing, Johnson also opened up a space for more popular forms of lexicography. Wesley’s Complete English Dictionary (1753), compiled for his Methodist followers, was an early example of the small popular dictionary, which in a somewhat larger form was to become the commercial staple of late nineteenth- and twentieth-century lexicography. Wesley knew Johnson personally and was presumably aware of the nature of his

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project. With 4,600 entries, Wesley’s dictionary was intended, according to its preface, ‘to assist persons of common sense and no learning to understand the best English authors’. The dictionary was aimed at a market that Johnson’s publishers largely ignored and was based on a conception of reading as selfeducation that was alien to Johnson. Although popular speech and dialect were by the late eighteenth century largely reviled by the linguistic elite – Campbell (1776), for example, described dialect words as an ‘offense against the norm of national use’ – they too were to become objects of lexicographical activity. Grose’s A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue (1785) sold well and went through five editions over a period of 40 years and Wakelin (1987: 169) lists a number of titles of dialect dictionaries published during this period. Dialect and popular speech were, however, in the lexicographical scheme of things subordinate to the version of the language represented in the general dictionary, or, as in the title of Jonathon Boucher’s A Supplement to Dr. Johnson’s Dictionary, or a Glossary of Archaic and Provincial Words (1807), ‘supplementary’ to it. For Crowley (1989: 72), the dominant eighteenth-century conception of the English language functioned ‘not merely to act as an agent of unification for the nation, but to evince national superiority by the very nature of its language’. The English language was the language of the English nation and the language of the nation was the language of the elite. Nationalist discourse on the merits of the English language and its potential role as a language of the world dates back to the sixteenth century. But it was not until the mid-eighteenth century that the nation and the language acquired a dictionary adequate to their destiny. By the late eighteenth century, colonialism was gathering pace and, although it was seldom recognised in discourse on the English language of the time, English had become a language of the world. Dialect and popular speech were not only an offence to the nation, they were also local and necessarily subject to the authority of the national language. The lexicography of these forms of speech was also necessarily relegated to the supplementary dictionary, the appendix or to the margins of the wordlist of the general dictionary. Although the English dictionary was undoubtedly to become more democratic in the course of the nineteenth century, the principle that the core of the language and the core of the dictionary should consist of its most refined forms persisted. In Britain, this core was increasingly known as the ‘standard’ in a recognition of its dual role as a measure of the quality of the language and as the linguistic flag of the nation. Late twentieth-century discourses on the English language have tended to suppress the nationalist and elitist connotations of the term ‘Standard English’. For the early twentieth-century linguist, however, these associations were both clear and entirely legitimate. For the linguistlexicographer Wyld, for example, dialects were ‘backwaters of the great stream of national speech’: This subordinate position of the provincial dialects is the inevitable result of the one immensely predominant form of language, as that of the official

90 From Johnson to the OED classes, and of the most cultivated portion of the community. When one dialect obtains the dignity of becoming the channel of all that is worthiest in the national literature and the national civilization, the other less favoured dialects shrink into obscurity and insignificance. (Wyld, 1907: 357–8) For Wyld, the character of the standard language is not accidental or inherent to its forms, however. Rather, it lies ‘simply in the fact that a more or less deliberate choice is exercised by the speakers in eliminating, or adopting for use this or that particular pronunciation, word, phrase or construction’. Wyld has no hesitation in recognising that the standard language is a superior language. Indeed, he urges that ‘Standard English has an absolute superiority over any other dialect in the high degree of acoustic distinctness which it possesses, compared with the provincial or vulgar forms of English’ (1907: 357; italics in original). Nor does he pretend that the standard language is not a class dialect. On the contrary, it is this that constitutes its strength, since the standard is formed through its refinement in the speech and writing of the class which, by transcending locality, becomes most closely identified with the nation itself. Although few modern lexicographers would see Wyld’s argument as appropriate to the description of late twentieth-century English, the modern general English dictionary nevertheless continues to place the standard language at the centre of the dictionary. Standard English is conceptualised in more democratic terms, but its description proceeds within structures inherited from lexicographers for whom nationalist and class-based conceptions of linguistic refinement and order were both natural and progressive. It was not until the late nineteenth century that British lexicographers began to come to terms with overseas varieties of English. When they did so, they used structures that had been put in place for the centralisation of the standard language and the marginalisation of its dialectal and popular forms. Overseas varieties of English were relegated to supplementary works or to the margins of the dictionary, where they largely remain today. This fact is all the more remarkable when we come to consider the development of American lexicography in the nineteenth century.

Webster and the rise of American lexicography At the turn of the nineteenth century, Samuel Daniel’s poetic vision of English as a language of the world had become part of the standard rhetoric of British imperialism. Bailey (1991: 106–9) has reproduced a number of contemporary quotations of this kind, of which the earliest illustrates the intertwining of ideas of linguistic improvement, European political rivalries and imperial destiny: However, my idea is, that if the English language be cultivated as it ought to be, regulating and improving its harmony, and adapting it, as far as can be with propriety, to the several European dialects, derived from Latin, it will ultimately supersede the French. It is already the most general in America. Its

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progress in the East is considerable; and if many schools were established in different parts of Asia and Africa to instruct the natives, free of all expence, with various premiums of British manufacture to the most meritorious pupils, this would be the best preparatory step that Englishmen could adopt for the general admission of their commerce, their opinions, their religion. This would tend to conquer the heart and its affections; which is a far more effectual conquest than that obtained by swords and cannons: and a thousand pounds expended for tutors, books, and premiums, would do more to subdue a nation of savages than forty thousand expended for artillery-men, bullets, and gunpowder. (Russel, 1801: 93–5; italics in original) The export of the English language was crucial to the self-concept of the imperialist as an agent of progress. It was through the richness of the language that the colonisers would convey the benefits of science, Christianity, good government and civilisation to the world. If English had much to offer the world, however, it seems that the world had little to offer the English language. At the turn of the century, lexicography was still an exclusively British preserve, and although dictionaries had begun to include a few loanwords from the colonies, the concept of overseas varieties of English simply did not exist. For the British lexicographer, the English language was firmly centred on England and, if it was recognised that the English of the internal (Ireland, Scotland and Wales) and external (notably America, Australia and India) colonies varied from the norm of the English elite, this was no more than a sign of the potential for degeneration implicit in linguistic diversity. England had already lost one colony, however, in 1776, and as the nineteenth century progressed the structure of the English language began to look very different when viewed from an American perspective. The first English dictionaries to appear in America were exports from England. Johnson’s dictionary arrived in 1818 together with Walker’s pronouncing dictionary, and was revised by Joseph Worcester in 1827, but the more successful dictionaries were of a more popular kind. By the turn of the century two American dictionaries had already appeared, Johnson and Elliott’s A Selected Pronouncing and Accented Dictionary (1800) and Alexander’s The Columbian Dictionary of the English Language (1800), both of which contained some American words. Webster is credited with the first reference to ‘the American Tongue’ in his Dissertations on the English Language of 1789. And in a letter to Jedidia Morse (July 30 1806), Webster raised the question of ‘whether an American citizen shall be permitted to correct and improve English books or whether we are bound down to receive whatever the English give us’. Beneath the early development of the dictionary in America lay an intellectual undercurrent of linguistic nationalism that led logically to the production of Webster’s An American Dictionary of the English Language in 1828. A significant feature of early American linguistic nationalism was that it developed many of the themes current in eighteenth-century linguistic thought

92 From Johnson to the OED in the context of the rise of America as a world power in its own right. In 1780, John Adams (second President of the United States) called in a letter to the President of the Congress for an American Academy for the English language and complained that ‘to this day there is no grammar or dictionary extant of the English language which has the least public authority’. In the same letter, Adams predicted that English was ‘destined to be in the next and succeeding centuries more generally the language of the world than Latin was in the last or French is in the present age’. And in a letter written some weeks later, he suggested that it was the population and commerce of America that would force the language of England into general use. In the future as Adams envisaged it, America would set the standard for England, in language as in political and social life, rather than the reverse (Wells 1973: 49–50). For Webster, the problem with the English language was its degeneration in the home country and the problem with Johnson’s dictionary was that it was inadequate to the language of the day. In Green’s (1996: 259) words, Webster saw Johnson’s version of the English language as ‘an old, decaying building, struggling to maintain itself in the face of the advances of time’. For all his subsequent criticisms of Johnson’s dictionary, however, Webster evidently admired Johnson, shared his doctrines of linguistic improvement and ultimately produced a dictionary that conformed to the essentials of his model. He also appears to have shared some of Johnson’s conservatism in his attitudes towards regional dialect, recommending his dictionary in a letter written in 1831 as a ‘standard to prevent the formation of dialects in this extensive country’. Wells (1973: 52) observes that, in the early nineteenth century, authoritarian attitudes towards English in the United State shifted from the nationalist to the pro-British camp. Webster’s Compendious Dictionary of the English Language (1806) added americanisms to the wordlist, but is described by Friend (1967: 14) as ‘no more than a creditable start in the right direction’. The next work of any note to deal with americanisms was Pickering’s Vocabulary, or Collection of Words and Phrases which have been supposed to be peculiar to the United States of America (1816) – a work that aimed to eradicate, rather than promote, the ‘corruptions’ that it described. Pickering’s work remains important to the history of American lexicography, however, as the occasion for Webster’s vigorous defence of American English in his riposte and ultimately for his more substantially nationalist An American Dictionary of the English Language, published in 1828. In the preface to the dictionary, Webster wrote: It is not only important, but in a degree necessary, that the people of this country should have an American Dictionary of the English language; for, although the body of the language is the same as in England, and it is desirable to perpetuate that sameness, yet some differences will exist.… A great number of words in our language require to be defined in a phraseology accommodated to the condition and institutions of the people in these states …

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According to Green (1996: 263), however, the number of americanisms, which make up only a small proportion of its 70,000 words, is ‘far less extensive than might be assumed’. The dictionary has also been criticised for its New England provincialism, a region that was more ‘British’ in its linguistic attitudes than most. Webster’s linguistic nationalism is most apparent in his use of citations, which were wherever possible drawn from American works. Webster’s dictionary was clearly not intended to supplement English dictionaries. Nor was it specifically intended to promote American English as an independent form from the English of England. Indeed, in 1841 Webster sent a copy of the second edition of his dictionary to Queen Victoria with a note expressing the hope that ‘genuine descendants of English ancestors born on the west of the Atlantic, have not forgotten either the land or the language of their fathers’. Webster’s linguistic nationalism was expressed more strongly in the writings that surround his dictionary than within the contents of the dictionary itself. From Webster’s point of view, his was simply a better dictionary in lexicographical terms than those of his predecessors, and it was better in part because it was based on and represented the particular qualities of the language as it was developing in the New World. The fact that such a dictionary appeared so early in the history of American lexicography, and before British lexicographers had even begun to think of American English as an object of lexicographical concern, had a considerable influence on the development of the dictionary on both sides of the Atlantic. The period that followed the publication of Webster’s dictionary was dominated by the so-called ‘dictionary war’, which began as a dispute over plagiarism between Webster and Joseph Worcester, developed into a commercial rivalry, and ultimately became a site for the working out of a complex of cultural debates within early American society. According to Friend (1967: 85), chief historian of the conflict, ‘Worcester vs. Webster came to mean not only linguistic conservatives and moderates vs. radicals and liberals, but, with some inevitable extremist distortion and oversimplification, Anglophiles vs. Americanizers, BostonCambridge-Harvard vs. New Haven-Yale, upperclass elegance vs. underbred Yankee uncouthness’. By the time the war was over, however, America had developed both a large dictionary market and a well-established lexicographical tradition. Well before the completion of the OED, America had produced three major scholarly dictionaries: Whitney’s eight-volume The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia (1889–91), Noah Porter’s edition of Webster’s International Dictionary of the English Language (1898) and Funk and Wagnalls’ 450,000 word New Standard Dictionary of the English Language (NSDEL, 1913) edited by Frank Vizetelly. The American dictionary had also developed its own distinctive style, direct and authoritarian in its definitions, more popular than the British dictionary in its orientation and with strong coverage of encyclopedic, scientific and technical material. Webster’s dictionaries also enjoyed some success in England and both Ogilvie’s (1850) and Boag’s (1852–3) dictionaries, two of the major British works of the mid-nineteenth century, were based on Webster’s wordlist. According to

94 From Johnson to the OED Green (1996: 363), when Whitney’s Century Dictionary appeared in England, the editors of the NED ‘both noted and quickly began replicating the American prototype’s infinitely superior coverage of technical and scientific material’. Thus, as the century progressed and the influence of Johnson’s dictionary waned, British lexicography gradually lost its exclusive right to represent the language as if it were simply the language of England. British dictionaries continued to locate the centre of the language in England, but at the same time American dictionaries located its centre in America. The language had, as it were, acquired two mutually influential linguistic centres. Anglo-American lexicography had become a ‘family affair’, but national biases in dictionaries on both sides of the Atlantic remain to this day (Algeo, 1995). Although the existence of these twin linguistic centres is now generally accepted, the extent to which they are artefacts of developments in lexicography is less well recognised. The publication of Webster’s dictionary in 1828 remains an event of particular significance in the history of English as an international language, for it was to be more than 150 years before a general dictionary of the English language would be published independently of a British or American publisher in any other region of the English-speaking world. For Americans an early escape from colonial rule also meant an early escape for the American language and the American dictionary. The United States was to be the sole exception to the rule of the ‘supplementary dictionary’ that was to govern the lexicography of English as an international language until the publication of the Australian Macquarie Dictionary (MacqD) in 1981.

The New English Dictionary The NED project did not proceed in ignorance of the contribution of American lexicography. When Murray first heard of his possible role as a lexicographer in April 1876, it was from the British publishing house Macmillan who had been approached by the American publishers Harper to cooperate on an abortive project to produce a new standard dictionary of English. As Elisabeth Murray, her father’s biographer, records it: Harper’s idea was for something ‘like the Webster, in bulk, and as far superior in quality as possible’. This was a challenge, since Webster’s original dictionary, published in 1828, had been very much improved and enlarged, and the latest edition, the ‘unabridged’ of 1864, had acquired an international fame. It was held to be superior to every other dictionary and taken as the leading authority on the meaning of words, not only in America and England but also throughout the Far East. (Murray, 1977: 133) In later years, Murray kept copies of Webster and Whitney’s Century Dictionary open for reference as he worked on the dictionary proper and Webster was frequently used as a scale of measurement to estimate the size of the finished

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work. When the first volume of the Century Dictionary appeared in 1889, Murray ‘worried that the work would be a commercial rival and dangerous competitor’ and ‘worked himself up into a state of agitation and indignation’, which provoked an accusation of plagiarism and a suggestion that the Delegates of Oxford University should take legal action (1977: 266). In contrast to the English Government, the United States made unsolicited donations of publications that it thought should be read for the dictionary (Murray, 1977: 164), which also benefited from the contributions of numerous American readers, notably the expatriates Fitzedward Hall and William C. Minor, whose work for the dictionary was carried out within the confines of Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum. Yet as the fascicles and volumes of the dictionary began to appear it became evident that the dictionary was to be a peculiarly anglocentric work. The NED was to become a historical dictionary, informed by the science of historical linguistics, that grounded the history of the language more firmly than ever within the history of the English nation. In its synchronic dimensions also, the NED would, in both structure and content, reflect an unashamedly British view of the language and the world. If the intention of the NED project was not specifically to rival the products of American lexicography, its effect was to reclaim the pinnacle of English lexicography for the English. At least in the minds of the English linguistic elite, the NED re-established England as the centre for the language and its role in the world. The history of the NED spans more than 70 years of British imperialism from the conception of the dictionary in Trench’s 1857 lectures to the Philological Society to its completion in 1928. Nineteenth-century imperialism called for two kinds of Englishman. There were those who travelled to, and expanded, the ends of the earth as it was known to the English (and by the 1830s, there were more than a million English men and women living or stationed overseas). And there were those who, like the major figures in the NED project, seldom travelled beyond the heartland of the standard language. The compilers of the NED were by no means imperialist ideologues – indeed domestic atttitudes towards imperial adventure remained equivocal until relatively late in the century. Their concerns were scholarly, not political, and turned inwards towards the history of the language as a language of England, not as a language of the world. Murray’s damp scriptorium, built in a trench in his back garden in Oxford, is a perfect image of the dictionary’s isolation from the world events that surrounded it. Yet the work of the NED project was infused with the spirit and methods of the age and its final product was, to borrow an image from Barthes (1982), almost literally an ‘empire of signs’. We may begin by noting that, in linguistic terms, the NED was a triumph for nineteenth-century comparative philology, which was itself one of the intellectual triumphs of Orientalism. The father figure of comparative philology, William Jones, was one of those who travelled. Without Jones’ researches on Asian languages and cultures, and without his officially sponsored residence in India during the last 10 years of his life, there might have been no comparative

96 From Johnson to the OED philology. To be a philologist, one needed to know Sanskrit and the languages of India – a form of knowledge that became available to Europeans only through imperialism. One also needed the sweeping geographical and historical vision and capacity for the hard intellectual labour of knowledge production unique to the imperialist scholar. By the time of his death in 1794, Jones had learned 41 languages, 13 of them thoroughly. He had translated numerous oriental classics and had an expert knowledge of Hindu culture, botany, zoology and Indian law. The early philologist also needed to travel in order to acquire the kind of empathy for the languages and cultures encountered along the way that informed Jones’ research. In the late eighteenth century, the intellectual qualities that could produce a discipline such as comparative philology were the unique privilege of the travelling imperialist scholar. Although Jones was an Englishman, a more general mistrust and contempt for indigenous colonial cultures ensured that comparative philology would develop first in Germany and only influence the NED in a peculiarly English form concerned less with the history of language than with the history of the English language. For those who stayed at home, the impetus for the development of historical linguistics in England came first from a revival of AngloSaxon studies and the publication of a large number of Anglo-Saxon manuscripts by Benjamin Thorpe and John Kemble in the 1830s. The first paper to the Philological Society, founded in 1842, was on the subject of ‘the dialects of the Papuan or Negrito race, scattered through the Australian and other Asiatic islands’. But as Green (1996: 295) observes, the members of the Society largely ‘ignored state-of-the-art philology’ and concentrated on English Studies. The impetus for a new dictionary came both from this renewed scholarly interest in early English texts and from a set of national linguistic concerns which had for some years focused on the inadequacies of Johnson’s lexicography. The critique of Johnsonian lexicography was fuelled by the economic and social changes in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Britain that had made imperial expansion a necessity. Industrialisation, the incorporation of Ireland, Scotland and Wales into the United Kingdom (which would lead to the suppression of their indigenous languages) and the extension of literacy produced social divisions, in the context of which the acquisition of Johnson’s version of the language as a rite of passage to the linguistic elite had become an anachronism. In 1786, John Horne Tooke published his Diversions of Purley, in which he ridiculed Johnson’s etymologies. Although Jones had already demonstrated that Horne Tooke’s method was unsound, and that many of his etymologies were absurd, his theories influenced both Webster’s (1828) and Richardson’s (1836) dictionaries. Horne Tooke’s work also had a political motivation, however, concerned with the need to uncover the elitist bias within Johnson’s version of the history of words. In 1818, William Cobbett published his Grammar of the English Language, whose subtitle declared that it was ‘intended for the use of schools and of young persons in general; but more especially for the use of soldiers, sailors, apprentices, and plough-boys’. Cobbett’s grammar was designed not to produce

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conformity, but so that its readers might become ‘so completely capable of detecting and exposing the tricks and contrivances of their oppressors, that the power of doing mischief will die a natural death in the hands of those oppressors’. Among the book’s most notable features was an exposure of ‘specimens of false grammar’ in Johnson’s writings. And in Thackeray’s Vanity Fair, published in 1848, Becky Sharp on her departure from Miss Pinkerton’s academy for young ladies on Chiswick Mall had performed the ‘heroical act’ of flinging a copy of the Great Lexicographer’s’ dictionary out of the window of her coach. ‘So much for the Dixonary; and, thank God, I’m out of Chiswick’, she said. Miss Pinkerton’s sister Jemima, who had presented her with the book, almost fainted with terror and Amelia Sedley, her fellow graduate and travelling companion, was unable to complete her sentence.2 In the years immediately preceding the conception of the NED, the Chartist revolt of 1848 had firmly placed the need for national unity on the political and linguistic agenda. What was needed in the field of lexicography was not a set of idealised prescriptive norms that excluded the mass of the population from the standard language, but a normative account of the language that was both inclusive and unifying. The eighteenth-century concept of the ‘complete dictionary’ was replaced by the notion of the ‘comprehensive dictionary’. By the time of Trench’s address, Ogilvie (1850), Boag (1852–3) and Clarke (1855) (the first to use the word ‘comprehensive’ in the title of a dictionary) had begun the work of democratising the dictionary, but something more was required. For Trench, the dictionary that the language stood in need of was not simply a comprehensive dictionary, but one that would also be ‘an historical monument, the history of a nation contemplated from one point of view’. The dictionary that Trench proposed would be the semiotic realisation of the mid-nineteenthcentury view that the unity and destiny of a nation lay in the history of its language, a history that was co-terminous with the history of the nation itself. It is at that this time that the ‘familiar story of the English language’, which according to Leith (1996: 95) ‘assumes the existence of an unchanging national “essence” residing in a shared ethnic origin, a fixed territory and a common language’ is first told. The task of the NED would be to tell that story in minute detail and, in doing so, to produce a representation of the language worthy of the nation that had produced it. Although it addressed essentially national concerns, the NED project was also a thoroughly imperialist project in terms of its methods and style. The forces that actually saw the dictionary through to completion included the zeal for cataloguing, classifying and comparing, the capacity for the hard labour of scientific inquiry and the ability to rally the efforts of the middle-classes to a national purpose that so characterised nineteenth-century discourses of the natural sciences. In addition, Trench, Furnivall and Murray all possessed, in their different ways, the nineteenth-century Christian sense of rightness that legitimated imperialism as a particular combination of conquest, scientific inquiry and reform. Trench’s vision of the dictionary as a national monument was perhaps inspired by the Great Exhibition of 1851, which drew more than six

98 From Johnson to the OED million visitors to the Crystal Palace in five months. According to Morris (1979: 199), the exhibits included, in addition to the latest technological achievements, ‘such unmistakably imperial items as a Bushman’s blanket from Cape Town, a gold ring inscribed with the emblems of the Ionian Septinsular Union, hats made of cabbage-tree leaves by Australian convicts, a dress such as worn by the women soldiers of the King of Dahomey, a preserved pig from Dublin and the Koh-I-Noor’. In the field of botany, Kew Gardens had been established in 1841 as ‘a State institution, where all available botanical knowledge was considered, sifted and turned into green delight or sustenance’ (1979: 211). And the prospectus of the Zoological Society of London promised a series of exhibitions of ‘animals brought from every part of the globe to be applied either to some useful purpose, or as objects of some scientific research’ (1979: 199). Perhaps the closest relatives to the NED project in terms of discourse and style, however were the great projects of exploration of the mid-nineteenth century. In 1858, the year of the proposal for the NED, Speke and Burton had together reached Lake Tanganyika and Speke had gone on alone to Lake Victoria Nyanza, declaring it to be the source of the White Nile. Burton doubted the claim and over the next 20 years the puzzle of the source of the Nile became a national obsession. Speke and Livingstone, under the auspices of the Royal Geographic Society, made arduous and well-publicised trips into the African interior until the question was finally settled by Stanley, a journalist, in 1877. The Nile was of strategic importance to British imperialism, but as the explorations proceeded, the controversies over the location of its source focused on a purely intellectual problem concerning the ultimate source of things. The great river, it seemed, must have a single source lying somewhere in the unknown heart of Africa. For Morris (1979: 285), the British regarded the puzzle as ‘a challenge specific to themselves, its solution as the greatest prize awaiting any British adventurer of the nineteenth century’. Ultimately the answer to the puzzle had little practical value other than that it enabled geographers to map the centre of Africa and expose the entire continent to view. The NED project was equally concerned with a search for ultimate sources that would lead to the production of a lexicographical ‘map’ of English and its role in the world, in which the furthest extremities of the language would be seen to radiate outwards from its historical centre. Although Murray’s long hours of discomfort in the dampness of the scriptorium do not compare to the rigours of the African bush and jungle, lexicography had nevertheless become an adventure of exploration as important to the linguist as the exploration of Africa was to the geographer. Aside from its sheer size, the most significant feature of the NED was its treatment of the historical dimensions of the language. For Trench, the lexicographer was an historian, not a critic, but he was not necessarily a linguistic historian in the sense that the comparative philologist understood the term. The NED placed etymology within the dictionary on a scientific footing for the first time, but its compilers were also concerned with the problem, marginal to the science of comparative philology, of the history of words within the English language. The history of English words would lend substance to Skeat’s

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(1873: xii; italics in original) claim that ‘the language which we speak now is absolutely one, in its essence, with the language that was spoken in the days when the English first invaded the island and defeated and overwhelmed its British inhabitants’. The goal of the historical method in the OED was thus as much a sociopolitical goal embedded within the discourse of the science of comparative philology as it was a scientific goal in its own right. In the NED, etymologies were clearly separated from the history of words within the language. The etymology of the headword comes at the beginning of the entry. This is followed by the main body of the entry containing definitions organised in the form of a history of the various senses of the headword from the earliest to the latest. At the end of the entry comes a series of citations, which in principle support each historical stage in the development of the meanings of the word. As Crowley (1989: 113) points out, however, the history of a word in the NED is a reverse history, since the headword corresponds to the current or most recently recorded form and sense. Although the body of the entry begins with the earliest recorded form and sense, neither of these necessarily corresponds to the form and sense for which the word is entered. The structure of the NED entry thus represented the belief that the history of the language from 1150 onwards was the history of a single language, not simply a disordered progression from one language to another. As Crowley argues, ‘the historical variation of a word ceases to be a problem as the word becomes an essential unity and is an atom that lies beyond, and is unchanged by history’ (1989: 113). The historical method, as it is applied in the NED, lends a uniquely ahistorical character to the standard language as the history of the English language becomes, in typically ethnocentric fashion, a history of events leading inexorably up to the present. The NED was undoubtedly a large dictionary and it remains in revised form the largest available today. Yet it does not include ‘all the words of language’ and from the outset principles of selection were established. In this respect, Trench’s ‘inventory of the language’ shared the conservatism of its predecessors in excluding in advance dialect, provincialisms and slang, the language of ‘that rabble of scribblers who hang onto the skirts of literature, doing their worst to profane and degrade it and language’. These categories of words, which extended also to trade jargon and scientific and technical neologisms, were to be excluded because they lay beyond the language. Although the lexicographer was not to be a ‘critic’, his efforts were nevertheless to be confined to the standard language, which was reconceptualised as the language itself. As we have seen in Chapter 2, Murray presented these policies of inclusion and exclusion in terms of centre–periphery metaphors grounded in the objectivity of late nineteenthcentury science. Excluded categories of words were to be excluded, however, not because they did not belong to the language but because they belonged to its periphery, and not because they were disapproved of but simply because the work of collecting them lay beyond the scope of the historical dictionary. The criteria and mechanisms of exclusion were inherent within the historical method itself, for, when the method is applied, words are seen to possess history

100 From Johnson to the OED to different degrees. According to the particular conception of the history of English proposed in nineteenth-century English studies, words that can be traced back to Old English have a longer history within the language than those that cannot. In addition, while the vast majority of English words have etymologies in languages other than English, many have little or no ‘history’ to speak of within the language. As a result, NED entries were of very different lengths, ranging from several pages to a few lines. The size of the entry for a word was in direct relationship to the length of its history in the texts that formed the dictionary corpus. Words with longer histories automatically became more central to the semiotic and cultural system of the dictionaries than those with shorter histories. Typically the items with the longest entries are those that can be traced back to Old English, while those with the shortest are foreign in origin. Murray’s policy on dialect, explained in the General Explanations to the first published volume of the dictionary, was to include all dialect words recorded before 1500, since English is said to have existed only in the form of dialects up to that date. Those first recorded after 1500 were excluded ‘unless they continue the history of a word or sense once in general use, illustrate the history of a literary word, or have themselves a certain literary currency’. Murray’s reasoning was that the work of collecting these items had not yet been completed, but the effect was, as in Johnson’s dictionary, to make the inclusion of modern dialect words dependent upon the arbitrary criterion of their occurrence in works of English literature. No policy was stated in regard to overseas words, although their inclusion in the dictionary was also clearly dependent on their inclusion in the texts that constituted the dictionary’s sources, which included several published dictionaries and glossaries.3 Thus, in both its general implications and its specific application to dialect, the historical treatment of words functioned as a centralising force within the ‘comprehensive’ dictionary to counteract the democratic implications of the descriptive method. Evaluations of the treatment of international English in the NED are harsh, especially when they are made by editors of subsequent editions of the dictionary. In his preface to OEDS4, for example, Burchfield, a New Zealander, observes: For the most part Murray preferred to fend off overseas words until they had become firmly entrenched in British use. Words more or less restricted to North America, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, the West Indies, and so on, were treated almost like illegal immigrants. For Simpson, co-editor of OED2: … the Dictionary is unashamedly Anglocentric in its approach to vocabulary, usage and definition – though words from other varieties of English were included to the extent that information was available to the Dictionary’s editors … (Simpson, 1990: 1963)

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And for Weiner, Simpson’s fellow editor, all this was no more or less than the product of a generalised policy: The implicit assumption was that Standard British English was identical with the standard version of English overseas. And this was probably correct in the 1880s. Britain’s linguistic hegemony had not been questioned: good English, the English that all English-speakers had in common, was probably believed to be British English (the Queen’s/King’s English) in all communities, both in Murray’s day and for many years afterwards. (Weiner, 1990: 500) Simpson’s (1990: 1963) additional comment that criticisms of the NED’s anglocentrism are based on twentieth-century notions of what an international dictionary should contain is fair. It could also be added that we have no real way of assessing the significance of the quantity of international items included in the NED that would do justice to its historical context. Weiner’s suggestion that British linguistic hegemony had not been questioned in the 1880s is surprising, however, in view of the importance of American dictionaries in Britain at the time. More generally, however, it can be said that Burchfield’s, Simpson’s and Weiner’s comments miss the point that the anglocentrism of the NED lies less in its neglect of international vocabulary than in the application of the historical method to it. The NED did, in fact, include a large number of overseas words. If such a word appeared in a British text, it was likely to be included. Similarly the lexical products of botanical and zoological explorations were included wholesale, in addition to words imported by other scholarly discourses of the imperialist age. The point is, however, that the NED did not attempt in any sense to represent this vocabulary comprehensively or in the context of its use. Overseas words appeared in the dictionary almost accidentally and only to the extent that they had been subject to the centralising gaze of the imperialist scholar. Yet they also appear in large numbers, so that the language as a whole is presented in the dictionary just as Murray described it, as ‘a nucleus or central mass of many thousands of words whose “Anglicity” is unquestioned’, linked on all sides to a periphery of questionable words. Overseas words were, in addition, treated unequally by virtue of their lack of history within the language and through a variety of semiotic mechanisms including the randomness of their selection, labels, the forms of their definitions, and supporting citations. Without exactly intending to do so, therefore, Murray succeeded in representing English as a language of the world. But this representation naturally took on a form corresponding to the structure of the language and its central and peripheral aspects as they were understood at the height of the British Empire. As we shall see in later chapters, the form of this representation in the OED and other English dictionaries has essentially remained unchallenged to the present day.

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The English Dialect Dictionary Late nineteenth-century developments in European linguistic thought, leading ultimately to the Saussurean revolution, undermined the notion that a language could be divided into words that belonged and did not belong to the language on prescriptive grounds. Similarly, the idea of a narrowly defined literary standard gave way to the idea of a much broader standard based on observable norms of contemporary use. Moreover, by the end of the nineteenth century, a principled distinction between a language and its dialects had become difficult to maintain – the standard language was itself seen as a dialect, albeit a superior one. The NED prioritised words that possessed a history within the standard language, but unlike its predecessors it did not explicitly disparage regional dialect and other excluded categories of words. Words were excluded from the NED mainly on the grounds that the work of collecting and describing them in historical terms had not yet been done. In the compilation of the EDD, the documentation of the regional dialects of Britain became an adjunct to the description of the standard language. It also took place within a new scientific framework that rejected the lumping together of dialects and other colloquial varieties under the single heading of ‘dialect’ in favour of systematic classification based upon empirical research. The role of the EDD in relation to the NED project is of some interest to this study because it firmly established the principle of the supplementary dictionary, according to which non-standard words would continue to be represented as peripheral to the standard, while nevertheless being treated scientifically. Nineteenth-century interest in the history of the English language, and the unearthing and re-publication of texts that went with it, uncovered important new sources of dialect material. In order to marshal this material and bring it under the same system of order applied to the standard language in the NED project, the English Dialect Society, founded by Skeat in 1873, undertook a scientific investigation of regional dialect, which led to the publication of a sixvolume work that aimed to include all dialect words current or known to have been in use during the previous 200 years. The EDD was conceived, however, as a supplementary work to the NED, which would fill in the gaps left by Murray’s policy on dialect. As Crowley explains: The fields were clearly related and in terms of both the theoretical hierarchy and the practical relationship of the N/OED (NED) to the EDD, the relationship was to take the form of dominance and centrality opposed to subservience and eccentricity. Just as the ‘standard’ literary language was held to be central and the dialects peripheral theoretically, the N/OED was considered the major project and the EDD a much more secondary task in terms of practical production. (Crowley, 1989: 105) This relationship between the two dictionaries gave semiotic form to Murray’s circle of the English language and dictated that the compilers of the EDD define

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dialect reductively in relation to the standard language. A dialect word was not simply a word that had its roots in a particular region. It was specifically a word that had failed to enter the standard as it was described in the NED. Moreover, by the time the NED was finally published as a single dictionary, the work on regional dialect had not only commenced, it had been completed. With the publication of the EDD, the English Dialect Society dissolved itself. Unlike the description of the standard language, which was an unending task, the description of dialect had a definite finishing point. The supplementary principle embodied in the NED–EDD relationship led to a definition of dialect that emphasised its difference from the standard over its own integrity. The production of supplementary dictionaries was not new (there had been several supplements to Johnson’s dictionary), but it was unusual for a supplement to be published concurrently and in such close connection with a major work. Moreover, it was a distinctive feature of the NED–EDD relationship that the work of the supplement was to re-emerge in the major work, which made extensive use of the glossaries compiled by the English Dialect Society and of the EDD itself. One effect of this was that the dialect portion of the NED appeared to be supplementary to the main body of the wordlist, an effect achieved by labelling and explicit reference to the EDD and other dialect glossaries. The emergence of the supplementary principle also reinforced the central position within English lexicography claimed by the NED, as it became clear that the ‘big dictionary’ was not only the most comprehensive, but also the hub of a network of dictionaries yet to be produced that would ultimately embrace the English-using world.

Conclusion The history of the English dictionary from Johnson to the OED is dominated by the ‘great’ dictionaries of the time. It involves both a shift from the elitist notion of ‘completeness’ to a more democratic notion of ‘comprehensiveness’ in the dictionary’s representation of language. Yet within this shift, there is a continuation of the idea that the language has a ‘centre’, identified with the standard language, that should be prioritised by the dictionary. Changes in the form and structure of the dictionary correspond to a reworking of the notion of the standard and its relation to the peripheral forms of the language, which at each stage is realised in its semiotic representation in the dictionary. The rise of American lexicography led to a disruption of the idea that the centre of the language necessarily lay in England, which has continued to lend American English a privileged position within the British dictionary. But the NED sought, largely successfully, to reclaim the centre of the language for England through the historical method, which would ultimately lead the English language wherever it was spoken in the world back to its Anglo-Saxon roots. Murray began his Romanes lecture of 1900 by observing that Johnson’s dictionary had for many years been ‘the Dictionary’. Neatly skipping over the possible claims of the nineteenth-century American dictionary, he concluded by

104 From Johnson to the OED observing that ‘the structure now reared (in the NED) … will remain, it is believed, the great body of fact upon which all future work will be built’. It is not easy to conceive, he added, ‘what new feature can now be added to English lexicography’. Murray’s use of the word ‘structure’ is significant because the NED was not only a superbly anglocentric account of the English language and its role in the world, it was also a semiotic triumph – a representation of the language that was so highly structured in terms of its division of entries and use of typefaces that, when the dictionary-makers turned their attention to reproducing it in the form of an electronic database in the 1980s, they found the task much easier than they expected. The fact that the NED was a lexicographical triumph in technical and semiotic terms meant that the particular view of the language and of the world contained within it would continue to dominate English lexicography for the remainder of the twentieth century. The OED has continued to reproduce itself in the form of supplements, a second edition and a proposed third. It continues to claim its own pre-eminence among dictionaries and its publishers are among the most active in the documentation of English as an international language. There can also be few lexicographers anywhere in the world who would commence the task of producing or revising a dictionary without a copy of the OED to hand. As we will see in the next chapter, the OED has defined both the fundamental structure of English as an international language as it is represented in the late twentieth-century dictionary and the structure of English lexicography as an international industry.

6

The lexicography of English as an international language

That the NED was fundamentally an ethnocentric dictionary, structured around a British imperialist view of the world, is not particularly surprising given the period and context in which it was compiled. Nor is it particularly surprising that it incorporated many overseas words and presented them within a structure in which they appeared peripheral to the British core of the language. It seems unlikely, however, that the compilers of the NED had any particular policy towards the international dimensions of the language. Indeed, the documents that surround the production of the dictionary are characterised by their silence on the subject. For the lexicographers of the day, English as an international language simply did not exist. Although the OED defined a set of structures for its description, systematic coverage of English in the world in the dictionary is a phenomenon of the second half of the twentieth century. For Béjoint (1994: 96–7), the history of the English dictionary is characterised by successive phases in the expansion of the wordlist. The eighteenth century aimed at complete coverage of the literary language, while the nineteenthcentury dictionary was concerned with historical exhaustiveness. The dictionary then went through a phase of social exhaustiveness, characterised by the inclusion of more and more technical words, and today, ‘all modern dictionaries, in Britain and the USA, as well as in France, are now moving towards a spatial interpretation of exhaustiveness – hence the desire to include more and more regionalisms’. We might also add that each of these phases involves changing conceptions and constructions of the standard and of those who are authorised to participate in its creation and use. The late twentieth-century tendency towards geographical exhaustiveness in the English dictionary is undoubtedly influenced by changing notions of the rights of English-users around the world to set their own standards of usage, advanced most strongly by advocates of World Englishes. However, within the English dictionary, the representation of the geographical spread of the language has taken a structured form that is essentially a development from the form that it took in the NED. In the last chapter of this historical review of the English dictionary, we look at the ways in which English as an international language is represented through four innovations in twentieth-century lexicography: the supplementary dictionary; the regional adaptation; the dictionary of world English; and the learner’s

106 English as an international language dictionary. We will also examine the development of lexicography in one country on the lexicographical periphery of the English-using world, Australia.

The supplementary dictionary OED1 was published in 1933 and consisted of the already published volumes of the NED accompanied by a hastily compiled supplement. The editors of the dictionary were aware that their coverage of the English language was incomplete, but for a number of years work on the dictionary was suspended, leaving others to fill in the gaps. One of the most glaring gaps was the dictionary’s coverage of English overseas. Although the OED had sampled non-English varieties of English, it had failed to treat them systematically or in any historical depth. In the following years a number of projects were initiated to produce regional dictionaries in the OED mould, which were all in some sense intended to supplement the larger work. Through the publication of these dictionaries, there also developed a particular conception of the nature of an overseas variety of English and its relationship to British and American norms. The first of these supplementary dictionaries, Edward Morris’ Austral English. A Dictionary of Australasian Words, Phrases and Usages (1898), was published before the NED was completed. Morris was a reader for the NED and compiled his dictionary from material that he collected during his researches. His dictionary was far from comprehensive, but is significant as the first example of a regional dictionary employing the principles of the NED. The second, the Dictionary of American English on Historical Principles (DAmE, 1934) was compiled principally by William Craigie, a Scot who worked on the NED for more than 25 years before he moved to the University of Chicago. Craigie’s dictionary was something of an historical oddity because it aimed, according to Craigie’s preface, to include ‘not only words and phrases which are clearly or apparently of American origin, or have greater currency here than elsewhere, but also every word denoting something which has a real connection with the development of the country and the history of its people’. In Görlach’s (1985) terms, the dictionary was ‘inclusive’ rather than ‘exclusive’, although the task of describing American English for American readers had already been adequately performed by American dictionaries. Craigie’s dictionary did not, however, set a precedent and was succeeded by Matthews’ regionally exclusive Dictionary of Americanisms on Historical Principles (DAm, 1951). Avis’ Dictionary of Canadianisms on Historical Principles (DCan, 1967) and Cassidy and Le Page’s Dictionary of Jamaican English (DJamE, 1967) were both published in the same year. Branford and Branford’s Dictionary of South African English (DSAfE, 1978) and Holm and Shilling’s Dictionary of Bahamian English (DBahE, 1982) followed. Two dictionaries of sub-varieties of Canadian English have also appeared: the Dictionary of Newfoundland English (DNfE, 1982) and the Dictionary of Prince Edward Island English (DPEIE, 1988). All of these dictionaries make reference to the OED in their methods and contents. In supplementary lexicography, a regionalism is essentially an item that has not appeared in the

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OED or another major regional dictionary, or one that appears with a regional label. With the exception of the relatively small DSAfE, none of these dictionaries were published by OUP, but in 1988 OUP re-entered the field with Ransom’s Australian National Dictionary (AusND). In the final years of the twentieth century, three Oxford dictionaries were added to the list: the Dictionary of South African English on Historical Principles (DSAfEHP, 1996) edited by Penny Silva, Allsopp’s Dictionary of Caribbean English Usage (DCarEU, 1996) and Orsman’s Dictionary of New Zealand English (DNZE, 1997). The production of a scholarly regional dictionary is dependent on a number of factors, including the availability of a compiler and a publisher. Several of the dictionaries listed were compiled over many years and at least one proposed dictionary, the Dictionary of West African English (Banjo and Young, 1982) seems unlikely to appear in the near future. As Béjoint (1994: 82) observes, the large historical regional dictionary is, for reasons of cost, currently in danger of extinction and recent trends suggest that it is only with the support of OUP that such projects can be brought to completion. Nevertheless, the exclusive regional dictionary has succeeded in covering much of the English-using world. The exceptions are, in addition to West Africa, the Indian subcontinent, the Philippines, Malaysia and Singapore. A significant absence is the scholarly dictionary of briticisms, which was proposed in 1938 by Allen Walker Read. Although Read and Algeo have continued to work on the project, the dictionary itself is yet to appear (Algeo, 1987; Read, 1987). There is a Scottish National Dictionary (ScND, 1931–76), perhaps ultimately reflecting the prominent role of Scots in the history of English lexicography, but to date no dictionary of Irish English or Welsh English has been proposed. The development of the regional English dictionary has, until the recent involvement of OUP, reflected a pre-OED style of lexicography, in which the individual dictionary compiler is the primary force. Nevertheless, a general pattern emerges, in which English as an international language is progressively covered in exclusive fashion from its major native-speaker varieties outwards towards the periphery. For recent editors of the OED, the supplementary principle has been a logical one. In his preface to OEDS1 (1972: xiv–xv), for example, Burchfield points out that ‘it is already and will remain impracticable for any general dictionary of English, wherever it is prepared, to absorb all the contents of the great historical dictionaries of regional forms of English that have appeared or are in preparation’. More recently, Weiner has suggested that: Considerations of practicality mean that regional forms of English which have been enshrined in specialist dictionaries have first call on space in the New OED. The detailed study and registration of a regional variety of English in dictionary form ought to be done by the users of that variety, rather than by people on a remote site. Full coverage of a regional variety in the New OED would be dependent upon prior work by local scholars. It would be unrealistic to consider extending the New OED’s umbrella to a region for

108 English as an international language which such work has not yet been done, or was still incomplete, however desirable that might be in principle. (Weiner, 1986: 265) Weiner proposes a structure for the coverage of English as an international language consisting of a central computer database corresponding to the printed dictionary and a number of ‘satellite databases’ incorporating various specialised works. The image extends Murray’s centre–periphery metaphor for the language into the age of the electronic dictionary. There is even some irony in the notion of words fighting for space in a dictionary, first conceived of as an ‘inventory of the language’, in an age in which computers may eliminate the obstacle of the physical size of the printed dictionary altogether. As we saw in Chapter 1, the notion of a language variety is essentially Saussurean in origin. However, the detailed working out of what a regional variety of English consists of in the context of English as an international language has largely been left to the regional dictionary. Scholarly regional dictionaries generally begin with a preface in which the scope of the regional variety is defined. The first to attempt the task was Morris, in his preface of 1898: ‘Austral’ or ‘Australasian English’ means all the new words and the new uses of old words that have been added to the English language by reason of the fact that those who speak English have taken up their abode in Australia, Tasmania and New Zealand. Morris went on to list the categories of words in the dictionary, which included: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Old English names for flora and fauna applied to new Australian species; English names applied to objects in Australia through processes of metaphor or metonymy; Aboriginal or Maori words incorporated unchanged into the English language and denoting their original object; Aboriginal or Maori words which have their meanings extended or applied to other objects; Anglicised corruptions of Aboriginal or Maori words; fanciful or humorous names given to natural objects; words and phrases of quite new coinage, or arising from ‘new objects or orders of things’; scientific names for new species; slang.

Most regional dictionaries include a similar set of categories, and it may be noted that the regional English dictionary is among the most systematic in defining its criteria of inclusion. But as Görlach (1990) points out, these criteria are not always clear and there is sometimes inconsistency between categories mentioned and the dictionary contents.

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The compilers of the DJamE, working in a far more systematic fashion than Morris, began with a basic file of words and citations, some from printed sources and many more from records of local dialect sources. This material was then checked against the OED, DAmE and DAm, as well as against the EDD, the ScND and the Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue (DOScT, 1931–). The object of the exercise was to establish which words properly belonged to Jamaican English, in one of seven specific senses outlined in the preface to the dictionary: 1

2

3 4 5 6 7

words or senses now (or once) general in English but of which the earliest or latest record is in a book about Jamaica by one who had been there or otherwise had direct knowledge of the island; words not otherwise especially associated with Jamaica, but recorded earlier or later, in a book about Jamaica, than they are known to be recorded elsewhere; words, spellings, or senses used in Jamaica though not a part of the English language outside the Caribbean; dialect words which been given written forms more or less in the manner of traditional orthography; dialect words written down by their collectors in naïve spellings, whose spoken form is unknown; dialect forms known only from oral sources; dialect forms which, though sometimes printed in dialect literature, have no established spelling and are known chiefly from oral sources.

Whether a word belongs to Jamaican English or not, in as much as this is indicated by an entry in the DJamE, is only indirectly connected to its use by Jamaicans. The more important criterion is that the word has not been entered in another dictionary with a similar form and sense and with an earlier date of first record. According to the second category, a word may even belong to Jamaican English if there is no record of it ever having been used in Jamaica itself. Regional dictionaries also tend to define the internal structure of the language varieties they describe, often in quite arbitrary ways. The categories of inclusion in the DJamE suggest a wide range of registers, from the writings of colonists and visitors to purely spoken forms. Although the registers included within the dictionary are not necessarily hierarchically organised, the editors nevertheless recognise a gradual scale of usage from educated to dialectal speech. Within the wordlist, however, a simple binary distinction is made between words with a recognised orthography (i.e. they have appeared in print), which are entered in upper case, and those that are known only in oral form, which are entered in lower case. Register distinctions are therefore presented in the form of a diglossia, which is actually an artefact of the collection process. Within this diglossia, the high form appears to be that which comes closest to the language of the colonisers and the central overseas norm of reference. The

110 English as an international language notion of centre and periphery within the language as a whole is thus extended to divisions within the regional variety itself. The history of the regional English dictionary to date suggests that once a dictionary has been produced it is unlikely to be regularly revised or updated. For many international varieties, the regional dictionary may also be the only form in which it is represented systematically for its users and for the world. Thus, the lexicographer’s decision on what the variety consists of is likely to stand for the variety itself for many years to come. The preface to the DBahE begins: The Dictionary of Bahamian English is the first comprehensive study of the words Bahamians use when talking informally. It demonstrates that Bahamian English forms a link between the Caribbean creoles, such as Jamaican English, and the English spoken today by many black people in the United States. Bahamian English, according to this account and according to its representation in the DBahE, is informal Bahamian English, rather than the totality of English use in the Bahamas. In typical scholarly fashion, the editors also define the function of Bahamian English historically, rather than in terms of its role in the lives of contemporary Bahamians. One regional dictionary that has been both revised and considerably expanded is the DSAfE. The original dictionary had a clear bias towards white Anglo-Saxon English, which has been corrected to some extent in the DSAfEHP, which according to OUP publicity ‘covers words originating in all the country’s ethnic groups and communities’. The implication of the DSAfEHP that modern South African English is a homogeneous entity consisting of a representive sample of words from all communities (within which the white Anglo-Saxon community perhaps continues to be over-represented in relation to its numerical and political importance) is questionable. To add to the confusion, the DSAfE – now in its fourth edition – remains in the OUP catalogue beside the larger and more recent work. It must be acknowledged that lexicographers of regional English generally carry out their work in a spirit of respect for the language varieties they describe. Indeed, it is often their intention to promote these varieties both internally and internationally. But the production of a regional dictionary does not necessarily imply that the region in question possesses ‘it’s own’ dictionary. As Ilson (1990: 1967) points out, the DJamE ‘was published by Cambridge University Press, and prepared under the direction of F. Cassidy, a Jamaican working in the USA, and R. Le Page, an Englishman associated with the University of York’. Like many dictionaries of its kind, it is a record of the regional variety constructed within a centre–periphery discourse, which prescribes that a peripheral variety of English should be described from an external central perspective and via a process of reduction from the central norm. The supplementary dictionary has also become the point of reference for the description of language varieties more generally within the World Englishes movement. Invariably, the documentation of an international variety of English begins with a contrastive account of its

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grammar, pronunciation and lexis in relation to an often undefined AngloAmerican norm. Works that have covered regional lexicons in this way include Sey (1973) on Ghanaian English, Kujore (1985) on Nigerian English, Tongue (1974) on Singaporean and Malaysian English, and Nihalani, et al. (1979) on Indian English. Although these works have the merit of bringing their respective regional Englishes to local and international notice, they do so in ways that are fundamentally influenced by the form of the supplementary dictionary. The supplementary dictionary thus defines both a structure for the lexicography of English as an international language and a particular way of viewing English as an international language in centre–periphery terms. Essentially, Britain and the United States are authorised to produce general dictionaries of the English language, while it is the role of other English-using regions of the world to have their varieties described from a central reductive perspective. English as an international language is similarly viewed, under the influence of the supplementary principle, in terms of a structural relationship between the norm-providing Anglo-American centre and the norm-following or norm-breaking periphery. This structure is also supported by the economics of dictionary production – for many English-using regions lack both the financial and academic resources and a sufficient local market to support a general dictionary of English compiled from their own perspective. These regions depend upon general dictionaries produced in the centre for the world market. And as we will see in the following sections, the supplementary principle enters these dictionaries also.

Regionally adapted dictionaries In twentieth-century dictionaries, lists of regional vocabulary have often been appended as supplements. The earliest record of this kind of list was Lake’s supplement to Webster’s International Dictionary of the English Language (1898), described as ‘A Dictionary of Australasian Words’. Whether the list was included simply in order to shore up the dictionary’s claim to internationalism or to cater for an Australian market is not known. An Indian edition of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary (SOED) published in 1984 included an appendix of Indian words, compiled by R.E. Hawkins and the Singaporean Straits Times Chambers Learners’ Dictionary (STCLD, 1985) included an appendix of Malaysian and Singaporean words. Such supplementary lists become redundant once a regional dictionary is available and the tendency is for them to be incorporated into the wordlist as a set of labelled items as the dictionary is revised. This was the case, for example, in the second edition of the Times-Chambers Essential English Dictionary (TCEED2, 1997), a development from the STCLD, in which Malaysian and Singaporean items were incorporated into the dictionary and a new appendix was included of informal words derived from local languages. Dictionaries to which local words have been added for an overseas market are often called adaptations. Both the COD and POD series have been systematically adapted for overseas markets, including Australia, Canada, New Zealand and South Africa. Collins and Heinemann have also produced a number of regionally

112 English as an international language adapted dictionaries and many Canadian dictionaries are adaptations of US dictionaries. The source of local words is often a local academic or lexicographer, who will be listed as an editor or consultant, but the final decision on the items to be included usually rests with the company who produces the dictionary. The quality of local wordlists in regionally adapted dictionaries varies considerably and is rarely transparent to the user. Comparing the Heinemann New Zealand Dictionary (HNZD, 1979) and the New Zealand Pocket Oxford Dictionary (NZPOD, 1986), for example, Görlach (1990: 1487) comments that the HNZD is ‘the Heinemann international dictionary with minor local modifications’, whereas the NZPOD includes up to 1,000 additional New Zealand or Australasian items from OED files. The South African Pocket Oxford Dictionary (SAfPOD, 1987) also appears to be a more substantial adaptation than most, with the inclusion of approximately 3,000 headwords from the DSAfE (Görlach 1990: 1489). In all regionally adapted dictionaries, the bulk of the wordlist and its definitions remains unchanged, which reinforces the assumption that international varieties of English essentially consist of a core of international items (usually consisting of more than 90 per cent of the vocabulary) and a delimited set of local items. But the core items are often defined in ways that are distinctive to the country in which the original dictionary is produced. The effect of this is illustrated in the entries for the main languages of Malaysia and Singapore in the TCEED2: Bahasa Malaysia … Bahasa Malaysia refers to the Malay language spoken in Malaysia, as distinct from the Malay spoken in Indonesia. Malay … Malay is the most widely-spoken language in Malaysia (where it is called Bahasa Malaysia or Bahasa Melayu) and Indonesia (where it is called Bahasa Indonesia). Mandarin … Mandarin, or Mandarin Chinese, is a dialect of Chinese, spoken mainly in Beijing, that is widely regarded as standard Chinese. Tamil … Tamil is the language spoken by the Tamils. English … is the main language of Britain, North America and Australia, and an official language in some other countries. In the context of Malaysia and Singapore these definitions are both uninformative and misleading. The fact that Bahasa Malaysia is the official language of Malaysia and that English, Malay, Mandarin and Tamil are the official languages of Singapore is not mentioned. Indeed, there is no mention whatsoever of any language being spoken in Singapore. The entries for Bahasa Malaysia and Malay are particularly obscure, since the first suggests that Bahasa Malaysia and Bahasa Indonesia are different varieties of Malay, while the second suggests that they are simply different names for the same variety. The TCEED2 gives no indication at

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all of how one should refer to the Malay language as it is spoken in Singapore (there are no entries for Bahasa Indonesia or Bahasa Melayu). The entry for English is in the standard form found in British dictionaries. As an English-using nation, Singapore is subsumed in ‘some other countries’ and is subordinated to Britain, North America and Australia. Malaysia, where English is not an official language, is not included as an English-using nation at all. The regionally adapted dictionary is essentially an ad hoc response to the need to make British and US dictionaries more responsive to overseas markets. Yet it also presents a particular view of the language to overseas dictionary users – a view according to which the core of English as an international language is identical to the language of the Anglo-American centre and the local variety consists of words additional to it. In some cases the claim that a local edition is really a local edition can almost amount to deceit. Australian editions of the CollED are, for example, as one of its Australian consultants has pointed out, almost identical in content to the corresponding British editions (Wilkes, 1981). The Australian items in the dictionary are those supplied for the British edition, yet the dictionary claims on the dust jacket to the most recent edition (CollED4AusEd) that ‘Australian English (is) comprehensively covered: from acreage to zambuck, Bondi to Uluru’. The assumption is that the coverage of Australian English in a dictionary originally designed for British readers is more than adequate for Australian readers. What is principally absent from dictionaries adapted to overseas markets is the perspective of the overseas user. The importance of this perspective has occasionally been recognised in the regional dictionary – for example in the DCan, where a canadianism is defined as a word ‘distinctively characteristic of Canadian usage though not necessarily exclusive to Canada’. A regional word is, arguably, any word that is important to the people of the region concerned, who in regard to the general dictionary will not necessarily be concerned with whether the word is exclusive to the region or whether it is entered in overseas dictionaries. The concern to define and identify regionalisms is a concern of the centre and involves the reinforcement of the centre–periphery distinction within English as an international language. Incorporating the perspectives of overseas users into the dictionary involves an extensive revision of the wordlist and definitions so that it reflects local perspectives. The need to incorporate local perspectives in general dictionaries for overseas use is recognised in the recent Canadian Oxford Dictionary (CanOD, 1998), which claims to be more than an adaptation of the edition of the COD on which it is based. The dictionary is based on a 20-million word corpus of Canadian texts, lists senses in their order of importance to Canadians and uses idiomatic Canadian English in definitions. Every entry, the publicity material claims, is ‘written from a Canadian point of view’. This recognition of the importance of perspective is an important development, but the question remains as to why such dictionaries should necessarily be produced by a British publisher. The Australian MacqD is also ultimately an adaptation of an overseas dictionary,1 a fact for which its claims to be a genuinely Australian dictionary were called into

114 English as an international language question by the OEDS editor Robert Burchfield (1989: 151–5) in an essay on the ‘genealogy of dictionaries’. The most distinctive feature of the MacqD, is not so much its Australian perspective, which is clearly present, but the fact that it is the product of an independent lexicography based in Australia and exclusively concerned with the production of dictionaries for Australia and the surrounding region. The crux of Burchfield’s argument, however, was that ‘the extent of the indebtedness should have been made clear, and it could even have been turned into a virtue’ (1989: 155). The comment is a curious one that amounts to a justification of the hegemony of British and American dictionaries in the world. For Burchfield the incorporation of a largely British and American wordlist into an overseas dictionary is a strength rather than a weakness.

The dictionary of world English The supplementary regional dictionary and the regionally adapted dictionary respond in different ways to the needs of dictionary users beyond the AngloAmerican linguistic centre. In the main, dictionary users within the centre are not even aware of the existence of such dictionaries. This is not the case, however, with the general English dictionary, which continues to be directed towards users at the centre, but is increasingly sold overseas. Béjoint observes that: On the whole, all the studies of different editions of the same dictionary, or of different generations of dictionaries, demonstrate that dictionaries are more and more open to regionalisms, even though the coverage may still be patchy and the choices sometimes inexplicable. (Béjoint: 1994: 88) This trend is in part a response to growing international markets for the general dictionary. It also reflects a broader lexicographical climate in which it is felt that the language that the dictionary describes should be English as an international language, rather than simply the language of the country in which it is produced. Although the NED included a large number of labelled international items, it did not do so as a matter of policy. Today, the practice has become systematic and explicit, although the methods of selection and description remain fundamentally the same. The need for a ‘dictionary of world English’ has been a recurrent theme in late twentieth-century English lexicography. This theme first emerged in a paper by Read, in which he commented that: Other parts of the world have branches of the English language with characteristic developments – New Zealand, the Philippines, India, South Africa, Ghana, the Caribbean, etc. – and each offers a challenge for the lexicologist to assemble the material that can be drawn on by the general lexicographer. (Read, 1962: 222)

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The theme later re-emerged in a proposal by Cassells for a ‘Dictionary of English-speaking Peoples’, whose aim would be ‘to provide in one work comprehensive coverage of all the standard regional varieties of English’ (Crystal, 1986: 73). The project was aborted when, as its proposed editor David Crystal puts it, the publishers realised the enormity of the task. The dictionary of world English has nevertheless continued to remain an ideal in one form or another. Bailey (1986), for example, has proposed an index of existing English regional dictionaries and Aitken (1987) has speculated on the possibility of a dictionary that would cover material distinctive to particular English-speaking regions but leave out ‘the common core’. Most recently, Béjoint (1994: 89) has suggested that ‘the ultimate step in a ‘‘lexicography of World English’’ would be the realisation of a dictionary, or at least a lexical database, that would contain all the variants of the English language throughout the world’. The dictionary of world English is, in a sense, a dream constructed within the terms of the globalising discourses of twentieth-century Western post-imperialist knowledge. The practical utility of such a work to ordinary dictionary users, who primarily need works that reflect the usage of their own parts of the world, is doubtful. But the general historical direction of the dictionary has often been fuelled by such dreams and a number of dictionaries have already taken practical steps towards its realisation. The OED was one of the first to expand its coverage of English as an international language, which was significantly increased during the compilation of the four volumes of the OEDS and the OED2. The first sign of the new policy came in the preface to OEDS2, where Burchfield stated: For new general vocabulary we have repeatedly and profitably turned to North American sources.… We have given somewhat more attention in this volume and the last to the special vocabulary of the West Indies and, nearer home, of Scotland. In the preface to OEDS3, Burchfield recorded that he had visited China in 1979 and noted as one of the ‘pleasures of historical lexicography’: … the numerous Chinese loanwords or loan translations – for example, pipa, putonghua, Little Red Book, running dog and scorched earth – with the Chinese originals expressed in the revolutionary (and one hopes permanent) Pinyin transliteration system. And in the preface to OEDS4, Burchfield states that ‘as far as possible, equality of attention has been given to the sprawling vocabulary of all English-speaking countries’. In three published papers, Weiner (1986, 1987, 1990), co-editor of the OED2, has emphasised the role of the OED in documenting the international dimensions of English and has described this as one of the two major policy questions for the projected New Oxford English Dictionary.

116 English as an international language Willinsky (1994), however, is somewhat sceptical of the OED’s approach to world English. Reporting on his fieldwork at the dictionary offices in Oxford, he comments: On the new vocabulary of the English-speaking countries, it was my observation that the reading program systematically increased its coverage of world English in 1988 through steps that included appointing two readers to cover such non-British sources of the English language as Nigeria, Jamaica, and India. The World English Program, as it is called, supplements, rather than replaces, the nineteenth century view of Great Britain’s gift of a civilizing influence on language and culture. (Willinsky, 1994: 137) He also observes that expanded coverage of world English is an ideological issue for the dictionary: The challenge (of world English) is to recognize the imperial patterns in the OED’s construction of the language as it gradually moved out from London and has now begun to develop a basis for a postcolonial lexicography. The indications from Oxford are that the reading program is expanding its attention to voices from around the globe, if only in a slowly widening circle that is still very much centered on Anglo-American cultural concerns. (Willinsky, 1994: 193–4) For Willinsky, the importance of English in the world to the OED today is bound up with the global conception of the dictionary and the need to find ‘the means to expand its market and authority around the world long after the empire of its origins has deflated’ (1994: 13). The nature of the OED’s policies towards the international dimensions of English up to the publication of the OED2 are explored in detail in Chapters 7 to 10 of this book through an analysis of the dictionary’s treatment of China. The recently published New Oxford Dictionary of English (NODE, 1998), which claims to include approximately 14,000 regionally marked items, also gives some idea of the project’s approach to its new challenges. Other British dictionaries that have paid particular attention to world English include the CollED and the LDEL. In the preface to the LDEL, world English is mentioned as one of three areas of vocabulary to which the dictionary pays special attention (the others are scientific and technical words and colloquial and idiomatic English): In the age of the ‘global village’, and with English continuing to grow in importance as a medium of international communication, a dictionary cannot afford to be insular; hence this work provides an exceptionally full treatment of significant features of vocabulary, grammar, and spelling occurring in non-British English.

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The CollED has been described as ‘the first dictionary in nearly 50 years to be based entirely on an international survey of contemporary written and spoken English’ (Loughridge, 1990: 15). Görlach (1990), in a review of English dictionaries around the world, describes it as one of the best in terms of its coverage of world English. This is signalled in part by a list of ‘special consultants’ and ‘specialist contributors’ for a number of varieties of English including Indian English and Malaysian English. A multiple-authored essay entitled ‘English around the World’ has also been included in every edition of the dictionary, although this has not been updated since its first publication in 1979. The most recent arrivals on the scene, the NODE and the Encarta World English Dictionary (EWED, 1999) suggest that the trend towards emphasis on world English is ongoing. The preface to NODE suggests that the 14,000 regionally labelled items in the dictionary represent approximately 9 per cent of the total, which is undoubtedly a larger percentage than can be found in any previously published general dictionary. The emphasis, however, remains on the ‘standard language’: The scope of a dictionary such as the New Oxford Dictionary of English, given the breadth of material it aims to cover, must be limited in the main to the vocabulary of the standard language throughout the world rather than local dialectal variation. Nevertheless, the New Oxford Dictionary of English includes thousands of regionalisms encountered in standard contexts in the different English-speaking areas of the world.… The underlying approach has been to get away from the traditional, parochial notion that ‘correct’ English is spoken only in England and more particularly only in Oxford or London. The distinction between ‘the standard language throughout the world’ and ‘regionalisms encountered in standard contexts in the different English-speaking areas of the world’ is a neat distinction that is not fully explained. Nevertheless, it is recognised that there is no single homogeneous standard for the world: A network of consultants in all parts of the English-speaking world has assisted in this by giving information and answering queries – by e-mail, on a regular, often daily basis – on all aspects of the language in a particular region. Often, the aim has been to find out whether a particular word, sense, or expression, well known and standard in British English, is used anywhere else. The picture that emerges is one of complex interactions among an overlapping set of regional standards. This recognition that English has multiple regional standards is perhaps inevitable at the close of the twentieth century. Nevertheless, the Oxford lexicographers continue to engage in the process of representing these standards in hierarchical fashion. Indeed the preface to the dictionary lists the main regional standards in the form of a hierarchy: ‘British, US and Canadian, Australian and New Zealand, South African, Indian and West Indies’. The core

118 English as an international language of the standard language remains a British core, but it is the job of the British lexicographer to strip it of its uniquely British items. The role of the overseas consultant, it will be noted, is to answers questions posed by the lexicographers at the centre, who retain overall control of the representation of the language in its international dimensions. The important question to be asked of these overseas consultants is whether British items are used ‘anywhere else’, not how the language might be represented from their own perspectives.2 The EWED is unusual both in its emphasis on world English and in the form of its publication. The dictionary is a partnership between British, US and Australian publishers and Microsoft, who publish the dictionary in electronic form. The printed version of the dictionary was published simultaneously in Britain, the United States and Australia in three different editions. The Australian edition contains a foreword by British publisher Nigel Newton, who spells out the dictionary’s policy on world English: The argument for a new English dictionary, using the world as its cultural perspective, is inescapable, as English can no longer be said to be the British language originally defined by James Murray in the first Oxford English Dictionary or the language of America that Noah Webster set out to define. Today English is the language of the world. What does this mean? It is interesting to note that in the current edition of a leading English dictionary the term ‘imperial’ is defined as ‘of or relating to an empire: Britain’s imperial era’. The Encarta World English Dictionary defines the same term as ‘concerning or involving an empire or its ruler’. The point is that a dictionary of the world’s lingua franca in the third millennium should reflect a broad cultural perspective rather than the history of nations that once held power over others. In contrast to the NODE, the EWED is not explicitly concerned with national or international standards, and the conception of world English underlying it is a distinctive one. In making a distinction between the two definitions of imperial, Newton proposes a standpoint for the dictionary’s representation of the world that somehow stands above any particular geographical location – a standpoint from which world English appears as a decentred language. In arguing for this standpoint, the rhetoric of the dictionary tends to inflate the role of English in the world. ‘When the world wants to communicate,’ writes Newton, ‘especially if it wants to communicate beyond its own borders, English tends to be the chosen means of communication’. English is clearly not the only international language, nor is the extent of its current influence entirely separate from the political and economic influence of the major English-using nations (the United States in particular) in certain regions of the world. The notion that English ‘belongs to the world’, however, necessarily implies a view of English as an international language that is stripped of its historical associations with imperialism. The contents of the dictionary itself present the reader with a kind of lexical and encyclopedic smorgasbord of English in the world. But its representation of

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English as an international language does not in the end escape from the conventional structures established in earlier dictionaries. Like the NODE lexicographers, the EWED lexicographers employed a team of consultants organised through the London office. ‘Every evening from our offices’, writes British editor Kathy Rooney, ‘we e-mailed our team batches of work. These were then returned to us by e-mail’. Every international item is carefully labelled with its region of origin (the preface lists no less than 29). The British and Australian editions give British pronunciations only and the American edition gives American pronunciations only.3 And in British-American pairs, the British and Australian editions follow the convention of giving an explanatory definition for the British form and a British synonym for the American form: pavement … a paved path for pedestrians alongside a street. US term sidewalk sidewalk … US = pavement In spite of its global rhetoric and the addition of many international items, therefore, the EWED remains typical in its approach to the representation of the language. The British and US editions are essentially British and US dictionaries of English as an international language, with all the structural implications that such a description entails. The principal development within the dictionary of world English is the addition of an ever-increasing number of international items. In other respects, these new dictionaries remain conservative in adopting the approach to internationalisms that was characteristic of the NED. The international items continue to represent a sample of those available, they are always labelled and they are frequently defined in British or American terms. One indication of the degree to which newer dictionaries succeed in escaping from the centre– periphery metaphor is the ‘durian test’. In Chapter 3, I cited the CollED definition of durian, a popular fruit of Southeast Asia, as an example of a definitional type that both exoticises and peripherises Asian words by invoking a central cultural context from which their denotata are defined. This form of the definition of durian, however, has a long history in the English dictionary. The earliest example I have been able to find appears in Ogilvie’s Imperial Dictionary of the English Language (1850): durio … A genus of plants, nat. order Malvaceae. The D. zibenthinus, or civet durio or durian, which is the only species, is a large and lofty tree growing in the Malayan Archipelago. The largish flowers, of a yellow green colour, are produced on the stem or main branches, and are followed by the large fetid fruit, which is of the size of a man’s head, and is a favourite food of the natives during the time (May and June) when it is in season. There is usually a second crop in November. The smell is offensive, like putrid animal matter, but with this is associated the most delicious flavour, which places it,

120 English as an international language notwithstanding the odour, in the opinion of many, in the foremost place among tropical fruits. The definition clearly encodes an imperialist view of the role of the English dictionary, in which one of its functions is to document the discoveries of colonial travel, and the words that go with them, for the domestic reader. It is not only CollED3, however, that repeats the essential form of this definition:4 durian … The oval or globular fruit of Durio zibethinus, N.O. Sterculiaceae, a tree of the Indian Archipelago; it has a hard prickly rind and luscious cream-coloured pulp, of a strong civet odour, but agreeable taste; also the tree itself. (OED2) durian … a large oval tropical fruit with a prickly rind and pleasant-tasting but foul-smelling flesh; also an E Indian tree (Durio zibethinus) that bears durians. (LDEL) durian … a tree found in the tropical rain forests of Southeast Asia that has foul-smelling but deliciously flavoured fruits. (EWED) It is no secret that dictionaries frequently borrow their definitions from earlier dictionaries. In the context of the dictionary of world English, however, this practice causes an imperialist view of the world to leak into the modern dictionary. The effect is also pervasive: in the OED2, the durian tree grows in the Indian Archipelago, and in the EWED it is ‘found’ in the (rapidly disappearing) ‘tropical rainforests of Southeast Asia’, not on the durian plantation where it is now more commonly cultivated. Imperialist geographical terminology is far from uncommon in modern dictionaries. The EWED, for example, includes another archaic entry for the word amah, defined as ‘a children’s nurse, female domestic servant, or office cleaner and attendant in the Far East’. Although the dictionary has no entry for Far East, it does have an entry for East Asia, which is defined as ‘the countries of the Far East’. The issue here is not simply that these dictionaries include entries borrowed from earlier dictionaries that stand in need of revision. It is rather that the representation of English as an international language in the modern dictionary is primarily seen as a matter of adding new international items to a structure that served well in the representation of the English language as the language of the British Empire. Definitions of older international words, such as durian and amah, are not revised because they lie on the periphery of the language and the failure to revise them reinforces the peripheral status of the regions in which they originate. Similarly, it does not appear to matter especially whether these regions are called ‘Southeast Asia’, ‘the Indian Archipelago’ or the ‘the Far East’. More

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importantly, little attention has yet been paid in the dictionary of world English to the revision of the basic lexicographical structures within which the language is represented in centre–periphery terms. The current tendency to submerge the imperial origins of English as an international language within post-imperialist notions of ‘overlapping standards’ and English as ‘the language of the world’ does little to encourage basic revisions of this kind.

The learner’s dictionary The dictionary of regionalisms, the regionally adapted general dictionary and the dictionary of world English are all essentially oriented towards the native speaker of English and have grown organically out of the English dictionary of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The learner’s dictionary, designed for non-native speakers of English, is an innovation of the late twentieth century that is in many respects independent of this tradition. The idea of the learner’s dictionary originated in the 1930s and was based on a notion of a ‘pedagogic core’ within the language (Sweet, 1899/1964; Palmer, 1938, Cowie, 1988).5 The first examples of the genre were initiated in Bengal and Japan, but the learner’s dictionary has now become a key member of the dictionary family for several British publishers. The learner’s dictionary has also been the site for a number of important innovations in ‘user-friendly’ lexicography. The core of the language as it is represented in the wordlist of the learner’s dictionary consists of words that are considered to be of particular value to a learner of English as a foreign language, assessed in terms of factors such as their specificity, functional load and frequency of occurrence. This core is further refined to form the restricted defining vocabulary of the learner’s dictionary, discussed in Chapter 3. Linguistic notions of core vocabulary are clearly related to, and ultimately derived from, the general dictionary’s representation of the language in terms of a selected wordlist and defining vocabulary. But while the idea of the linguistic centre is largely implicit in the general dictionary, the pedagogical core of the learner’s dictionary has been extensively theorised. In an extended discussion of the notion of core vocabulary, Carter (1998: 36) discusses a series of tests that ‘aim to show the extent to which some words are more tightly integrated than others into the language system’. The problem with such tests, however, is that it is difficult to determine to what extent the linguistic notions underpinning them are themselves underpinned by assumptions derived from the conventional representation of lexical relationships within the semiotic form of the dictionary. The test of ‘syntactic substitution’, for example, involves determining which items in a lexical set can be defined by the others. Carter suggests that ‘in the lexical set gobble, dine, devour, eat, stuff and gormandize, each of the words could be defined using ‘‘eat’’ as a basic semantic feature but it would be inaccurate to define eat by reference to any other of the words in the set’ (1998: 37). The test is thus dependent upon the concept of lexical definition, which is essentially a lexicographical concept. A further problem, which is likely to be of concern to the lexicographer who is unlikely to be satisfied with simply

122 English as an international language entering the word eat in the dictionary, is that the test does not help us judge the degree to which other items in the list belong to the core, nor is there any easy way of ranking them without reference to contexts of use. Criteria such as frequency of use, functional load, usefulness in communication or syntactic substitution necessarily vary from speaker to speaker and from context to context. In a regional sense, the core vocabulary for one speaker in one part of the world will necessarily differ from the core vocabulary of another speaker in another part of the world. As Carter points out, an important feature of ‘any core word derived from a description of British English will be one of “anglicity” ’. (1998: 36). Although learner’s dictionaries have been produced in the United States and Australia, British publishers have been by far the most active in the field. The core vocabulary of the learner’s dictionary is therefore, for most of its users, the core vocabulary of British English. The OALD has the longest history among the various learner’s dictionaries on the market today. The dictionary now known in full as the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary was first compiled by A.S. Hornby and others in Japan during the 1930s and first published as the Idiomatic and Syntactic English Dictionary in 1942 (Cowie, 1995). Cowie notes that earlier editions of the dictionary carried traces of their Asian origins which have been largely eradicated. OALD4 (1989) still included some Asian words, such as the Indian English numerical units lakh and crore, but these were dropped from OALD5. The OALD is oriented towards the ‘foreign learner’ as a regionally undifferentiated category of user, who presumably has little use for such words. What these users have in common is principally the fact that they are not British, which legitimates a focus on British English and culture within the dictionary. As Béjoint (1994: 67) points out, the OALD ‘is a book used for the teaching of English as a foreign language, and it must transmit British culture as well as the English language’. In the CCELD1, the geographical limitations of the wordlist representing the ‘central core of the language’ were, unusually, explicitly acknowledged in the preface: … this dictionary, originating in Britain, inevitably tends towards a British variety of English. It tries to avoid British usages which are not international. Equally, aspects of American, Canadian or Australian English which are distinctive to these regions have been left out, but those which are familiar to the international community have been recorded. CCELD1, however, was anglocentric not only in the composition of its wordlist, but also in a number of definitions of words related to Asia. Part of the definition for yellow verges on racism: ‘people who belong to a race with pale yellow skins, for example the Chinese or the Japanese, are sometimes described as yellow’.6 Other definitions are almost disturbingly naïve. The definition of The East, for example, neatly divides the world in two: ‘the countries in the southern and eastern part of Asia, including India, China and Japan, which have a different culture and different traditions from Europe and the U.S.A.’.

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The definition of Taoism – ‘a Chinese religion which believes that people should lead a simple, honest life and not interfere with the natural course of events’ – is simplistic to the point of being patronising. And the definition of ginseng – ‘the root of a plant found in China, Korea and America, which some people believe is good for your health’ – calls in to question the credulity of those who ‘believe in’ the efficacy of the plant. British bias within learner’s dictionaries was challenged to some extent by the Cambridge International Dictionary of English (CIDE, 1995). As Paul Procter, editor of the CIDE, was reported as saying in a Cambridge University Press newsletter: I do think that we’ve got to stop thinking that people want to learn English in order to learn about England or about things like Whitehall or Beefeaters. This is nonsense. People want to learn English in order to talk to each other about business, to go on holiday together if they are from different language groups. They want to learn American English at least as much as British; probably more so, because they are exposed to far more of it – they are exposed to huge amounts of American culture. (Stanfield, 1995: 1) The construction of English as an international language in CIDE, however, does not extend very far beyond British, US and Australian English. CIDE has simply gone further than most other British learner’s dictionaries in responding to pressures to provide more of the language that international users are presumed to need. It does little to incorporate the perspectives of these readers themselves into the dictionary. The most substantial effort to localise the wordlist of a learner’s dictionary to date has taken place in the TCEED2, which is aimed at learners of English in Singapore and Malaysia and claims to incorporate ‘about 1000 items of local terms and usage’. The bulk of the vocabulary in the dictionary is drawn from the British edition of the dictionary, which makes use of the British National Corpus, and the Singaporean and Malaysian items were contributed by consultants from the National University of Singapore, who made use of a local corpus of texts. The coverage of Singaporean and Malaysian English (SME) in the TCEED2 is in part intended to legitimise the local variety: Since SME contains influences from so many linguistic backgrounds, it has often been critically referred to as a hotchpotch of unstable items. Our examination of the corpus, where marked regularities have been found, clearly contradicts this perception. English has been available as a first language for over 60 years now, and this dictionary represents part of the attempt to describe this variety. (TCEED2: vii) At the same time, it is evident that the inclusion of SME words was also intended to help local learners avoid them in certain situations, as they were also

124 English as an international language ‘chosen to reflect learners’ needs in distinguishing between the use of English for communication outside the country as well as within the country’ (italics in original). ‘Informal’ SME words were also included ‘to help learners distinguish between formal and informal usage’ and ‘to enable them to make the transition from what they already know … to their equivalents in core English’. The TCEED2 is essentially a regionally adapted learner’s dictionary, which carries with it many of the problems of the regional adaption. In particular, the core of the language remains a British core, to which the local items are presented as marginal. Although the learner’s dictionary has been an important focus for innovation in dictionary-making, in its approach to English as an international language it has tended to be a conservative force. Indeed, the core of the English language that it presents to its international users, one grounded in the best usage of speakers of British English, is in many respects a return to the version of the language produced by Johnson in 1755.

Lexicography in Australia My discussion of the history of the English dictionary so far has located the driving force of its development within the twin linguistic centres of Britain and the United States. As such, this history appears to be one in which the representation of English as an international language continually remains under the control of these centres. But when the history of the dictionary is viewed from other perspectives it may appear differently. We will conclude this chapter, therefore, by considering the history of English lexicography in a region of the English-using world that appears peripheral in the context of the dictionary’s representation of the language, but which is far from peripheral to those who live in it. Australia was first settled in 1788 as a penal colony and the first known Australian word book, James Hardy Vaux’s Vocabulary of the Flash Language, was compiled by a convict at Newcastle in 1812 and included in his memoirs published in 1819. Vaux’s collection was essentially a glossary of criminal slang of the kind in vogue in Britain at the time, and was not especially Australian. Later slang collections included the Australian Slang Dictionary, published by H.J. Franklin in 1882 by an unknown compiler. All these collections were relatively small, compiled by amateurs and often described words inaccurately or included words that were not Australian at all. Morris’ Austral English, published in 1898, was the first Australian word book to be based on lexicographical principles. It was also the first to suggest that Australia had more to offer the English language than its slang. In his preface, Morris argued that ‘a great deal of slang is used in Australasia, but very much less is generated here than is usually believed’. Believing that ‘the phrase “Australasian English” includes something wider than slang’, Morris paid considerably greater attention than any other lexicographer before or since to the documentation of the names of local flora and fauna and to Aboriginal and Maori loanwords. In the same year as Morris’ Austral English, a second scholarly

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work appeared in the form of an appendix to Noah Porter’s 1898 edition of Webster’s International Dictionary of the English Language. Compiled by Joshua Lake, the supplement was entitled ‘A Dictionary of Australasian Words’ and included approximately 700 words not included in the main body of the dictionary. In a short preface, Lake noted that ‘slang words have been very sparingly admitted, and only when they seem to have established themselves firmly in colonial usage’. Morris was subsequently criticised in Australia both for his emphasis on flora and fauna and for his neglect of slang. Baker (1945: 29 fn.), in his book The Australian Language, wrote that Morris’ treatment of Australian slang was ‘the academician’s cross-section of our life – ill-balanced, incomplete and unrepresentative’. Morris dismissed slang, according to Baker, ‘because he was ignorant of its scope, and made no more than a half-hearted attempt to acquaint himself with it’. In Hornadge’s (1986: 11) assessment, Austral English was ‘certainly a comprehensive record of the newly developing language of the bush in the colonial period, particularly in the fields of flora and fauna, but Morris lived in a prudish era and he omitted, perhaps deliberately, a considerable amount of the more colourful language of the period, so his work is seriously marred by its selectivity’. At the root of these assessments lay a view of Australian lexicography as an essentially nationalist enterprise concerned less with the dry and methodical collection of local words and senses than with the exploration of Australian identity. For Baker: … the Australian language we want to examine is something closer to the blood-beat of everyday life. It is something that will help us see the Australian in the round, as a person living and talking in his own way and not much more concerned with English traditions, customs and clichés than the average American. (Baker, 1945: 11) Baker’s own work paid little attention to flora and fauna and claimed to be ‘a simple examination of Australian history in terms of the popular speech we have developed as incidental to our national growth’. Baker’s work, which was a thematically organised book rather than a dictionary, was both the first to argue for the idea of Australian English as a distinctive national variety and the first to equate a national variety with its popular speech. It was followed by a supplement, Australia Speaks, in 1953 and by The Drum (1959), a work which consisted of a discourse on the Australian character followed by a 2,000-word dictionary of slang. The notion that the Australian character can be best understood through Australian slang is one that dies hard. Hornadge (1986: 9), for example, describes his book, entitled The Australian Slanguage, as ‘a study of the social history of Australia rather than an examination of the language of the continent’. In spite of the production of more sophisticated lexicographical works, glossaries of Australian slang continue to find a ready market. Blackman’s Aussie Slang Dictionary for Old and New Australians (AusSD, 1990) and Johansen’s Penguin Book of Australian Slang (PBAusS, 1988) are two recent examples of the genre.

126 English as an international language In 1952, A.S. Mitchell provided another supplement of Australian words to Chambers Shorter English Dictionary (ChamSED) and, in 1969 Robert Burchfield added a supplement to the POD. But until the 1970s Australians relied upon imported British works. The first dictionaries to include substantial local content were regional adaptations. These were, however, in part, a product of growing academic interest in the Australian language in Australian universities. From 1964 onwards, the Australian Language Research Centre at Sydney University published a regular series of occasional papers documenting aspects of Australian English. Papers on the language of the shearing industry, Australian football, bushranging, opal mining and early convict language and slang give some indication of the flavour of the research. In the same period, the first major scholarly works on Australian and Australasian English were published by Ramson (1966, 1970) and Turner (1966). The authors of these works included several who were to become contributors to localised British dictionaries and lexicographers in their own right. In 1976, two small regional adaptations appeared, the Heinemann Australian Dictionary, produced in association with linguists at La Trobe University, Melbourne, and the Australian Pocket Oxford Dictionary (AusPOD), edited by Graham Johnstone. As new British editions of the Pocket and Concise Oxford series were published, revised Australian versions were also produced. Collins have also produced adaptations of their smaller dictionaries based mainly on the contributions of Gerald Wilkes, who published his own Dictionary of Australian Colloquialisms (DAusC) in 1978. Adapted British dictionaries continue to be a staple of the Australian dictionary market – the most recent production from OUP being Bruce Moore’s Australian Concise Oxford Dictionary (AusCOD4, 1997). All of these dictionaries are essentially regional adaptations, however, and they sit aside from the more substantially Australian MacqD, first published in 1981 and now the centre of a family of smaller and specialist works. The history of the MacqD has been documented by two of its compilers, Arthur Delbridge and Susan Butler, who describe it as: … a national dictionary of Australian English, edited by Australian lexicographers, its major editions printed and produced in Australia, with residents in Australia as its envisaged principal users. (Delbridge and Butler, 1999: 1) Delbridge and Butler observe that early scholarly research on Australian English was oriented to the eventual publication of an historical dictionary. The Australian Language Research Centre saw the production of a general Australian dictionary only as a means to finance this scholarly historical account. The editors of the MacqD, however, took the view that ‘the most urgent need was for a people’s dictionary that would hold up the mirror directly to contemporary Australian speech and writing as its first object of study’ (1991: 4). The first edition of the dictionary was an adaptation of a British dictionary, which was itself an adaptation of an American dictionary, and many of the original

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definitions remained. But it differed from other adaptations in Australia in that the final product became the property of the local publisher. The MacqD also included many of the local features claimed by other adaptations, but was clearly a more substantially localised work. In particular, Australian pronunciations were given for every word and, crucially, australianisms were unlabelled. This policy was explained in the briefest of terms in Delbridge’s introduction to the dictionary: The national labelling of words in this dictionary is reversed from what one normally expects in English or American dictionaries. Words which in those dictionaries would be given an Australian label are here not labelled at all: words which in this dictionary are labelled Brit. or U.S. would in those dictionaries not be labelled at all. It was, however, a significant decision in the history of the lexicography of English, for it led, for the first time in four centuries of the English dictionary, to a representation of the English language as a language centred on a region other than Britain or the United States. It also led to a reconceptualisation of the concept of Australian English. As Wilkes (1981) observed in his review of the dictionary, ‘if the word horse is used in Australia, then horse is part of Australian English’. Interestingly, Delbridge also made reference to Murray’s centre– periphery metaphor for the English language: As the editors of the Oxford English Dictionary said, ‘the circle of the English language has a well-defined centre but no discernible circumference’. We have been content to spend a fair amount of time gathering words from the misty perimeter of the Australian lexicon. That is where the turbulence is, and where the material for a revised edition is taking shape. The metaphor evidently dies hard. However, it is significant that by shifting the international centre of the dictionary to Australia, the editors of the MacqD were able to reconceptualise the periphery of the language as the periphery of Australian English, rather than Australian English itself. The publication of the MacqD was greeted as a major event for the Australian language within Australia, largely because the dictionary was sold at first exclusively through several Australian newspapers. In one review, Australian author Thomas Keneally (1981) stated that the dictionary ‘will, for the first time, declare that Australian English is not a bastard convict but a legitimate heir’. But it also provoked, if not a dictionary war, at least a minor skirmish, in the form of a review by the OEDS editor Robert Burchfield (1982). Describing the dictionary as ‘a work of unmatchable content and skilful endeavour’, Burchfield went on, in the typical style of the dictionary review written by a dictionary editor, to document a catalogue of errors and lexicographical infelicities. Summing up his criticisms, Burchfield commented that:

128 English as an international language The reasons one might adduce for believing that it is a strictly local triumph and not an international one lie in two main directions, its primary derivativeness and its occasional charming unawareness of the standard professional requirements of reputable lexicography outside Australia. (Burchfield, 1982) The review concluded by informing its readers that the forthcoming OEDS3 would include ‘hundreds of words that are not listed in the Macquarie Dictionary’, but that the MacqD would ‘serve Australians well until the long awaited larger Australian dictionary on historical principles appears’. There was more than a hint of commercial rivalry in the review and, to his credit, Burchfield (1989: 155) later acknowledged that it was ‘uncharitable’. However, the comments were revealing of the ideological underpinnings of the Oxford dictionary enterprise. For Burchfield, the MacqD was a ‘strictly local triumph’, which was in effect what it claimed to be. Its failure was a failure to establish its credentials internationally as these were defined by the OED. Evidently, a potential threat to the international hierarchy of English lexicography (and possibly to the hierarchy of language varieties that it implied) had been recognised and quickly averted through the discourse of the dictionary review. This hierarchy would soon be decisively restored through the publication of a larger and more scholarly historical dictionary, by which time the success of the MacqD in Australia would seem no more than a ‘charming’ interlude in the history of English as an international language. The ‘long-awaited’ historical dictionary finally appeared as the Australian National Dictionary (AusND, 1988), published by OUP and compiled solely by William Ramson, who had earlier provided much of the Australian material for the MacqD (Delbridge and Butler, 1999: 4). Although it was an important scholarly work in the Oxford tradition, Ramson’s dictionary was a dictionary of regionalisms rather than a general dictionary, and perhaps smaller than expected at 10,000 words. It was in no sense a rival to the MacqD, and its most important function may simply have been to add one more piece to the jigsaw of English as an international language viewed from the central Anglo-American perspective. The AusND also, of course, lends a degree of authority to OUP’s continued commercial operations in the quiet war of Australian dictionaries. Another important new dictionary is the Australian Learners Dictionary (AusLD, 1997), produced independently of the MacqD by the National Centre for English Language Teaching and Research at Macquarie University and aimed at migrants to Australia. The AusLD is an Australian dictionary in the same sense as the MacqD. According to its preface: This is the first dictionary of Australian English to be developed by writers in Australia for learners of English in Australia and published by an Australian publisher.

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Pronunciations are Australian and australianisms are not labelled or in any other way distinguished from the bulk of the wordlist. As in other learner’s dictionaries, the wordlist represents a core of the language, but this is explicitly identified as ‘the words which Australians use most often’. The result is that the wordlist actually contains relatively few distinctively Australian words. Similarly, although considerable efforts have been made to provide illustrative examples and pictorial illustrations that reflect the multicultural character of Australia, this is less apparent in the composition of the reduced wordlist than it is in the MacqD. The key difference between the AusLD and British learner’s dictionaries is, however, that it is explicit in its aim to provide the user with a version of the language grounded in Australian usage. Aimed at a specific readership, rather than the ‘foreign learner’ in general, AusLD does not claim that its version of the language is the core of the language as a whole. The most significant development in modern Australian lexicography, however, is perhaps the fact that the new dictionaries have become intertwined with broader linguistic developments in Australia. The MacqD (now in its third edition) stands at the head of a large family of smaller dictionaries and reference works. Macquarie University, where the dictionary is based, has its own Dictionary Research Centre, which has both contributed to and benefited from the compilation of the MacqD and the AusLD. The MacqD has been adopted by the Australian Education Council as the standard for Australian spelling, by the Australian Broadcasting Company for pronunciations and by the law courts as the authoritative defining dictionary. The AusLD also received strong financial support from the Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs. It should be added that OUP have also made their contribution to the Australian language through funding for the Australian National Dictionary, although the work of the centre remains more narrowly focused on australianisms. The MacqD is now in the process of establishing a presence in Southeast Asia through the publication of localised dictionaries such as the Macquarie Junior Dictionary (MacqJD, 1999) adapted for Singapore, Malaysia and Brunei, and a proposed larger dictionary of regional English for Asia.7 The process is fraught with the problems and compromises associated with the regionally adapted dictionary. In the MacqJD, the base wordlist is Australian and the local items remain a sample and are labelled as local. In his preface, Delbridge notes differences between local usage and international usage, because ‘it seems to be in the students’ best interests to be alerted to the difference between localisms and international standard usage’. The question remains as to what exactly ‘international standard usage’ means. In the usage note for alphabet (which in Malaysia and Singapore can often refer to a single letter of the alphabet) and other items, the point of reference is Standard British English. The pronunciations are neither local nor Australian, but British. As in the case of the TCEED2, there is a degree of deference to local education authorities, although it is less obtrusive in the labelling system, which makes no distinction between informal and formal local usage. These problems only illustrate the extent to which centre–periphery structures are inherent in the form of the modern dictionary

130 English as an international language itself. A new centre has been established, but within the framework of current lexicographical practice, a new centre almost inevitably implies new peripheries. The rhetoric that surrounds the modern Australian dictionary is also reminiscent of the nationalist rhetoric surrounding the British dictionary of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The first edition of the MacqD carried the slogan, ‘an Australian achievement’ and publicity material described it as ‘a book as big as our country’. Christopher Candlin’s preface to the AusLD states that ‘Australia is the richest land on earth for its vocabulary’. There is, however, a difference between this rhetoric and the rhetoric of the imperialist dictionary, because it goes no further than to stake a claim for Australian English within English as an international language. It might also be noted that the AusLD goes further than most British dictionaries in its efforts to redress gender and cultural inequalities in the dictionary and that the MacqD Asian initiative is grounded more in the World Englishes movement than in linguistic imperialism. Context is all-important. Although the modern Australian dictionary works within the inherited centre–periphery structures of the imperialist dictionary, Australia is a former colony, not an imperialist power in its own right. The labelling of a British word in an Australian dictionary and the labelling of an Australian word in a British dictionary have different meanings since they operate within different social and discursive contexts. The American dictionary also works within the same centre–periphery studies, yet it does not exploit them to the same extent as the British dictionary in relation to English as an international language. The same is perhaps even more true of the Australian dictionary. The history of Australian lexicography up to the 1980s can be seen as a series of more or less disconnected events, linked more to developments in lexicography overseas than to developments within Australia itself. It shows no tradition of dictionaries building upon the achievements of their predecessors, since each new dictionary was essentially a by-product or reflection of dictionaries produced in Britain. Recent developments in Australian lexicography both reflect and encourage a growing linguistic self-confidence. For many years, Australians deferred to British standards, disparaged their own speech and saw strengths only in its ‘slang’. Yet it was also the case that both the imported and local dictionaries available in Australia encouraged this by representing British English as the standard form to which Australian English was peripheral. In the modern Australian dictionary, Australians are able to see the Australian language as the source of its own authority, and it is in part through the dictionary that new perspectives on the language are produced. The question that remains is whether the example of Australian lexicography represents the future for the lexicography of English as an international language elsewhere in the world. For Delbridge (1983), the Australian experience was part of a more or less natural process of lexicographical evolution and ultimately every English-using nation should have its own national dictionary. But in comparison to other English-using nations, Australia possesses considerable academic resources and a relatively large dictionary market. Moreover, it was not until 80 years after Federation that Australia acquired its national

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dictionary. If the national dictionary is the solution to the problem of the lexicography of English as an international language, one may wonder how long it will be before other nations acquire theirs.

Conclusion The history of the English dictionary that I have outlined in the preceding chapters is necessarily selective and takes little account of many important developments and innovations. It is as much a constructed history as any other. My main aim, however, has been to deconstruct the idea that the essential continuity within this history lies in a progress towards ever-greater technical and intellectual sophistication and objectivity. By emphasising lines of continuity that lie in the structured representation of the language as an object of social knowledge in both its historical and geographical dimensions, we place the history of the English dictionary much closer to its ideological contexts. But the dictionary, like discourse in general, is never a direct reflection of these contexts. The dominance of the OED within the field of lexicography, I would argue, has caused the discourse of the dictionary in respect to its treatment of English as an international language to lag behind the times. Among the fundamental questions that need to be asked about English lexicography in the post-imperial age is the question of why a dictionary designed for the age of imperialism should remain not only the model, but also the leading site, for the lexicography of English as an international language. The answer to this question lies in the authority that the OED has succeeded in achieving – an authority that causes all other dictionaries in some sense to defer to it. This authority itself, however, lies in part in the assumption that the dictionary’s representation of the language is an objective representation rather than an ideological construction. Since the OED, the structures of the dictionary have become naturalised to the extent that it is difficult to see how they could be anything other than they are. In the remaining chapters of this book, we will therefore look more closely at the ways in which these structures function ideologically in the specific overseas context of the OED’s representation of China and the Chinese.

7

China in the OED: the wordlist

The remaining chapters of this book are concerned with the treatment of one region of the world in one dictionary. From the discussion in earlier chapters, the reasons for the focus on the OED will be clear. The first edition of the dictionary, completed in 1928, and published with a supplement as the OED1 in 1933, established standards for English lexicography in terms of methodology and content that have yet to be seriously challenged by any other dictionary. From 1972 to 1986, four supplements were produced (OEDS1–4) and in 1989 these were integrated with a revised version of the OED1 and an additional 5,000 words as OED2. The task of revising the OED1 is not yet complete, so that the OED2 is in effect both an old and new dictionary at the same time, yet there can be little doubt of the dictionary’s claim to continued dominance within the field of English lexicography. In recent publicity material, for example, the publishers are able to quote the New York Times describing the OED2 as ‘the arbiter of the English language as it is read and spoken all over the world’. Other dictionaries might dispute the honour, but none could legitimately claim it for itself. More important, however, is that fact that the OED2 simply has the most extensive coverage of English in the world of any published dictionary to date. The ways in which the OED goes about the task are reflected in other dictionaries, making it the ideal exemplar for the lexicography of English as an international language as it is exists in the present day. The reasons for the selection of China as the subject of this case study may be less obvious, since there is no ‘Chinese English’ in the sense that there is an Australian, Canadian or even Malaysian and Singaporean English. Nevertheless, the statistics are telling: the OED2 contains 903 references to China in definitions (under 646 headwords) and 2,804 references in quotations (under 2,207 headwords).1 Leaving Britain and the United States aside, only India (2,801) and Australia (1,217) have more references in the main body of the entry. Several countries with their own well-established varieties of English have far fewer: Canada (376), New Zealand (356) and South Africa (378). The number of references to China is also greater than the number for other countries in East and Southeast Asia: Japan (644), Malaysia (281), Burma (88), Philippines (76) and Singapore (6). It is clear from these statistics that the number of references to different countries in the OED2 has little relationship to the supposed

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importance of regional varieties within the scheme of English as an international language. It is equally clear that China exists on the margins of the dictionary. The 646 headwords with references to China represent approximately 0.2 per cent of the total. But China occupies a particularly important place on this margin and is therefore a suitable point from which to begin an exploration of the ways in which it is constructed in lexicographical terms. The OED2’s coverage of words associated with China is also more extensive than that of any other British dictionary. The CollED3, the most likely rival, for example, contains 453 entries with references to China out of an estimated total of 184,000, but this figure includes 230 biographical and place-name entries for China which have no entry in the OED2.2 When these are removed from the CollED3 total, the percentage of total entries is roughly half that of the OED2. The number of headwords associated with China in the OED2 can also be compared to the number listed in other works on the vocabulary of China in English. Cannon’s (1988) list of 547 Chinese loanwords is the largest collection of Chinese words in English to date.3 The OED2 contains several hundred words associated with China that do not appear in Cannon’s list or any other dictionary. The particular prominence of China in the OED is readily explained by its importance in Western discourses on the world from the eighteenth century to the present day. As Mackerras (1989: 268) has observed, ‘the main determinant of Western images of China is the West itself ’. For several centuries, scholars, scientists, diplomats and popular writers have constructed refracted self-images of the West through the lens of China and the East. China played a particular role within nineteenth-century discourses of British imperialism as the ‘other’ to which ideas of Britain’s civilising mission in the world were counterposed. In fact China remained the last great civilisation that British imperialism was unwilling or unable to colonise fully, and in consequence it had to be reduced through discourse. It was a period in which, as Mackerras puts it, ‘Europe colonised not only China, but also knowledge about it’. In the nineteenth century, China was visited by a variety of diplomats, missionaries, botanists and travellers who had no other purpose than to see the mysteries of China at first hand. They all brought back and published their accounts, which were liberally scattered across the pages of the NED. The process continued in the twentieth century as the works of Pearl Buck, Edgar Snow, Han Suyin and other interpreters of China made their way into the OED Supplements. As Mackerras shows, the nature of dominant Western images of China has swung back and forth from positive to negative as the centuries have progressed. In the eighteenth century they were largely positive and in the nineteenth century largely negative. The ninth edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica (1875–89) reported that in China ‘dishonesty prevails to a frightful extent, and with it, of course untruthfulness’. This offered some slight excuse for the use of torture in the judicial system, but fortunately ‘the Mongolian race is confessedly obtuse-nerved and insensible to suffering, and no doubt Chinese culprits do not suffer nearly as much as members of more sensitive races would under similar treatment’

134 China in the OED: the wordlist (Mackerras, 1989: 60). Such images found their way into the NED (and largely remain, as we will see, in the OED2), but China was also the source of cultural and natural riches, which contrasted with the degradation of its political system. These too found their way into the dictionary. The nineteenth century was the century in which knowledge of China was laid bare and inscribed within the language. Although more positive images have prevailed in the twentieth century, China remains a country that appears to exist in Western eyes in order to be known. When these images are found in their original contexts, they are relatively easy to critique. Although the Encyclopaedia Britannica is a work concerned with ‘facts’, the entry quoted above will readily be recognised as a version of China and the Chinese that is loaded with the dominant ideologies of its times. But when they enter the dictionary, they enter not as images but as words with defined meanings. They become a part of the language, and are therefore less open to critique. The images of China that have found their way into the OED and other dictionaries are varied and complex, but they are unified by the fact that the dictionary has drawn them into the network of English in a particular way. In the chapters that follow, it will often appear to be the case that China and the Chinese are treated ‘unfairly’ in the OED, but this is not the essential point about ethnocentrism in the OED. Far more important is the fact that China appears to exist in the dictionary primarily in order to be known through the language and in order that the language may be constructed as one through which the world in general is known. It is moreover in the OED’s treatment of words associated with China that the semiotic mechanisms of peripherisation discussed in Chapter 3 operate with their fullest force at the levels of the wordlist, labelling, definition and illustrative citation.

The semiotics of the wordlist The discussion begins with the premise, introduced in Chapter 2, that dictionaries are not simply containers for the words of a language, but structured representations of the language as it is constructed by the dictionary itself. At the level of the wordlist, the key semiotic concept is ‘macrostructure’, which implies that the selection of words for the dictionary is meaning-bearing in terms of an interpretative expectation that the dictionary corresponds to an entity perceived as ‘the language’ by its users. It has been argued that presence and absence of words in the macrostructure function as signifiers for inclusion and exclusion, which in turn function ideologically as signs for ‘membership’ and ‘nonmembership’ of the language. Words may also be partially excluded if they appear in the dictionary only as examples of their class or because they are found among some other class of words. Inclusion, exclusion and partial exclusion are considered as mechanisms for the evaluation of words, classes of words and the people, things or concepts they denote. One of the first observations to be made about the words associated with China in the OED2 is that, although the list is extensive, it appears to be

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somewhat arbitrary. Of Cannon’s (1988) list of 547 Chinese words in English, for example, approximately 250 have no entry in the OED2. At the same time, there are approximately 350 words associated with China in the OED2 that do not appear in Cannon’s list. The shared vocabulary is less than 50 per cent of each list. Similarly, of the 646 words in the OED2 and the 453 words in the CollED3, only 152 are associated with China in both dictionaries. Moreover, 404 of the OED2 items (63 per cent of the total) have no entry at all in the CollED3 and 262 of the CollED3 items (58 per cent of the CollED3 total) have no entry in the OED2. The lack of overlap suggests from the outset that the words associated with China in the OED2 are a selection of those that could be included. They are included as examples of their kind. The lack of overlap between the OED2 and the CollED3 is largely explained by the types of words included in each dictionary. In the first instance, it is worth remarking that in both dictionaries there is a preponderance of nouns: 333 of the words in the two dictionaries represent the names of places, persons, organisations, dynasties, reigns, periods and events, or are derived from them. Although many of the nouns also have verbal or (more often) adjectival uses, only 7 items are listed primarily as verb forms (pung, ride a tiger, save face, sinicize, sinify, stir-fry, walking on two legs), only 12 as adjectives (iconomatic, monosyllabic, pareoean, red, Seric, Sinaean, Sinic, Sinesian, Sinetic, Sinitic, white, yellow) and 1 as an adverb (velly). Nouns, or the names of people, things and concepts are, therefore, the main concern of English dictionaries in their treatment of the vocabulary of China. Subdividing all the words associated with China in the OED2 and the CollED3 according to broad lexico-semantic categories reveals the 11 leading categories listed in Table 7.1. Names of places, persons, languages and groups account collectively for 369 words (39 per cent of the total) and six other categories dominate the remainder, accounting for a further 391 items (41 per cent): flora and fauna, food and cooking, politics, ceramics and antiquities, philosophy and religion, and units of measure. These 11 categories account for 80 per cent of the Table 7.1 Lexico-semantic categories of words associated with China in the OED2 and the CollED3 Category Place names Flora and fauna Food and cooking Politics Ceramics and antiquities Names for China and the Chinese and related terms Names of persons (biographical) Languages/dialects and linguistic terms Philosophy and religion Names of ethnic and population groups Units of measure (currency, length, weight) Others

No. of items 184 118 76 70 68 58 56 44 34 27 25 195

136 China in the OED: the wordlist total number of words, but they are also unevenly distributed between the two dictionaries. The four leading categories in the CollED3 are names of places (182/40 per cent), names of persons (56/12 per cent), food and cooking (32/7 per cent) and flora and fauna (29/6 per cent). In the OED2, on the other hand, the four leading categories are flora and fauna (101/16 per cent), food and cooking (67/10 per cent), politics (65/10 per cent) and ceramics and antiquities (53/8 per cent). Each dictionary has its own version of what knowledge of Chinese words means although both share a particular concern with food and flora and fauna. The OED2’s coverage of China appears to be more balanced than that of the CollED3 in that the largest category (flora and fauna) represents only 16 per cent of the total and a wider range of categories is covered. Imbalances among the categories in the OED2 are revealed, however, when items associated with China in the OED2 but not included in CollED3 are analysed separately from those that are included in both dictionaries. Analysis of the statistics for these items shows that two categories are relatively over-represented in the OED2: music, and ceramics and antiquities. In contrast, food and cooking terms are underrepresented in comparison to the CollED3. Among the lexico-semantic categories that are sparsely represented in both dictionaries are transport (9 items), clothing (7), jobs of work (6), the built environment (6), shops (4) and climate (2), all categories concerned directly with everyday life that tend to have a high frequency in the dictionaries overall. Thus, the tendency to cover categories of high culture in relation to China is matched by a tendency to neglect categories of everyday life. It could well be argued that words from these categories simply have not entered the English language. We are able, however, to take only one example, to identify a number of words for popular Chinese festivals that are well known to overseas residents of China, Hong Kong and Southeast Asia that are not included in the OED2 (Bun Festival, Ching Ming, Cheung Yeung, Double-tenth, Hungry Ghosts Festival, Lunar New Year, Midautumn Festival, Tuen Ng). Similarly, names used for aspects of the Hong Kong environment such as country park, feng-shui wood, new town, nullah, public housing estate, sitting-out area and typhoon shelter are not included. The inclusion of names of ceramics and musical instruments in the OED2 in preference to items of this kind clearly does not reflect the structure of the vocabulary in an objective sense. It is rather a product of a lexicographical decision to include certain types of items in preference to others. The exception to the rule would appear to be food and cooking terms, which are both a well-represented category for China and a category related to everyday life. Although Chinese food and cooking terms are generally well represented in comparison to other categories, the items included do not necessarily reflect everyday Chinese life. Thus, a number of words for well-known food items in Hong Kong have no entry in the OED2 (bear’s paw, beggar’s chicken, chicken wings, congee, drunken chicken, dough sticks, hairy crab, snow frog). The dictionary appears more likely to include Chinese food names when they have been assimilated into Western eating habits than when they have not. In Chapter 9,

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we will also see that there are important differences in the ways in which these two kinds of food are defined. Similarly, the OED2 has entries for 15 names of Chinese teas: bing, bohea, campoi, China, congou, hyson, Keemun, Lapsang Souchong, oolong, oopack, pekoe, singlo, Souchong, Theezan and Twankay. Of these, only one (oolong) is readily available in Hong Kong supermarkets. Four other types of tea (iron buddha/ti kuan yin, jasmine, pu er/po lei and sow mei) are widely available in Hong Kong but have no entry in the OED2. The point of this comparison is simply to suggest that the inclusion of words associated with China in the OED2 is less a matter of an objective record of the words that have entered the vocabulary of English, than of a selection (which is not necessarily the result of a policy) representing a certain set of meanings for ‘China’ within Western contexts of knowledge. In the OED2, there is a preponderance of nouns over other word-classes and within the nouns a large proportion are proper nouns. There is a preponderance of lexical categories concerned with cultural and artistic artefacts over those concerned with everyday life. There are also a disproportionately large number of words concerned with music, and ceramics and antiquities. Lastly, within the one main category of everyday life that is covered, food, there is a tendency to document a Western rather than a Chinese interest. The coverage is primarily encyclopedic, being concerned with ‘things Chinese’, and within this encyclopedic coverage the categories covered are samples of the categories available. Within any given category the words covered are also samples of the words available. Thus, although China is relatively well represented in the OED2, the representation turns out to be partial, reflecting an interest in China as an object of Western knowledge. The principles behind selection of individual words also turn out to be somewhat arbitrary, a feature of the wordlist that has also been identified with peripherisation of the categories to which they belong.

Sources of words The quotations supporting words associated with China in the OED2 give some clue as to the processes underlying their selection. The content of these quotations will be discussed in more detail in Chapter 10. They are relevant here only in so far as their dates and sources allow us to infer why their headwords are included in the dictionary. The significant data for an item associated with China in the definition part of an entry are the number of supporting quotations concerned with China, the dates of first and most recent record, and the sources of quotations. Although the OED2 does not include all the quotations for words that are available in its files, it does normally include the earliest and most recent quotations available. For many of the words entered in the dictionary, however, there are no supporting quotations at all and for others only one is given. The reason for this may be that quotations are not available, but it also happens that multiword forms and derivatives tend to be supported by fewer quotations than single-word or lemma forms, especially when a large number of sub-headwords

138 China in the OED: the wordlist Table 7.2 Distribution of dates of first record for items associated with China in the OED2 Period No. of items

Before 1700

1700– 49

1750– 99

1800– 49

1850– 99

1900– 49

1950– 76

77

33

41

96

161

134

87

are listed within a single entry. Of the 646 words associated with China in the OED2, 17 have no supporting quotation and a further 54 items have only one. The majority (429) have between 2 and 6 supporting quotations, while 48 have more than 10, with typhoon having the most at 28. According to statistics in Berg (1991) and Willinsky (1994), the OED2 has 2,412,400 quotations for 616,500 word-forms, or an average of 3.9 quotations for each. Items associated with China are supported by 3,166 quotations, or an average of 4.9 quotations per word. There is, therefore, no evidence that the words associated with China are deprived of quotations. However, the quotations supporting a definition associated with China do not always support the association made. Indeed, for 194 of the 646 words associated with China, the supporting quotations offer no support for the association at all. This is typical, for example, of entries for flora and fauna, where the denotatum of the item is said to originate in or to be native to China, but the quotations suggest that the word is known from non-Chinese sources. Since the OED2 definitions are supposed to rest upon supporting quotations, we can legitimately ask where the evidence for the association with China comes from in these 194 cases. For the items of flora and fauna, it seems likely that definitions have been borrowed wholesale from encyclopedias or technical works, while the quotation has been supplied from another source. The quantity of unsupported associations with China, however, again indicates a degree of arbitrariness in the construction of the class of words associated with China in the dictionary. A further indication of the arbitrariness comes from an examination of dates of first and last record. Table 7.2 shows the distribution of dates of first record for the 629 items with supporting quotations. The figures in Table 7 . 2 s h o w that 65 per cent of the words associated with China in the OED2 have dates of first record before 1900. The distribution, however, appears to be related as much to the periods at which the reading programme for the dictionary was active as it is to the dates at which the words actually entered the language. Thus, the largest group falls in the second half of the nineteenth century, when the reading programme for the OED1 was at its most intense, and the slight dip in the total for the first half of the twentieth century reflects the fact that the reading programme was suspended from 1933 to 1957 (Willinsky, 1994: 130). The dates of first record suggest that most of the words associated with China in the OED2 were first entered in the OED1 rather than the OEDS or the OED2. The distribution of dates of most recent record in Table 7.3 appears to reflect the vagaries of the reading programme even more strongly.

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Table 7.3 Distribution of dates of most recent record for items associated with China in the OED2 Period No. of items

Before 1745

1746– 1824

1825–79

1880– 1929

1930–49

1950–86

11

0

60

115

13

376

Table 7.3 shows the dates of most recent record for 545 words supported by two or more quotations. For the periods 1746–1824 and 1930–49 very few citations other than citations of first record appear to have been added to the dictionary at all, so that dates of most recent record for Chinese words tend to fall either in the period 1825–1929 or 1950–86. More than half of the words have citations dated later than 1950, many of which update earlier entries, but a number of words current in Hong Kong today have no citations later than 1900: notably, catty (1857), chop (= trademark) (1859), chop-stick (1862), sampan (1867), longan (1869), bird’s nest (soup) (1871), coolie (1873), junk (1880), chop (= seal) (1881) and fan tan (1888). Since the process of updating quotations was not completed by the time of the publication of the OED2, lack of a recent citation does not necessarily imply that a word lacks currency. But although this might be transparent for internationally known words such as chop-stick, readers unfamiliar with English usage in Hong Kong and China would have no way of knowing whether words such as coolie or fan-tan are current or not. In contrast, the compilers of the OED2 have gone to some lengths to update citations for words that arguably do not need to be updated at all. Three examples illustrate the point. Reorganizationist (defined as: ‘One who favours (political) reorganization; spec. a member of a radical Chinese faction’) has three supporting quotations, which suggest that the word is, in fact, used exclusively as a proper name. If the word should be entered at all, the first citation, from The Times of 25 March 1930, might be considered sufficient. However, two further citations have been added from 1967 and 1975: 1930 Times 25 Mar. 23/5 Nanking was faced by a revolt from the so-called ‘Reorganisationists’, a group mainly consisting of the political leaders of the left who had been excluded from office. 1967 J. ISRAEL in A. Feuerwerker et al. Approaches to Mod. Chinese Hist. 292 Many Wuhan figures who cast their lot with Wang Ching-wei (exiled leader of the Reorganizationist faction) argued that the revolution remained ‘unfinished’. 1975 I. C. Y. HSÜ Rise Mod. China (ed. 2) xxiii. 653 Wang and his left-wing followers were out of office. The latter group retaliated by accusing Chiang of betraying the principles and ideas of Sun, and demanded a reorganization of the KMT in the spirit of the 1924 manifesto–hence their nickname ‘The Reorganizationists’.

140 China in the OED: the wordlist As the 1967 and 1975 quotations are from historical works, they do not testify to the currency of the word. In the case of John Chinaman (‘A Chinaman; the Chinese collectively. depreciatory’), which is surely obsolete, a recent citation from the 1970 edition of Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable (‘John Chinaman, a Chinaman or the Chinese as a people’) appears to keep the word alive. A third example is the entry for kow-tow, which is defined both literally (‘The Chinese custom of touching the ground with the forehead in the act of prostrating oneself, as an expression of extreme respect, submission, or worship’) and figuratively (‘An act of obsequious respect’). The figurative definition of kowtow has been usefully up-dated by a 1972 citation: 1972 Times 21 Oct. (Hongkong Suppl.) p. i/6 Peking has referred officially to Hongkong’s shameful colonial status only once since President Nixon’s dignified kowtow and the belated entry of the people’s republic into the United Nations. While the reference to President Nixon’s visit to China shows the word used in a new context,4 a second recent quotation supporting the literal historical sense of the word is less helpful: 1966 Listener 29 Sept. 443/2 Not even the emissaries of the Pope could escape the Great Kow-tow – the ceremony involving the three kneelings and nine prostrations before the throne of the Chinese Emperor. Like the recent quotations for reorganizationist, the quotation is from a historical source (although this is not entirely transparent) and adds little to the dictionary’s representation of the meaning of the word. While historical quotations are entirely acceptable as sources, the point to be noted here is that the OED2’s approach to updating citations for words associated with China does not appear to be directed at establishing currency. Similar examples can be found throughout the 376 entries with post-1950 citations to the extent that there seems to be very little relationship between recent citation and the currency of the words they support. For example, of the 64 words concerned with ceramics and antiquities, 58 (91 per cent) have post-1950 quotations in contrast to only 58 per cent of the words as a whole. In as much as interest in Chinese ceramics and antiquities remains reasonably stable and the names of periods and styles do not change, these quotations seem somewhat redundant, especially when they are drawn from catalogues and encyclopedias of ceramics. Quotations for words associated with China in the OED2 are drawn from a wide range of sources, including academic books on history, anthropology and language, travel books, newspapers, magazines, encyclopedias and dictionaries. The overwhelming majority of the 3,166 quotations attached to items associated with China are from non-Chinese sources or from sources written by nonChinese. Authors with Chinese names appear occasionally and usually in

China in the OED: the wordlist Table 7.4 Chinese sources of citations in the OED2 Source No. of citations No. of issues China Now 26 7 China Reconstructs 8 3 Peking Review 8 5 Hongkong Standard 26 2 South China Morning Post 23 10

141

Period 1977–9 1958–78 1958–78 1977 1969–77

support of entries for political, philosophical and religious terms and words concerned with food or cooking. Chinese writers of fiction are barely represented, the one notable exception being Han Suyin, who contributes 21 items from 5 of her works. Including these and other sources evidently written by Chinese, however, there are at most 78 quotations from Chinese sources supporting 54 items associated with China. The small number of Chinese sources used include the official Chinese publications China Now, China Reconstructs and Peking Review and two Hong Kong daily newspapers, the Hongkong Standard and South China Morning Post. Although the number of quotations from these sources is small, they are interesting for the insight they give into the ways in which citation data are collected for the OED2. Table 7.4 shows the number of quotations drawn from each of the five publications, the number of separate issues from which they were drawn and the period from the first issue cited to the last. The Beijing and Hong Kong publications differ in the purposes for which quotations are used. Most of the quotations from the Beijing publications support items associated with China in a definition, in contrast to only 5 of those from the South China Morning Post (Hang Seng, kwai-lo, pak pai (2), Sino-) and 2 from the Hongkong Standard (cadre, triad). Clearly, these sources only appeared relevant from the late 1970s onwards and they have not been read systematically. It may even be possible to trace the outlines of one reader’s journey to China in 1977, which began in Hong Kong with the purchase of the Hongkong Standard on 12 April (yielding 18 quotations). On 13 April the South China Morning Post provided a further 6 quotations and on 14 April the Hongkong Standard again provided 8 and the South China Morning Post 2 quotations. On 15 April the South China Morning Post provided 2 more. The stay in China appears to have lasted three months during which China Now provided quotations in April/May (1), June (3), and July/August (4). On 22 July, the trip appears to have ended once again in Hong Kong, where the South China Morning Post provided a final 5 quotations. Although the itinerary is conjectural, it is noteworthy that this 3-month period in 1977 furnished 49 of the 91 quotations drawn from the five publications concerned. The point is perhaps that citations and words associated with China are collected arbitrarily and not as the result of any systematic fieldwork in the region.

142 China in the OED: the wordlist

Political vocabulary In conclusion to this discussion of the sources of items associated with China in the OED2, I want to look briefly at a group of words concerned with the political life of modern China that were added to the dictionary through the OEDS3 and the OEDS4. The editor of the OEDS, Robert Burchfield, visited China in 1979 and remarked in his preface to the OEDS3 that a number of Chinese loanwords and loan translations had been entered under the letters P to S, of which he mentions pipa, putonghua, Little Red Book,5 running dog and scorched earth. In total, at least 33 words of this kind were entered in the OEDS3 and the OEDS4: pao-chia, paper tiger, people’s republic, political commissar, rectification campaign, red, Little Red Book, Red Guard, reform through labour, capitalist road, capitalist roader, running dog, Sanfan, scorched earth, Second World, semi-proletariat, social imperialism, splittism, State Council, struggle meeting, Sun Yat-senism, ta tzu pao, Tachai(-type), thought reform, three anti, twoChina(s), walking on two legs, White Terror, work point, worker-peasant, work-study, workteam, Wufan. These 33 words are a significant proportion of the total of 70 concerned with Chinese politics, and considerably outweigh similar words under the letters A to O in the OEDS1 and the OEDS2 (barefoot doctor, cadre, Great Leap Forward, Hundred Flowers and Maoism). The inclusion of these words is of interest here for two reasons. First, they are distinguished in the dictionary by the fact that they tend to be supported in part by quotations from Chinese sources, including the three Beijing magazines mentioned above and several academic works by Chinese authors. In the entry for running dog, for example, Mao Tse Tung (in translation) appears as an authority. Chiang Kai Shek is quoted in the entry for Sun Yat-senism and the primary source for State Council is a translation from the Documents of the First Session of the 5th National Congress of the People’s Republic of China. The inclusion of these sources is of interest because it shows that words in the OED2 can be selected according to non-Western priorities and supported by non-Western sources. They show that there is no necessary reason why words associated with China cannot be treated from a Chinese perspective. However, it must be emphasised that no entry in the OED2 is entirely based upon Chinese sources. Invariably, quotations from Chinese sources are ‘balanced’ by quotations from non-Chinese sources. This also extends to non-political items such as pak pai (‘In Hong Kong, a car used illegally as a taxi’), which is one of the very few items of Hong Kong English entered in the OED2. Pak pai is supported by two quotations from the Hong Kong South China Morning Post, but one wonders if it would have been entered in the dictionary at all if not for the third, which comes from John Le Carré’s Honourable Schoolboy.6 A second notable effect of the inclusion of these political words is that the OED2’s coverage of contemporary Chinese political vocabulary is far more thorough for the letters P to Z than it is for the letters A to O. This kind of imbalance may be inevitable in a dictionary of the size of the OED, but it is not simply a practical matter of keeping other letters up-to-date with the letter on which the lexicographers are currently engaged. It is also a question of changing ideological climates. Chinese political vocabulary flowered in the OEDS in the

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143

period between Nixon’s ‘dignified kowtow’ in 1979 and the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989, when the West was more open to China than at any other time this century. The opportunity presumably existed to extend the treatment of Chinese political vocabulary from P to Z into the first half of the alphabet in the revisions made for the OED2. This does not appear to have happened, however, with the result that 35 out of the 38 quotations from China Now in the dictionary are for items beginning with the letters P to Z. This is equally true of quotations from Han Suyin (14 out of 21) and from the noted writer on the People’s Republic of China, Edgar Snow (125 out of 152). Chinese sources also seem to be more frequent in the OEDS3 than in the OEDS4. It remains to be seen, therefore, whether the use of Chinese sources has become a matter of policy or whether it was simply a brief interlude in the alphabetically organised history of the dictionary.

Conclusion In principle the OED wordlist is an edifice constructed upon a foundation of systematic reading and sampling, but the reading that has generated the class of items associated with China appears far from systematic. Reading is clearly stronger in some areas of the vocabulary than others and encyclopedias and technical works provide many of the entries. Items are typically associated with China without supporting textual evidence being provided. Dates of first and most recent record suggest that coverage of Chinese items is considerably out-ofdate in some significant aspects, but redundantly up-to-date in others. China is certainly not neglected in the dictionary. At the same time it is clear that words and word classes associated with China tend to be selected arbitrarily and according to Western rather than Chinese priorities. It is important to emphasise here that arbitrariness does not necessarily signify a random process of selection. It is rather that words belonging to a class, which appear to be selected on criteria internal to the class, are actually selected according to criteria that are tangential to it. In this case words that appear to be selected because they are representative of English usage in Chinese contexts are selected because they appear incidentally in works that are of interest to the readers and lexicographers, because they happened to be found in a newspaper that was bought on a trip to China at a certain time, or because they belong to the part of the alphabet on which the lexicographers were working at the time. The peripherisation of China in the OED is thus almost an accidental product of the arbitrariness of the lexicographical process as it is applied to English as an international language. While the criteria for selecting peripheral words may be arbitrary, however, their effects are systematic in that they produce partially represented classes and subclasses of words that stand as evidence of the ethnocentrism of the practices that produce them. The practices that peripherise China in the dictionary are neither deliberate nor sinister. They are simply the consequence of the normal application of normal descriptive lexicographical procedures to an object of knowledge conceived of in a particular way.

8

China in the OED: associating words with China

Conventionally, the names of countries or regions are used in dictionary entries in two ways: either as elements within the text of definitions that point to a restriction on the geographical distribution of the denotata of words; or as descriptive labels that point to restrictions on the usage of words. Görlach makes a similar distinction: Careful lexicographers distinguish between senses which are regional because they concern referents only found in one area (‘in Australia’, ‘an Australian plant … ’) and those which are different because the referent would be designated by a different word in BrE (British English, ‘AusE’). (Görlach, 1985: 23) Although this distinction is conceptually clear, in practice it is problematic for three reasons. First, a restriction on the geographical distribution of the denotatum of a word may imply a restriction on the distribution of knowledge of the denotatum and hence a restriction on the usage of the word. Second, whenever there is a regional restriction on the usage of a word, it is likely that its denotatum will also be seen as regionally distinctive. Third, where the name of a region indicates a restriction on the distribution of the denotatum, there is the question of whether the restriction is defining or non-defining. These problems were hinted at in Chapter 3, where descriptive labelling was considered from a semiotic point of view. Labels were described as having meaning in contrast to the unlabelled norm. Words that carry labels are peripherised by the fact that they are marked in contrast to the unmarked ‘core vocabulary’. The canonical form of the descriptive label can also be considered pragmatically as a ‘hedge’ on the range of applications of a word or its definition. Thus, although descriptive labels are typically located before definitions, in principle, any restrictive phrase can be considered as a label from a pragmatic point of view, whether it is located outside or inside a definition, provided it indicates some restriction on the usage of the word to which it applies. The point is an important one, because I will in this chapter be concerned with three distinct uses of the words China and Chinese to associate words with

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China in the OED2: descriptive labels; defining encyclopedic references; and non-defining encyclopedic references. This implies a focus on the options available to lexicographers for associating words with China and on the implications of their choices for the ways in which China is represented in the dictionary.

Associating words with China Within the 646 OED2 definitions containing a reference to China, there are 337 uses of the word China and 388 uses of Chinese. Looking at these definitions more closely, we can distinguish 7 major ways in which these words are used to associate headwords with China. 1

2 3 4 5

6 7

Descriptive labels. Any case where the words China or Chinese precede the definition of the word. This includes descriptive labels proper, cases where China or Chinese are part of a longer descriptive label and cases where the phrase ‘in China’ is used pre-definitionally. Usage comments. The words China or Chinese are part of a comment within the definition that indicates a restricted usage. Defining uses. The words China or Chinese are found in the main defining clause of the definition. Non-defining uses. The words China or Chinese are found in a secondary or nondefining clause of the definition. Illustrative uses. The words China or Chinese are found in the forms ‘esp. in China’, ‘in China, etc.’ and indicate that the word is associated with China and other regions. Mark of origin. The words China or Chinese are used in forms such as ‘originally from China’, ‘imported from China’, etc. Synonym. The words China or Chinese are used as a synonym or part of a synonym of the headword.

There are also cases where China or Chinese do not have any clear associative function with China. Table 8.1 shows the distribution of the uses of the words China and Chinese across these categories: Table 8.1 Uses of the words China and Chinese in OED2 definitions Descriptive labels Usage comments Defining uses Non-defining uses Illustrative uses Mark of origin Synonym Other Total

China 28 5 136 92 11 21 20 24 337

Chinese 20 14 185 46 16 2 39 66 388

146 China in the OED: associating words The most striking features of the figures in Table 8.1 are: 1

2

3

Only a small minority of the uses of China and Chinese take the form of descriptive labels, which suggests that there is little or no recognition of the existence of a Chinese variety of English in the OED2. The ‘Chineseness’ of words associated with China is seen as a function of their denotata, not of their usage. Within definitions, defining uses are considerably more frequent than nondefining uses. This may well be explained by the fact that the OED2 contains more defining text than non-defining text. Nevertheless, it is significant that ‘Chineseness’ is so often seen as a defining characteristic of words and their denotata. The higher frequency of defining uses is more pronounced for Chinese than for China. This is partly explained by the fact that Chinese fits more easily into the syntax of the defining part of an entry.

Descriptive labels For the purposes of this study I have adopted a broad definition of the descriptive label that encompasses any restrictive comment placed before a dictionary definition and separated from it either by punctuation or font. Following this definition, descriptive labels may be codified, italicised, parenthesised or abbreviated. They may also appear in the form of a pre-definitional prepositional phrase separated from the main clause of the definition by a comma, colon or some other punctuation mark. Both cases are functionally similar in that they alert the reader to a context in which the application of the word and its definition is restricted. Less frequently in modern dictionaries, codified labels or prepositional phrases are placed at the end of the definition. Conventionally, descriptive labels are the means used by dictionaries to point to usage or field restrictions, but I will also discuss a small number of cases where information on usage restriction is embedded within the text of the definition. The OED2 has only one instance of a language variety label involving the word Chinese. This is found under the entry for chin chin: chin chin … Anglo-Chinese. Also chin-chin. Anglo-Chinese is not defined in the OED2. By analogy with Anglo-Indian (a term that is defined and appears 199 times in the dictionary), however, we may guess that it refers to the variety of English used by English residents in the late nineteenth-century Chinese treaty ports. If so, Anglo-Chinese might well have been used as a label for other words in the OED2 such as comprador, hong, hoppo, shroff and taipan, or even to more recently entered items such as pak pai and walla walla. The Anglo-Chinese label is used only once, however, and is one of several ‘singleton’ labels.

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The word Chinese forms part of 18 other pre-definitional labels in the OED2. Of these, three take the form of conventional descriptive labels: tou … Chinese Antiq. (Chinese d™u.) A hemispherical pedestalled bowl with a lid of similar shape, used as a container for food. tribute rice Chinese Hist., a grain tax paid in kind. yuan … Chinese Archaeol. A flat ring or perforated disc made of jade, widely circulated from the Shang period to the Hang dynasty. Like the Anglo-Chinese label, these are isolated instances. As the lexical field analysis in Chapter 7 indicated, however, the Chinese Antiq., Chinese Hist. and Chinese Archæol. labels could well have been applied more widely. Twelve of the occurrences of Chinese in pre-definitional labels come in the form of prepositional phrases separated from the main part of the definition by a comma or a colon: In Chinese calligraphy … (ink brush, ta chuan, t’sao shu) In Chinese communism … (united front, rectification campaign) In Chinese literature … (hexagram) In Chinese medical theory … (tu-mo) In Chinese mythology … (feng shui) In Chinese philosophy … (yang, yin, shen) In Chinese thought … (t’ien) Again, in each case, the labels are applied only to a small number of items, representing a small proportion of the items in the dictionary to which they might have been applied. Two geographical labels are used on one occasion each: In the Chinese ports … (cumshaw) In northern Chinese cities … (hutung) The objective of these labels may well be to indicate a limited range of application within China. The last case is found in the entry for second world: (a) (following the outlook of the Chinese leadership) the developed countries apart from the two ‘superpowers’; (b) (poss. reflecting the orig. implication of the term Third World) the Communist bloc; This label is unusual in that it appears to delimit an ideological perspective within which the word and its definition should be interpreted. However, labelling here also serves the purpose of distinguishing two, possibly competing, usages of the word. One reason for labelling some items of a set but not others may be the need to separate out competing senses of a word. There is, however,

148 China in the OED: associating words no evidence that this is the case for the items listed above, most of which are entered for one sense only. In the OED2, the word China is used in labels 28 times: once in the codified label ‘China trade’ (chop (a mark on goods)) and 27 times in prepositional phrases beginning with the word ‘in’. The pre-definitional phrase ‘in China’ appears 11 times (chop (boat), hong, hoppo, pao-chia, political commissar, reform through labour, superintendency, tea-chop, t’ing, warlord, wonk) and in one case (chop (seal)) ‘in India, China’ is used. In a further 11 cases the label specifies a historical period: in China at the time of the Three Kingdoms … (tuchun) in the early years of the republic of China … (tuchun) in Communist China … (struggle meeting) in the People’s Republic of China … (cadre, ta tzu-pao, work-point) esp. during the Cultural Revolution in China … (capitalist road, capitalist roader) Hist. in China … (wu-wei) now, in China … (comprador) in modern China … (walking on two legs) In the last three cases, it will be noted, the period referred to is clear only if the reader knows the date at which the definition was written. Lastly, the OED2 has 4 similar labels placed at the end of the definition: pagod … An image of a deity, an idol (esp. in India, China, etc.) pagoda … A temple or sacred building (in India, China, and adjacent countries) compound … The enclosure within which a residence or factory (of Europeans) stands, in India, China, and the East generally. chow-chow 1 … A mixture or medley of any sort; e.g. mixed pickles or preserves. Also, food of any kind. Ind. and China. It was noted above that post-definitional labelling is rare in modern English dictionaries and it is not clear why this method of reference appears to be applied in the OED2 only in cases where more than one country is specified. The OED2 also has eight entries where a usage restriction is clearly indicated within the text of the definition: barbarian … Applied by the Chinese contemptuously to foreigners. boy … ‘‘In Southern India and in China a native personal servant is so termed, and is habitually summoned with the vocative ‘Boy!’ (Yule) [sic].

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coolie … The name given by Europeans in India and China to a native hired labourer or burden-carrier; also used in other countries where these men are employed as cheap labourers. compound … The enclosure within which a residence or factory (of Europeans) stands, in India, China, and the East generally. Supposed by Yule and Burnell to have been first used by Englishmen in the early factories in the Malay Archipelago, and to have been thence carried by them to peninsular India on the one hand and China on the other. In later times, it has been taken to Madagascar, East and West Africa, Polynesia, and other regions where Englishmen have penetrated, and has been applied by travellers to the similar enclosures round native houses. kwai loh … ‘Foreign devil’, a name given by the Chinese to foreigners. sampan … A Chinese word meaning ‘boat’, applied by Europeans in the China seas to any small boat of Chinese pattern. social-imperialism, a term used at one time in China (and occas. elsewhere) for policies held to conceal imperialist aims beneath a socialist veneer. soft-class … Applied in the Soviet Union and China to a class of railway carriage (esp. a sleeper) having soft, upholstered seats. These definitions specify usage restrictions of two types: (i) the usage of ‘Europeans in China’ (boy, coolie, compound, sampan) and (ii) the usage of Chinese (barbarian, kwai loh, social-imperialism, soft-class). However, this distinction is clearly artificial because a word used by one group is likely to spread quickly to the other. Barbarian, for example, is perhaps better known from its use by European writers who impute it to the Chinese, than from its use by the Chinese themselves. The contexts in which a Chinese person might have referred to a foreigner as a ‘barbarian’ in English are not easy to imagine. Similarly, in modern Hong Kong the word sampan is used as much by Chinese people speaking English as it is by foreigners: it is simply the name used for a certain kind of boat. A number of points stand out from this discussion of the use of China and Chinese as elements within descriptive labels: 1 2 3

descriptive labels account for a relatively small proportion of the uses of Chinese and China in the OED2; they tend to specify China as a field of knowledge rather than restrictions on the usage of words; usage restrictions involving China are just as likely to be specified in the text of the definition as they are by descriptive labels;

150 China in the OED: associating words 4

labels specifying fields of knowledge tend to cover only a small proportion of the items in the dictionary that fall within the field.

Field labels are appropriate mainly when it is necessary to distinguish a separate and limited sense of a headword from a more general sense. This would only seem to apply in a few of the cases cited in this section. Field labels that simply define the field within which the denotatum falls seem largely redundant and may simply function to distinguish labelled items from the unlabelled norm. However, we might also keep in mind that descriptive labels do not simply peripherise the items to which they are applied. They also call attention to the class of items labelled as an object of the knowledge produced by the dictionary. Thus, the inclusion of categories such as ‘Chinese antiquities’, ‘Chinese philosophy’, ‘Chinese calligraphy’, and so on as options within the microstructure implies that each category covers a set of items and is linked to other categories of a similar kind. Because Chinese field labels are isolated and cover only a few items within each potential set, they create the illusion that the dictionary’s ‘knowledge of China’ is far more comprehensive than it actually is. This parallels the semiotic principle of the wordlist whereby items belonging to a peripheral class of words generally function as exemplars of their class. The addition of field labels to exemplars of these exemplars may have no other function than to signal that these classes are indeed represented in the dictionary. In this way, descriptive labels not only peripherise items by marking them off from the unlabelled norm, they also peripherise the sets of items to which they refer by drawing attention to them as partially represented classes of knowledge.

Defining encyclopedic references Where the words China and Chinese are embedded in the text of a definition, their function may be either defining or non-defining, a distinction that is made mainly on the basis of the syntax of the definition. If the word China or Chinese is located in the first main clause or sentence of the definition, it is likely to be defining. If it is located after the first main clause or sentence of the definition, it is likely to be non-defining. In this sense the function of the association with China in the definition as a whole is seen, not as a property of the meaning of the word itself, but as a property of the construction of this meaning through the dictionary text. In OED2 definitions, the most frequent use of the word China is within prepositional phrases embedded in the text of the definition and most often in phrases that begin with the word ‘in’ (‘in China’, ‘in Communist China’, ‘in modern China’, etc.). When such phrases appear in the main part of a definition, the structure of the definition can be represented formulaically as ‘HEADWORD = AN x IN CHINA’, where x represents the genus proximum and IN CHINA represents the differentia specifica. Similarly, Chinese is most commonly found as an adjective preceding a synonym of the headword. Where this is found in the main part of the definition, the structure of the definition can

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be represented formulaically as ‘HEADWORD = A CHINESE x’. Here x is again the genus proximum and CHINESE the differentia specifica. The position of the word China or Chinese in a definition is significant, therefore, because it determines whether or not ‘Chineseness’ appears as a differentia specifica of the word defined. Definitions in which China or Chinese function as differentia specifica are also necessarily encyclopedic, because the definition is a matter of the geographical location or ethnic association of the denotatum rather than the usage of the word. The characteristic formula for definitions where China and Chinese function as usage labels would therefore be ‘HEADWORD = IN CHINA, AN x’. In this case, the word is defined by synonymy and ‘Chineseness’ is characteristic of the usage, not of the denotatum of the word. Of the 725 uses of China and Chinese in OED2 definitions, 321 fall within the main part of the definition and can therefore be considered as defining. This suggests that the treatment of China in the dictionary is concerned less with linguistic usage than with the names of things that are by definition held to be Chinese. A close analysis of some definitions suggests, however, that the balance towards defining encyclopedic reference may well be skewed both in regard to the distinction between encyclopedic definition and usage definition and in regard to the distinction between defining and non-defining uses of China and Chinese.

Encyclopedic definition and usage labelling The question of whether a word should be treated encyclopedically or as a matter of usage often appears to be one of fine judgement. In the OED2 entries for wonk and zhuyin zimu the distinction seems clear and well motivated: 1

wonk … In China, a dog. Also wonk dog. zhuyin zimu … The national phonetic alphabet of China made up of symbols based on Chinese characters, first adopted in 1918. Also ellipt. as zhuyin. The definition given for wonk clearly points to the usage of the word and not to the denotatum. In fact, one of the supporting quotations suggests that wonk is (or was) not a breed of dog, but rather a ‘term commonly applied by foreigners to the ordinary Chinese dog’ (H.A. Giles, Gloss. Subjects Far East, 1900). While the application of the word might have been more narrowly specified, it is nevertheless clear that wonk is not a particular breed of dog. The definition rightly emphasises usage and the position of the phrase ‘in China’ seems appropriate. In contrast, the definition of zhuyin zimu clearly points to the denotatum rather than to the usage of the word. Again this seems appropriate, first because there is a clearly identifiable denotatum and second, because there appears to be no other English name for it. Moreover, zhuyin zimu cannot be adequately defined without reference to China since it is an officially sanctioned

152 China in the OED: associating words system of transcription. The positioning of the phrase ‘in China’ as a defining element in the main clause of the definition again seems justified by the nature of the word defined. Similar uses of China in definitions are not so easily explained, however, in the examples of boat people, taipan, typhoon and thought reform, where the distinction between encyclopedic and usage definition can be called into question. The OED2 entry for boat people covers two distinct applications of the word in Asian contexts: boat people n. pl., (a) (any of) a number of peoples of S. and E. China and of S.E. Asia who live in boats; (b) a colloq. name for refugees (esp. from Vietnam and S.E. Asia) who fled their country by putting out to sea in small boats. Definitions (a) and (b) differ in that (a) is encyclopedic, focusing on the denotatum of the word, while (b) overtly refers to usage through the phrase ‘a colloq. name for’. As an encyclopedic definition, (a) implies that boat people is not ‘a name for’, but ‘the name of ’ the peoples to which it refers in the same way as zhuyin zimu is the name of the national phonetic alphabet of China. In contrast to zhuyin zimu, however, boat people (a) has no clearly definable denotatum. First, the practice of living in boats is not confined to China and Southeast Asia and, second, the peoples to whom the definition refers are also known by various other names. For example, the ‘boat people’ of Hong Kong (where the term is still in common use) are also known as Tanka, a word that refers to their ethnicity and which also has an entry in the OED2: Tanka … The boat-population of Canton, who live entirely on the boats by which they earn their living: they are descendants of some aboriginal tribe of which Tan was apparently the name … While Tanka might be considered the name of the group to which it refers, boat people might more properly be considered as a name for the Tanka and other groups. Specifically, boat people represents a particular way of identifying and grouping certain peoples according to a particular characteristic of their way of life. The location of the phrase containing China produces a definition in which ‘of S. and E. China and of S.E. Asia’ and ‘who live in boats’ are the differentia specifica of the genus proximum ‘peoples’. By repositioning the phrase containing China, a quite different definition could be produced: for example, ‘in S. and E. China and S.E. Asia, a name used for a number of peoples who live in boats’. Although a usage definition of this kind would still fail to specify who uses the name boat people for exactly which groups and in which contexts (this would clearly require a much longer definition), it would at least call attention to the fact that the definition of boat people (a) is as much a matter of usage as boat people (b). The OED2 has two closely related definitions for taipan:

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1

taipan … a. A foreign merchant or businessman in China. b. The (foreign) manager or head of a firm in China, esp. Hong Kong. Also fig. Hence ‘taipanism’. Although taipan (a) is probably now obsolete, taipan (b) is still current in Hong Kong. For the lexicographer, words such as taipan present several options because they have not only a restricted range of denotation but also a restricted range of usage. The positioning of the phrase ‘in China, esp. Hong Kong’ in taipan (b) calls attention to the restricted range of denotation: taipan is only used of companies based in China and Hong Kong and only of foreign heads or managers. However, it is also the case that taipan is used more frequently in Hong Kong than elsewhere, where it represents, like boat people (a), a particular way of identifying and grouping according to certain salient characteristics. An alternative definition might be, for example: ‘in China, esp. Hong Kong, a name used for the (foreign) manager or head of a locally-based firm’. Again, a usage definition of this kind would fail to specify who uses the word and in which contexts, but it would at least call attention to the fact that these questions can be asked. The OED2 definition of typhoon contrasts with its definition of hurricane: typhoon … a. A violent storm or tempest occurring in India (†occas. with reference to other localities); b. A violent cyclonic storm or hurricane occurring in the China seas and adjacent regions, chiefly during the period from July to October. hurricane … 1. A name given primarily to the violent wind-storms of the West Indies, which are cyclones of diameter of from 50 to 1000 miles, wherein the air moves with a velocity of from 80 to 130 miles an hour round a central calm space, which with the whole system advances in a straight or curved track; hence, any storm or tempest in which the wind blows with terrific violence. The question that arises from these definitions is whether a typhoon is a different kind of storm from a hurricane, or whether the difference between them is a regional difference in usage. The OED2 definitions are less than helpful on the first part of the question because they do not have comparable structures. Where hurricane has a detailed technical description, typhoon has none. Moreover, typhoon (b) is defined as a kind of hurricane. The difference between typhoon (a) and typhoon (b) is similarly obscure, with the difference in location and the specification of time of year for (b) being the only clear distinction between the two senses of the word. It may well be that hurricanes, typhoons in India and typhoons in the China Seas are all quite different in kind, but the OED2 definitions do not help the reader to understand whether or not this is the case. At the root of the problem are the definitions for typhoon which take the typical encyclopedic form of (a) ‘AN x IN INDIA’ and (b) ‘AN x IN CHINA’. As a

154 China in the OED: associating words differentia specifica for typhoon, however, an encyclopedic association with China seems inadequate to a full understanding of the meaning and usage of the word. The contrast between the OED2 definitions of thought reform and reform through labour involves different uses of the word China in each definition: thought reform, a process of individual political indoctrination used in Communist China; also in extended sense. reform through labour … in China, an element of ideological reformation whereby criminals and dissidents are made to work as a part of their political re-education. In order to understand the significance of this contrast, I need to elaborate briefly on the use of thought reform in the Chinese context. Thought reform is a loan translation of the Chinese xue xi (hsueh-hsi) and refers to a set of practices, which followed from policies pursued by the Chinese Communist Party after 1949. Edgar Snow describes the practice as he observed it on a visit to T’sao Lan Tze prison in Peking: Here some two to four hundred political prisoners were held for interrogation and thought reform prior to a formal trial and verdict. During this period the prisoner was given an opportunity, by study and self-examination, to arrive at feelings of repentance and develop a political awareness. Prisoners often went through hsueh-hsi in this manner for as long as several years. The results could materially reduce sentences or even bring a dismissal, while failure to make any progress due to recalcitrance might increase the severity of the sentence. (Snow, 1963: 365–6) Although thought reform was often linked to punishment, exile or imprisonment, it was essentially a process separate from them. Jung Chang, for example, describes her mother’s participation in thought reform in a quite different context as a young revolutionary official in Sichuan in 1950: The Party’s all-round intrusion into people’s lives was the very point of the process known as ‘thought reform.’ Mao wanted not only external discipline, but the total subjection of all thoughts, large or small. Every week a meeting for ‘thought examination’ was held for those ‘in the revolution.’ Everyone had to both criticize themselves and be subject to the criticism of others. (Chang, 1991: 219) In the early 1960s, thought reform attracted positive attention in the West as one OED2 quotation indicates: ‘Great interest has been aroused by Chinese thought reform, because it has been used on a very wide scale with considerable success

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and because the methods used are novel’ (1964 M. Argyle, Psychol. & Social Probl. x. 134). Snow (1963) also discusses three reports published by Americans who had undergone thought reform in China in the 1950s (Rigney, 1956; Rickett and Rickett; 1957; Mills, 1959) and one psychological study (Lifton, 1961). Extracts from Mills’ article reprinted in Snow (1963) are by no means entirely negative and Snow also reports Lifton’s observation that among his 25 subjects ‘nearly all said that they had in some ways personally benefited from the experience’ (1963: 371). The purpose of this discussion of thought reform is not to defend the practice, but to suggest that the OED2 definition (‘a process of individual political indoctrination used in Communist China’) not only deals with the word from a Western perspective, but is also descriptively inadequate, because it fails to take account of the social and political contexts of the word. The literature that would have been available to the definer at the time (exemplified in the quotation section for the word) shows that thought reform consisted of a clearly defined set of practices including study of Marxist texts and criticism and self-criticism in small groups or cells. The definition also fails to capture either the role taken by individuals in undertaking their own thought reform or the ambivalent attitudes towards thought reform of Western writers who had undergone it. The descriptive inadequacy of this definition is closely allied, I would argue, to its structure, in which ‘individual political indoctrination’ serves as genus proximum and ‘used in Communist China’ as differentia specifica. The definition implies that thought reform differs from ‘individual political indoctrination’ elsewhere in the world only in being ‘Chinese’. The use of the phrase ‘used in Communist China’ as differentia specifica thus closes down options for a richer and more descriptively adequate definition. In contrast, in the definition of reform through labour the phrase ‘in China’ is positioned as usage label, which creates space for a definition constructed in terms of the cultural context of Communist China. This definition differs from the definition of thought reform not only in being a usage definition rather than an encyclopedic definition. It is also a much richer definition in terms of the meanings it conveys about the word. The definitions of boat people, taipan, typhoon and thought reform suggest that, in cases where both usage and encyclopedic definitions are possible, the OED2 tends to lean towards the encyclopedic option. Space forbids detailed treatment of the many items in the OED2 that are couched in the form of ‘AN x IN CHINA’, but the overwhelming preponderance of these definition types over definitions of the type ‘IN CHINA, AN x’ suggests that the OED2’s preference for the encyclopedic option does operate on a larger scale. This preference is implemented through the semiotic form of the definition, in particular through the location of the word China in its syntax. The result is the implication that ‘Chineseness’ is often sufficient in itself to differentiate the denotata of words associated with China and a consequent impoverishment of the meanings conveyed about them.

156 China in the OED: associating words

Chinese as an encyclopedic label in the OED2 Some of the points raised about the use of China in OED2 definitions also apply to uses of Chinese. However, the word Chinese also functions differently in certain respects. Chinese is used most frequently in definitions of the form ‘HEADWORD = A CHINESE x’. In definitions of this kind, Chinese can have one of three meanings: ‘belonging to China or the Chinese language’, ‘being of Chinese ethnicity’ or ‘belonging to a Chinese cultural tradition’. These are illustrated by OED2 definitions of yuan, hatchet-man and fan-tan: 2

yuan … 1. A Chinese unit of currency introduced in 1914, equal to 10 jiao; a coin of this value. hatchet-man … 2. In the U.S., a hired Chinese assassin. Also transf. fan-tan … A Chinese gambling game, in which a number of small coins are placed under a bowl and the players then bet as to what will be the remainder when the pile has been divided by four. Also attrib. Yuan is a unit of currency and belongs to China in a way that would make it difficult to define without using the word China or Chinese. In the definition of hatchet-man the word Chinese denotes Chinese ethnicity and appears to be the differentia specifica of the genus proximum ‘hired assassin’. In the definition of fan-tan the word Chinese indicates an association with Chinese culture and appears again to be part of the differentia specifica of the genus proximum ‘gambling game’. For both hatchet-man and fan-tan, however, it is not entirely clear why ‘Chineseness’ should be considered a defining characteristic. One problem with the OED2 definition of hatchet-man is the implication that a Chinese hired assassin is a particular kind of assassin, distinguished from other hired assassins only by his ‘Chineseness’. If, on the other hand, hatchet-man is merely a word that is applied to hired assassins who happen to be Chinese, a definition that treated the word as a matter of usage might be more appropriate. A similar problem arises with the definition of sing-song girl: sing-song girl, a Chinese girl who entertains men by singing and dancing (euphem. one of easy virtue) Here Chinese functions as the differentia specifica for ‘girl who entertains men by singing and dancing’, and again there is an implication that a Chinese woman who engages in this work is somehow different to a non-Chinese woman who does so. Clearly, these definitions are evaluative of (and potentially offensive to) Chinese people. This comes in part from the use of the word Chinese in a defining position. If the definitions were to be reconstructed so that Chinese were in a non-defining position and referred to the usage of the words (e.g., hatchet-man … a hired assassin, used esp. of Chinese in the USA), the effect would be quite different. In particular, the implication that hired assassins in

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the USA are (or were) typically Chinese would be removed. The definition of sing-song girl would have to undergo a more radical revision to remove its sexist implications also. The examples given above illustrate Chinese used as an adjective. There are also a total of 29 cases in the OED2 where the phrase ‘the Chinese’ refers to Chinese people in general. This phrase is typically used in English as a means of introducing stereotypes, in which an attribute of individuals is generalised to a group as a whole. For this reason alone, its use in dictionary definitions must be questionable. In the terms introduced in this book, it may also be seen as one means of positioning Chinese people as ‘objects’ rather than ‘subjects’ of the discourse of the dictionary. The definitions of chopsticks and patten illustrate problems arising from its use. chopsticks … The two small sticks or slips of bone, wood, ivory, or the like, held between the thumb and fingers of one hand by the Chinese in place of a fork for conveying food to the mouth. patten … Still sometimes applied to the thick-soled or wooden shoes of the Chinese or other foreign peoples … The definition of chopsticks objectifies in three ways: first through the phrase ‘the Chinese’, which implies that use of chopsticks is an ethnic attribute (‘used to eat Chinese food’ would be an alternative formulation); second by the use of the words ‘in place of a fork’, which implies that use of chopsticks is a deviation from the Western norm of eating; and, third, through the quasi-scientific language of the definition (e.g. ‘for conveying food to the mouth’), which implies that Chinese eating habits are an object of Western scientific inquiry. The phrase quoted from the definition of patten (‘the Chinese or other foreign peoples’) indicates that ‘the Chinese’ are, in fact, part of a broader group of people (i.e. ‘foreign peoples’) who fall under the scrutiny of the dictionary. As a defining or explanatory concept, ‘foreign’ is particularly vague and unhelpful, except in as much as it implicitly defines the central perspective of the dictionary. It is noteworthy, therefore, that in the OED2, the words foreign, foreigner and foreigners occur 911 times in definitions and 4,039 times in the dictionary as a whole. Fan-tan is defined in the OED2 as ‘a Chinese gambling game’ and a description of the basic rules of the game follows. This definition can be contrasted with definitions for cribbage, gin rummy and poker: cribbage … 1. A game at cards, played by two, three, or four persons, with a complete pack of 52 cards, five (or six) of which are dealt to each player, and a board with sixty-one holes on which the points are scored by means of pegs; a characteristic feature being the ‘crib’, consisting of cards thrown out from each player’s hand, and belonging to the dealer.

158 China in the OED: associating words gin rummy orig. U.S., ‘a form of rummy in which a player who has cards that count no more than ten may ‘‘knock’’ in an effort to win the number of points by which his opponent’s unmatched cards exceed his own’ (D.A.) poker … a. A card game, popular in America, a variety of BRAG , played by two or more persons, each of whom, if not bluffed into declaring his hand, bets on the value of it, the player who holds the highest combination of cards as recognized in the game winning the pool. Also fig. Space forbids the inclusion of more examples, but these three can be taken as a general pattern of definitions for games, according to which the ‘nationality’ of a game is mentioned only if it is not British in origin. Moreover, further distinctions are made according to whether a game is ‘originally’ of another nationality, ‘popular’ in another country, etc. Fan-tan is defined at the far end of this continuum as simply ‘Chinese’. Definitions of games illustrate the OED2’s particular concern with assigning things to their ‘proper places’ in the world. In contrasting the definitions of musical instruments such as p’ip’a and lute, we see that this assignment may substitute for a description of the denotatum of the word: p’ip’a … a Chinese stringed instrument. lute … 1. A stringed musical instrument, much in vogue from the 14th to the 17th centuries, the strings of which are struck with the fingers of the right hand and stopped on the frets with those of the left. In some cases, Chinese instruments are defined as a Chinese form of an instrument from the Western cultural tradition: for example, yang ch’in … A Chinese musical instrument similar to the dulcimer. yueh ch’in … A Chinese lute with four strings and a flat, circular body. In these examples, the definer chooses not to define yang ch’in and yueh ch’in in their own terms but instead to refer to instruments that are assumed to be well known to readers who inhabit the cultural centre of the dictionary. While this may appear natural, it is important to understand that it is only through definitions of this kind that the cultural centre of the dictionary is made explicit. Definitions of the kind offered for yang ch’in and yueh ch’in also imply that the Chinese instruments are simply a variation on their Western counterparts or more generally that Chinese culture is simply a deviation from the Western norm.

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‘Chineseness’ as a non-defining characteristic of words For many of the words associated with China in the OED2, the association comes in the form of a phrase that falls outside the main defining clause of the definition. In these cases, the association with China may be considered salient, but not defining. This notion of salience arises from a principle of economy according to which supplementary information would not be included in the definition at all if it were incidental or redundant. The question that arises with many of these non-defining associations with China is, however, the purpose that association with China serves. Where an association with China appears in a non-defining position, the option of a reference to usage does not normally arise. The definition of lace-bark pine, for example, is typical of references to China in definitions for flora and fauna: lace-bark pine, Pinus Bungeana of China, which sheds its outer bark every year It would make no sense to define lace-bark pine as ‘in China, Pinus Bungeana, a pine which sheds its outer bark every year’. One reason for this is that the phrase ‘in China’ defines neither the usage nor the denotatum of the word. In general, the OED2 defines the names of flora and fauna as synonyms of their scientific names, automatically rendering any other information included in the definition non-defining. One effect of this form of definition is that fragments of encyclopedic information are often chained together in no particular order, as in the definitions of ginkgo and loquat: ginkgo … The maidenhair tree (Ginkgo biloba) native to China and Japan and cultivated elsewhere, with wedge-shaped leaves and yellow flowers, the only living species of the order Ginkgoales which flourished in the Mesozoic era. loquat … a. The fruit of Eriobotrya japonica, a native of China and Japan, introduced into southern Europe, India, and Australia. Although the definitions of ginkgo and loquat both deal with the same kind of denotatum, they do so in entirely different ways. Such definitions typically have loose structures and syntax and the elements of information within them work together to give an overall impression of the denotatum, which is ultimately defined by its scientific name. In other cases, no scientific name is given and the association with China is more prominent: lard-stone … a kind of soft stone found in China; cf. agalmatolite.

160 China in the OED: associating words China-goose … a variety of goose found in China in immense flocks during the winter, esp. near Canton; In the definitions of lard-stone and China-goose, the phrase ‘found in China’ may technically function as the differentia specifica. An adequate definition for items of this kind would point the reader to the denotatum of the word as unambiguously as possible, but in neither definition is the reader given enough information to be able to distinguish the stone or the goose from others of their kind. Indeed, these definitions seem to show that the information that the denotatum is ‘found in China’ is less than helpful in defining a word, since it is not essentially an attribute of the denotatum itself. The OED2 definitions of ginkgo and loquat also show that phrases such as ‘native of China’ can indicate the origin of a denotatum rather than a restriction on its distribution. Indications of Chinese origin are quite common in the OED2, as the following examples illustrate: congou … A kind of black tea imported from China. lampas … 2. A kind of flowered silk, originally imported from China. Langshan … A breed of domestic fowl, introduced from China. In all three definitions, the information that the denotatum originates in China is prominent in a definition that is otherwise uninformative. The statement of Chinese origin seems to substitute for a clear definition or description of the denotatum, leaving the impression that the word is simply entered in the dictionary for the sake of record. Something similar is observed in the OED2 entries for attributive uses of proper nouns: Ch’ien Lung … The name of the Emperor of China who reigned 1736– 96, used esp. attrib. to designate pottery, carved jade, etc., made during those years, or the period itself. Keemun … The name of a district in China used to describe a black tea grown there. Also attrib. As a matter of policy, the OED2 only enters proper nouns for their attributive senses, but as the definitions above illustrate, once a proper noun is entered, it is likely to be glossed for its own sake also. Ch’ien Lung is included in the dictionary because it is used in the names of pottery, carved jade, etc. and Keemun is included because it is used in the name of a tea, but in each case the definition gives more information about the proper noun than it does about its attributive uses. The fact that words are formed from proper nouns denoting imperial titles or districts is an indication of the Chinese origin of their denotata. The OED2

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seems to pay more attention to the description of those origins than it does to the meaning of the words themselves. The definition of the names of things is notoriously difficult. For flora and fauna, for example, the best the lexicographer can hope to do is to describe one or two attributes of the denotatum of the word that will help the reader distinguish it from others of its kind. The point that I wish to draw attention to, however, is that the OED2 very often chooses the fact that something is ‘found in China’, ‘native to China’, ‘imported from China’, and so on as a particularly salient attribute of the denotata of words, often at the expense of other attributes. For example, although particular methods of growing and preparing tea evolve in particular regions, it is ultimately the taste and method of preparation that defines the tea. To define Keemun tea simply as a tea that is grown in or imported from Keemun is almost to avoid defining it all. In each of these definitions the reference to China may be redundant from a strictly definitional point of view, yet it is evidently considered salient. A reference to China can even substitute for a definition where no other salient information is available. Non-defining uses of associations with China of this kind are of particular interest here because they are indicative of the ways in which information is valued in the OED2. Although non-defining associations with China are, in effect, little more than labels marking the distribution of the denotata of words, the dictionary seems to find them salient to definitions. This testifies to a view of knowledge in which the geographical origins of things are of particular importance and things ‘foreign’ are not properly defined until they have been assigned to their place in the world.

Conclusion In this chapter, I have attempted to make a case for considering descriptive labelling in regard to China within a broader context of ‘association’. Within this context, the use of a descriptive label can be seen as one option, of which the others are placing a reference to China in a defining or non-defining position within the text of the definition itself. Conventionally, the distinction between reference to a region through a descriptive label and reference within the definition is a matter of careful distinction between matters of usage and matters of encyclopedic fact. However, the discussion in this chapter suggests that the distinction is often not clear cut and that lexicographers have the opportunity to exercise choices in the ways that they create associations with China. The overwhelming majority of associations with China in the OED2, as in other dictionaries, are made within definitions rather than through descriptive labels. This is, in effect, a denial of the existence of a Chinese variety of English. It is also evidence of a tendency to construct China as an object of the knowledge of the dictionary. There is evidence that encyclopedic references to China tend to be made even where descriptive labels are possible and might afford a richer definition of the word. Moreover, encyclopedic references to China may often serve no other purpose than to assign the denotata of words to

162 China in the OED: associating words their place in the world. Encyclopedic treatment of China, or more broadly the construction of China as an object of Western knowledge, can therefore be seen not only as a function of the selection of words for the wordlist, but also as a function of the semiotics of associative reference in the text of the dictionary itself.

9

China in the OED: definitions

In Chapter 3, dictionary definitions were identified as an aspect of the microstructure of the dictionary, where they are subject to the expectation that ‘information not explicitly given means “normal” information in any particular field’ (Béjoint, 1994: 12). Definitions are also subject to two specific semiotic constraints: first, that each word or sense of a word must have a definition and, second, that each word or sense will have only one definition. These constraints reinforce the assumption that the dictionary definition of a word is an essential quality of the word itself rather than an evaluation or particular way of looking at it. Dictionary definitions have been described as problematic from the viewpoint of theories of language that emphasise the indeterminacy or multiplicity of lexical meanings. The semiotics of the microstructure, however, specifically exclude the notion that words may ‘change their meaning according to the positions of those who use them’ (Pêcheux, 1982: 111). Definitions also carry ideological meanings in a number of ways. They may be either explicitly or implicitly evaluative. They may objectify social, ethnic or nationality groups, thus excluding their perspectives from the dictionary, or they may construct cultural contexts from which the perspectives of those groups are implicitly excluded. Words may be defined ‘pseudo-bilingually’ in terms of a ‘core’ vocabulary or ‘encyclopedically’, as if the denotatum of the word were of greater interest than the word itself. These aspects of definition are unified within a more general tendency for definitions to establish central and peripheral perspectives of ‘knower’ and ‘known’ in the dictionary. This chapter will be mainly concerned with the interaction between the content of definitions of words associated with China in the OED2 and their semiotic forms. It will focus particularly on the ways in which this interaction works towards the construction of a cultural context in which China functions as a peripheral object of Western knowledge. In contrast to Chapter 7, in which I adopted a mainly quantitative approach to items associated with China in the wordlist, this chapter adopts a qualitative or interpretative approach towards four categories of words: words defined in ways that are explicitly or implicitly evaluative of China; proper nouns; names of food items; and modern political vocabulary.

164 China in the OED: definitions

Evaluation and objectification in definitions A relatively small number of definitions in the OED2 are either explicitly or implicitly evaluative of China or Chinese people. Three types of definition are at issue: where the word itself is evaluative, where the definition is evaluative, and where the definition can be interpreted as evaluative because it is anachronistic. The OED2 includes a number of entries for colloquial epithets for Chinese people. The treatment of these epithets in the OED2 is in principle guided by a policy announced by Burchfield in the preface to the OEDS2 of entering ‘racial or religious terms however opprobrious they may seem to those to whom they are applied’. Since such epithets are typically offensive, they are normally accompanied by usage warnings, as in the definition of slopy: ‘U.S. slang. An oriental, a Chinese (Abusive.)’. Although such usage warnings are the norm, it should be noted that there is no standard form for them in the OED2, nor is there any specific warning that informs the reader that a usage may be ‘racist’. The OED2 occasionally uses evaluative citations from earlier sources as quotations within definitions, for example, in the entry for Cataian: A variant of Cathaian, a man of Cathay or China; ‘used also to signify a sharper, from the dexterous thieving of those people’ (Nares); ? a thief, scoundrel, blackguard. Here the quotation marks appear to absolve the dictionary from responsibility for the implication that the Chinese are (or were) ‘a nation of thieves’. Quotation marks work in a similar way in the definitions of boy and washerman: boy … c. In Southern India and in China a native personal servant is so termed, and is habitually summoned with the vocative ‘Boy!’ (Yule). Also applied to male Negro slaves of any age; in the South Seas to Polynesians kidnapped in ‘the labour trade’. washerman … A man whose occupation is the washing of clothes. ‘Chiefly designating the Chinese laundryman of the U.S. and the Asiatic native washer of clothes.’ – N.E.D. The stereotypical association of ethnic groups with particular types of work is, arguably, not a legitimate function of dictionary definition. The first part of the definition for boy quotes from Yule and Burnell’s Hobson Jobson, which was, at the time of the compilation of the first edition of the OED, an authority rather than an historical source. Nevertheless, the quotation distances the current edition from Yule and Burnell’s definition. However, the word boy is still in use in Hong Kong and elsewhere in East and Southeast Asia, if not as a colonial vocative, at least as a designation for personal servants and other male workers such as bar staff. In the definition of washerman, the OED2 quotes its own first edition with the clear intention of establishing distance. Unfortunately, the supporting

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quotations have not been updated to reflect the OED2’s more politically correct version of the definition and only serve to confirm the stereotype of the ‘Chinese laundryman’. The OED2’s definition for coolie is problematic in similar ways: The name given by Europeans in India and China to a native hired labourer or burden-carrier; also used in other countries where these men are employed as cheap labourers. The structure of this definition implies that it is ‘Europeans in India and China’, not the dictionary itself, who call ‘native labourers’ coolies. This is one way of clarifying that the word is an epithet rather than a name, but the problem remains that although the definition is clearly anachronistic (the most recent citation being 1873), the word is still in use in Hong Kong where it is principally applied to dock workers.1 However, the word becomes offensive when it is used more generally for a Chinese labourer or specifically as a term of abuse.2 Definitions may also evaluate through embedded presuppositions. For example, the OED2 defines joss-house as ‘a Chinese temple or building for idolworship’, implying that ‘idol worship’ is characteristic of Chinese religious practices. The OED2’s definition of chow (= food) includes a slightly different kind of presupposition in the comment: ‘This sense is supposed to be due to the use of the chow (‘‘the edible dog of China’’) as food by poor Chinese’. Here there is an implication that the meaning of the word chow can be explained by a supposed characteristic of ‘the Chinese’, in this case the behaviour of ‘eating dogs’. The OED2 contains a large number of anachronistic definitions that were in some cases written more than 100 years ago. These definitions often contain confusing deictic references of the kind indicated by the use of formerly and now in the definitions for the first two senses of comprador: † 1. Formerly, the name of a native servant employed by Europeans, in India and the East, to purchase necessaries and keep the household accounts: a house-steward. Obs. in India. 2. Now, in China, the name of the principal native servant, employed in European establishments, and especially in houses of business, both as head of the staff of native employés, and as intermediary between the house and its native customers. Although the ‘now’ that begins the second paragraph refers to a point in the late nineteenth century, this would not be immediately apparent to anyone who is not already aware that the second sense is now anachronistic. In at least one case, anachronism leads to a definition that is potentially offensive. The now obsolete word cumshaw is defined in the OED2 as ‘In the Chinese ports: A present or gratuity; a baksheesh’, with the etymological comment that it derives from a

166 China in the OED: definitions Chinese ‘phrase of thanks used by beggars’.3 Like the definitions of comprador, this definition implies that subservience is an attribute of Chinese people. Since the definition does not make clear that the word is obsolete, the assumption could again be made that the practice it refers to is current. Even in the context of their time, however, these definitions of comprador and cumshaw seem patronising. In nineteenth-century Hong Kong businesses, compradors were effectively managers (although they may still have been seen as ‘servants’ at the time) and often accumulated considerable wealth and status as a result of their positions. Cumshaw could well be defined as ‘commission’. It is said to derive from a Chinese phrase meaning ‘thank you’ and the fact that this phrase may have been ‘used by beggars’ is hardly relevant to the meaning of the word. These definitions, therefore, not only convey colonial attitudes. Their reproduction without comment in the OED2 could be seen as legitimising such attitudes in the present day. The definitions identified as evaluative in this section exhibit bias towards China in much the same way that sexist definitions exhibit bias towards women. However, they are relatively small in number and in several cases they could easily be updated in ways that would make them less evaluative. The fact that they have not been updated, however, is significant. Political correctness in dictionary definitions dates back no more than 20 years, but it seems unlikely that the kinds of evaluations discussed in this section would now be found in definitions relating to women or black people in British dictionaries. The fact that they are still found in definitions related to China and Chinese people is indicative of the peripheral position of China within the dictionary. It may be that dictionaries have not yet felt the need to clean up this particular part of the periphery of the language in the same way that the need has been felt in relation to groups who have a voice at the centre. It is not the aim of this study, however, to criticise the OED2 for ‘bias’ against China. Evaluative definitions of Chinese words are discussed here mainly as evidence of the treatment of China and Chinese people as objects of the discourse of the English dictionary. China can only be evaluated and judged in the dictionary, whether negatively or positively, because it has been objectified as a peripheral object of Western knowledge.

Constructing cultural context: defining proper nouns Objectification also implies the ideological construction of a ‘subject’ and hence of a cultural context within which the discourse of the dictionary works. Objectification also implies encyclopedic treatment, because of the tendency to treat the object of knowledge in terms of ‘known’ concepts and things. Encyclopedic treatment in relation to China is, therefore, characteristic not only of the selection of words for the wordlist and descriptive labelling, but also of definition. At this level, encyclopedism is largely a function of the interaction between the content of definitions and their semiotic forms.

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Definitions of words associated with China in the OED2 are characteristically of three types, illustrated here by wonk, t’ing and Manchu: 1

wonk … In China, a dog. Also wonk dog. t’ing … In China: a small open pavilion, esp. in which one may rest or enjoy the landscape. Manchu … 1. A member of a Tungusic race inhabiting Manchuria, which conquered China in 1644 and was the ruling class until the Revolution in 1912. These definitions illustrate three basic semiotic forms of the dictionary definition that I will call ‘synonym’, ‘genus-differentia’ and ‘encyclopedic’. The synonym form of definition is illustrated by wonk, which is defined as a synonym of dog. No additional information is given about the types of dogs of which wonk is used. The genus-differentia form of definition is illustrated by t’ing, where the genus proximum is ‘pavilion’ and the differentia specifica is ‘small open’. The definition of t’ing also includes an additional clause (‘esp. in which one may rest or enjoy the landscape’) adding information that is salient but not essential to the differentia specifica. Lastly, the encyclopedic form of definition is illustrated by Manchu. Although a proper name can be glossed, it cannot strictly be defined either by synonym or by the genus-differentia form. The information given in the definition of Manchu is, therefore, encyclopedic, although the definition itself has the semiotic form of a genus-differentia definition. In such definitions, the genus proximum is generally represented by minimal salient information (in this case the race, Tungusic, and the region inhabited, Manchuria) while the differentia specifica adds information that is salient but not essential (in this case that the Manchus ‘conquered China in 1644 and was the ruling class until the Revolution in 1912’). A definition can be considered ‘lexical’ or ‘encyclopedic’ to the extent that it is concerned with the word or its denotatum. The definition of wonk is purely lexical in that it informs the reader minimally of the meaning of the word without adding information on the types of dogs that it denotes. The definition of t’ing is both lexical and encyclopedic in that it minimally defines the word, but also adds information about the denotatum, which is superfluous to the minimal definition of the word. The definition of Manchu is purely encyclopedic in that it supplies biographical information about its referent without adding any information about the meaning or uses of the name or of the words of which it is composed. The focus of this discussion falls on the third type of definition, where the information supplied is of a purely non-defining kind, and especially on what may happen when non-defining information is conveyed through the semiotic form of the genus-differentia definition. This will be illustrated by definitions of Boxer and opium war.

168 China in the OED: definitions The OED2 defines Boxer as follows:4 (With capital initial.) A member of a Chinese secret society organized in the late nineteenth century, whose primary aim was to save the Chinese empire (and was consequently anti-dynastic); the movement inspired the attack on foreigners in Pekin in 1900. Also attrib. The name represents Chinese i ho chuan or chuen, lit. righteous harmony boxers (fists). This definition is listed as sense 2 of the more general boxer (‘One who boxes or fights with his fists; a pugilist’), although it could well be argued that it is, in fact, a derivative of Boxer Rebellion, an item which might itself deserve an independent entry. This also means that Boxer is defined recursively in terms of membership of an organisation or movement that carries the same name. Somewhat awkwardly, this subentry falls just before the subentry for boxer shorts (‘orig. U.S., long loose-fitting underpants for men, similar in design to the shorts worn by boxers in the ring’). These are all effects of a basic decision to treat Boxer lexically rather than encyclopedically. A second feature of the definition is that it is formulated according to the conventional genus-differentia form with the word ‘member’ as genus proximum and a description of the society that formed the core of the Boxer movement as differentia specifica. The effect of this form of definition is that a largely encyclopedic description of the Boxer movement and rebellion is presented as if it were a piece of lexical information about the meaning of the word Boxer. Whereas an adequate lexical definition of Boxer might be, for example, ‘a member of the nineteenth-century Chinese secret society named I Ho Ch’uan’, the OED2 provides considerably more information than is strictly needed. The information that is judged salient, however, is inevitably no more than the conventional Western interpretation of the nature of the Boxer movement. In particular, the dictionary states that the Boxer movement was ‘anti-foreign’ and that ‘the movement inspired the attack on foreigners in Pekin in 1900’. Western histories of China have tended to minimise the political importance of the Boxer movement in the history of China.5 In the OED2 this is also encoded within the definition of the word Boxer through the use of the words ‘attack on foreigners’ (rather than, for example, ‘revolt against imperialism’). It is likely, of course, that the OED2 definition was written at the time of the Boxer Rebellion itself, and thus reflects the thinking of its times. A similar pattern is observed in the OED2 definition of opium war:6 opium war … a war waged by Britain against China (1839–42) following China’s attempt to prohibit the importation of opium into China; also, a later war (1856–60) against China by Britain and France. Again the definition is encyclopedic in content but lexical in form. In the genus proximum part of the definition, the first opium war is ‘defined’ as ‘a war waged by Britain against China’. In the differentia specifica part, the cause of the first

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opium war is attributed to the Chinese action of ‘prohibiting’ the importation of opium. China thus appears to have caused the first opium war, but to have played no other active part in it! The conventional late nineteenth-century British version of this period of history is thus encoded in the form of a definition. This version is contested, however, by the official view of the People’s Republic of China that these wars were caused by European imperialist aggression, resisted by China, and that their outcomes were the ‘unequal treaties’ under which China was forced to cede the territory of Hong Kong to Britain. It could be argued that mention of the Chinese ‘prohibition’ of opium imports is salient to the lexical explanation of the name opium war. However, it could also be argued that the cause of the wars was not the Chinese resistance to the import of opium but the British insistence on its continuation. By choosing the former version of historical events, the OED2 clearly opts for the British perspective. The dictionary also has no entry or run-on for the term Anglo-Chinese wars (the preferred term in the People’s Republic of China and increasingly in Western histories also, cf. Welsh, 1993) or unequal treaty although the phrase is cited four times in the OED2 under other headwords. It is worth emphasising that the kinds of bias exhibited in the definitions of Boxer and opium war are no different in degree from the kinds of bias that have been identified in the ‘ideological’ dictionaries of the communist world discussed earlier in this book. Wherever there is more than one official perspective on an historical event, each with its own lexical correlates, British dictionaries tend to adopt the British perspective without even mentioning the alternative. Moreover, dictionaries continue to take for granted terminology and explanatory frameworks that date back to the nineteenth century, and which consequently treat colonisation and imperialism as if they were more or less natural events in the history of the world. Although the items concerned are few, they are significant in that they provide direct evidence of cultural assumptions expressed less explicitly elsewhere in the dictionary. The lexicographical point to be made here is that the interaction between the content of definitions and their semiotic forms is significant in two ways. First, economy of space forces the definer to select from the encyclopedic information available. Thus a dictionary definition for a proper noun does not contain just any information about its referent. The reader must assume that it contains only the information that is most salient. Second, this encyclopedic information is placed in specific locations within the structure of the definition, where different degrees of salience are attached to different pieces of information. Thus, by positioning the information that the first opium war was ‘a war waged by Britain against China’, the OED2 asserts that this is the most salient information to be conveyed to the reader. In so doing it conveys the ethnocentric assumption that British actions were the determining actions in the history of nineteenth-century China as a fact about the meaning of a word. Dictionaries do not, therefore, simply convey encyclopedic information about China, they convey this information through structures that cause it to be interpreted in terms of variable degrees of salience. The two examples discussed in this section illustrate

170 China in the OED: definitions this interplay between content and semiotic form, which not only peripherises China as an object of knowledge in the dictionary, but also promotes the British perspective as the perspective from which China is to be known.

Constructing cultural context: defining Chinese food The OED2 definitions of Boxer and opium war are concerned with the direct construction of cultural context through discussion of historical events. These items would hardly be significant, however, unless we were also able to identify similar but more indirect processes in the treatment vocabulary associated with China as a whole. In this section, therefore, I want to focus on the treatment of words for Chinese food, an area of the vocabulary in which one would not especially expect ethnocentrism to be at issue. Items associated with China in the lexical field of ‘food and cooking’ are relatively well represented in British dictionaries. However, we may begin by noting that the OED2’s listing of Chinese food items does not measure up well to the average Chinese restaurant menu in Britain or the United States, let alone China or Hong Kong. Two rather obvious omissions are water chestnut and wonton. We might also note that bean curd (a synonym of tofu) is defined incorrectly as an alternative form of bean paste. It is the way in which the items that are included are defined, however, that is of interest at this point. The typical form of definition for the names of Chinese food items is the genus-differentia definition, with an emphasis on the encyclopedic description of the denotatum. This basic form is divided into four types, which I will illustrate with four definitions: bean cake … a material consisting of compressed beans, or some substitute, deprived of oil, used in China as a food and fertilizer. balachong … A condiment for rice, much used in China, consisting of putrid shrimps or small fishes pounded up with salt and spices, and then dried. bean sprouts … the edible sprouting seeds of any of several varieties of legume (esp. the mung bean), used cooked or raw, orig. in Chinese cookery. chop suey … A Chinese dish of meat or chicken, rice, onions, etc., fried in sesame-oil. Bean cake (type 1) defines the word as the name of a substance, plant, animal, etc., which has among its attributes the fact that it is eaten in China or by Chinese people. Balachong (type 2) defines the word as a food that is eaten in China or by Chinese people. Bean sprouts (type 3) defines the word as a plant, substance, etc., that is used as an ingredient in Chinese cooking. Chop suey (type 4) defines the word as a Chinese dish or food item.

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The items listed in the OED2 divide into the four groups as follows: 1 2 3 4

adzuki, agar-agar, bean cake, bean curd/bean paste, shark-fin, trepang, tofu balachong, moon-cake, yuan hsiao bean sprouts, soy chop suey, crispy noodle, fortune cookie, fu yung, mee, Peking duck, spring roll, sweet and sour, thousand-year-old egg

Two words (bird’s nest and pao tzu,) do not fit clearly into any of these 4 categories because they are not directly associated with China in the definition. The main differences among these four types of definition are of two kinds: a

b

Types 1 and 3 are defined as substances, plants or animals used as food or as food ingredients, while types 2 and 4 are defined as directly consumable foods or dishes Types 1 and 2 are defined as foods consumed in China, or by Chinese people, while types 3 and 4 are defined as Chinese foods or Chinese dishes.

The second distinction is of particular interest because it appears to encode a distinction that is more cultural than semantic. In particular, type 1 and 2 definitions tend to apply to foods that non-Chinese typically do not eat (the exception is tofu, which may not have been common in the West at the time the definition was written). Type 3 and 4 definitions tend to apply to those that are more familiar or suited to the taste-buds of Westerners (the exception is thousand-year-old egg). This distinction is encoded mainly through the use of words such as ‘Chinese dish’, ‘Chinese food’, ‘Chinese cookery’ and ‘Chinese cuisine’ in type 3 and 4 definitions. Type 1 and 2 definitions, also tend to be more detailed than type 3 and 4 definitions, often making use of scientific terminology and a quasiscientific style. Type 2 definitions also tend to be precise and rich in encyclopedic details, whereas type 4 definitions are often vague in their description of the dishes they refer to. The OED2’s definition of balachong (type 2), for example (‘A condiment for rice, much used in China, consisting of putrid shrimps or small fishes pounded up with salt and spices, and then dried’), leaves the reader in little doubt about the nature of the substance that it describes. This definition contrasts with that of chop suey (type 4, ‘a Chinese dish of meat or chicken, rice, onions, etc., fried in sesame-oil’), which is so broad that the reader would undoubtedly experience difficulty in distinguishing chop suey from dishes with similar ingredients on the basis of this definition alone. In contrast to its definition of chop suey, the OED2’s definition of balachong is virtually a recipe for its manufacture. We have noted earlier in this book how dictionary definitions of durian typically exoticise a fruit that is not well known in the West. Here, differences in definitional style appear to encode familiarity and unfamiliarity more systematically. A definer who assumes that chop suey is familiar to the reader will adopt one

172 China in the OED: definitions style of definition (characterised by vagueness and a genus proximum such as ‘Chinese dish’), while a definer who assumes that balachong is unfamiliar will adopt another (characterised by precision and a differentia specifica such as ‘much used in China’). Contrary to the supposition that dictionaries attempt to define all words precisely and consistently, we see that precision and consistency in definition are, in this case, signs for the assumed unfamiliarity of the word or its denotatum. They are also productive means of rendering the unfamiliar ‘known’. For the most part, words associated with China are treated as unfamiliar in the OED2. This treatment contributes towards the construction of a cultural context in which the exoticism of China is assumed and is made known through the discourse of the dictionary. However, in the case of food items, there is a set of words that are less ‘unfamiliar’ to non-Chinese because of the spread of Chinese cuisine across the world. In dealing with these words, semiotic means of encoding familiarity and unfamiliarity are productive in dividing the ‘already known’ from the ‘known through the dictionary’. This division emphasises that the cultural context of the dictionary is one in which knowledge of China and the world is assumed to be a privilege of Western discourse.

The political vocabulary of modern China in the OED2 I have so far emphasised aspects of definition in the OED2 that tend towards the construction of a cultural context in which China is seen from a Western perspective. In this section, I want to return to groups of words connected with the recent political history of China that were first entered in the OEDS3 and the OEDS4. In contrast to words concerned with the earlier political history of China, which appear to have been entered unsystematically, the inclusion of these words offered the opportunity of a more systematic documentation of the political vocabulary of the region (even though, as we saw in Chapter 7, this was largely restricted to the second half of the alphabet). Moreover, many of these words name concepts that are extremely difficult to discuss or define without reference to a broader Chinese political context. Words such as Gang of Four have arisen and developed on Chinese ground, but have also acquired complex meanings in Western representations of modern China and the world. The inclusion of these items reflected the atmosphere of goodwill that characterised Western representations of China from the end of the Gang of Four period in the late 1970s to the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989. It is therefore of interest to investigate how the problem of cultural context is dealt with in relation to these words. One striking feature of the definitions of modern Chinese political concepts in the OED2 is the way they tend to adopt the principle, unusual in the OED2 and English dictionaries in general, of defining within the perspectives of the culture from which the word arises. This is the case, for example, in the entries for ta tzu-pao, walking on two legs and Wufan:

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ta tzu-pao … In the People’s Republic of China, a wall poster written in large characters that expresses a (political) opinion or other message. The posting of ta tzu-pao is no longer encouraged in China. walking on (or with) two legs … in modern China, the use of smallscale, local methods in production and education, as well as large-scale or capital-intensive ones; also attrib. Wufan … Used attrib. to designate an official campaign launched in China in 1952 against bribery, tax evasion, theft of state property, skimping on work and cheating on materials, and theft of state economic information. In each case, the item is defined in terms of its official meaning in China at the time of its entry into the dictionary. There are, however, some inadequacies in these definitions when they are judged in terms of their expression of their cultural context. For example, walking on two legs might better be defined as a general principle of making full use of all one’s resources, rather than simply in terms of its narrower application to a particular economic policy. Similarly, a more adequately contextualised definition of Wufan could mention that the campaign was conducted in the private sector, in contrast to Sanfan (also entered in the OED2), which was conducted in the state sector. Nevertheless, these are clearly definitions of a different order to those for Boxer and opium war discussed earlier in this chapter. If they are to be criticised at all on cultural grounds, it would have to be for their failure to express Western perspectives. Western perspectives are, however, often found in supporting quotations, such as the following (under Sanfan), from H. Trevelyan’s Worlds Apart: The early campaigns were followed by the ‘San-fan’ and ‘Wu-fan’ movements, the so-called Three Antis and Five Antis, directed against corrupt Government officials and businessmen, but doubtless also against the politically unreliable. This quotation implies that the concepts of Sanfan and Wufan concealed oppressive purposes behind their laudable official aims. No hint of these purposes is carried over, however, into the definitions of these two words. Other items are also defined in terms of their Chinese contexts, but with the difference that they carry field labels which indicate that they belong to a special lexicon of Chinese communism: rectification … spec. in Chinese communism, the correction of errors in ideology and practice within the communist party. running dog … in communist terminology, one who is subservient to counter-revolutionary interests.

174 China in the OED: definitions semi-proletariat … Communism … the class of poor peasants and others intermediate between the proletariat and the petty bourgeoisie. splittism … In Communist use: the pursuance of factional interests in opposition to official party policy. The addition of a field label allows a definition in terms of the cultural context in which the item is most typically used, but at the same time releases the dictionary from responsibility for the content of the definition. By defining rectification as ‘the correction of errors in ideology and practice within the communist party’ the dictionary does not thereby commit itself to the view that ‘errors in ideology and practice’ were the actual object of ‘rectification’, because the field label limits the context in which the definition applies. This form of definition is especially interesting because it appears to allow the definer to withdraw from the overall cultural context of the dictionary into a ‘microcontext’ determined by the field label. Definitions constructed within the context of a field label are not, however, without problems. For example, collocations in the supporting quotations for running dog suggest that the definition should perhaps be ‘one who is subservient to imperialist interests’ rather than ‘one who is subservient to counter-revolutionary interests’. Similarly, the definition of semi-proletariat appears to be inaccurate on the basis of its supporting quotations, which suggest that the semi-proletariat consists of poor peasants forced to seek additional work as labourers: i.e., ‘a class intermediate between the proletariat and the peasantry’ rather than ‘a class intermediate between the proletariat and the petty bourgeoisie’. These inaccuracies may be minor, but they suggest that the success of definitions constructed within the microcontext of Chinese communist thought depends upon appropriate interpretation and use of significant contextual terms such as counter-revolutionary, imperialism, petty bourgeoisie and peasantry. Inaccuracies in definitions of this kind may merely reinforce the peripherisation of the culture defined. A further distancing device used in the definition of modern Chinese political words is illustrated in definitions of social-imperialism and capitalist roader: social-imperialism … a term used at one time in China (and occas. elsewhere) for policies held to conceal imperialist aims beneath a socialist veneer. capitalist roader … esp. during the Cultural Revolution in China, a term for Party officials, e.g. the secretary of a provincial Party committee or the chairman of a people’s commune, who were alleged to have capitalist tendencies. Cf. capitalist road s.v. ROAD n. 6 g. Used of people of various views who are out of favour with the Chinese leadership. The use of the words ‘held to’ in the definition of social imperialism and ‘alleged to’ in the definition of capitalist roader addresses the problem of the dictionary’s

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responsibility for its definitions in a different way. These phrases imply that, in the dictionary’s view, those to whom the words are applied do not necessarily possess the attributes that the dictionary needs to mention in order to make an adequate definition. Words such as social-imperialism and capitalist roader belong to a particular class of words whose application necessarily implies an ideological evaluation of some kind. Unusually, the definitions for these words in the OED2 include the information that the ideological implications of these words are open to contest. Such implications are rarely contested when the word forms part of the ‘core’ vocabulary. The word terrorist, for example, falls into a similar category as capitalist roader in as much as it is generally applied to individuals or groups who are alleged to carry out certain acts. However, the OED2 defines terrorist as follows: Any one who attempts to further his views by a system of coercive intimidation.… The term now usually refers to a member of a clandestine or expatriate organization aiming to coerce an established government by acts of violence against it or its subjects. Note that the definition does not say ‘is held to attempt to further his views by a system of coercive intimidation’ or ‘allegedly aiming to coerce an established government by acts of violence against it or its subjects’.7 The use of these words in the definitions of social-imperialism and capitalist roader is, therefore, a device that places the culture within which these terms are normal, beyond the cultural context of the dictionary as a whole. One more distancing device appears in the second definition of capitalist roader (‘6g. Used of people of various views who are out of favour with the Chinese leadership’) and in the definition of struggle meeting: struggle meeting … in Communist China: a meeting at which those who have aroused official or public disfavour are criticized or denounced. In these definitions, the two terms are said to be applicable in cases where individuals have fallen ‘out of favour with the Chinese leadership’ or ‘aroused official or public disfavour’. Appearing within the definition of the words, these phrases obscure and call into question the precise meanings that the words convey in official Chinese contexts. More direct devices are used in the definitions of reform through labour and thought reform: reform through labour … in China, an element of ideological reformation whereby criminals and dissidents are made to work as a part of their political re-education. thought reform … a process of individual political indoctrination used in Communist China; also in extended sense.

176 China in the OED: definitions The definition of reform through labour appears to mix cultural perspectives by using the word ‘dissidents’ (where the official Chinese perspective would surely demand ‘counter-revolutionary’ or ‘reactionary’) in conjunction with the phrase ‘re-education’ (a Chinese political term). In the case of thought reform, the Western perspective irrupts in the formulation ‘political indoctrination’, rather than ‘reeducation’. In both instances, the result is a hybrid definition in which neither perspective is fully expressed. In reform through labour, the official Chinese perspective is missing because the process appears to be applied indiscriminately to ‘criminals and dissidents’, while the Western democratic perspective is incomplete because no mention is made that reform through labour is, in effect, a form of imprisonment and punishment. The definition of thought reform is particularly uninformative because no mention is made either of the purposes to which it has been put in China or of the contexts in which it was been applied. The systematic inclusion of modern Chinese political vocabulary in the OED2 presented a particular challenge to the OED because the vocabulary largely consists of translation equivalents of words embedded in Chinese political and cultural contexts. The pattern that emerges from the definition of these words is complex. Evidently, some attempt has been made to define from within official Chinese cultural perspectives, but there are also cases where these perspectives are isolated through the use of field labels and distancing devices of various kinds. It may be that the OED chose to define sympathetically concepts that were more palatable to Western liberal democratic perspectives (such as Sanfan, ta tzu-pao, walking on two legs, Wufan), while feeling compelled to comment on those that were less palatable (struggle meeting, reform through labour, thought reform). If so, we might point to a semiotic process in which ‘communist China’ is divided into its palatable and unpalatable aspects in much the same way as Chinese cuisine is divided into foods that are palatable and unpalatable to Western tastes. It is also noteworthy that where the OED comments, it tends to hint rather than condemn outright. The result is, in the case of reform through labour and thought reform, an apparent avoidance of commitment, which leads to peculiarly uninformative definitions. The treatment of these items raises a number of complex questions about the kinds of definitions that dictionaries should attempt for words that originate in one cultural context but are contested in others. My argument is not that official Chinese political terms should be defined exclusively in official Chinese terms since such a policy would at the very least fail to do justice to unofficial or oppositional Chinese perspectives. Difficulties that arise in the definition of such items ultimately test the limits of the semiotic principle of the dictionary microstructure that each sense of a word can have only one definition.

Conclusion In this chapter, I have tried to show how the content of definitions of words associated with China interacts with the semiotic constraints of dictionary

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definition to construct a cultural context for the dictionary in which China is constructed as a peripheral object of Western knowledge. Evaluative definitions of words and their denotata are presented as evidence of the objectification of China and the Chinese people. Definitions of proper nouns such as Boxer and opium war illustrate the influence of principles of economy and salience in the production of encyclopedic definitions that represent British versions of history as the meanings of words. The semiotic forms of definitions for Chinese food items contributed to the construction of cultural context through the division of these items into those that are ‘familiar’ and ‘unfamiliar’ from a British perspective. Lastly, the OED2 definitions of modern Chinese political terms were discussed. Although it was noted that some definitions are constructed so as to express Chinese perspectives, it was also noted that these perspectives tend to be constrained by semiotic forms that isolate them from the cultural context constructed for the dictionary as a whole. Although an argument for ethnocentrism in English dictionaries could well be established on the basis of an analysis of the content of definitions alone, I have chosen to emphasis the ways in which content is constrained by semiotic structure. The fundamental issue is that the conventional form of the dictionary definition encodes the premise that each sense of a word can have only one meaning. In effect, the semiotic structure of the definition constrains the dictionary to define words from a single perspective, suppressing variability and multiplicity of meaning. Within this constraint, when a word is defined from more than one perspective, the result is likely to be a somewhat confusing hybrid of the kind illustrated by the OED2 definitions of reform through labour and thought reform. The perspective from which words are predominantly defined becomes the semiotic ‘centre’ of the dictionary, the central perspective from which knowledge is produced and the world is defined as a world encoded in words and their meanings. At the same time, the defined world becomes the semiotic ‘periphery’ of the dictionary, the object of the knowledge produced at the centre. It is in this sense that ethnocentrism operates within the semiotic structures of the dictionary itself.

10 China in the OED: quotations

In the OED2, illustrative text consists almost entirely of attributed quotations from published sources.1 These quotations represent the substance of the OED’s claim to authority. They number almost 2.5 million and constitute more than half of the text of the dictionary (Berg, 1991: 4). According to Berg, quotations both ‘illustrate how a word is used in context in a particular sense’ and ‘help to define the meaning of a word or word sense’ (1991: 35). Quotations are usually supplementary to definitions, but occasionally they stand in place of them. In a relatively small number of cases, a quoted definition from another dictionary or authoritative work stands in place of a definition. The OED2 contains a large number of quotations containing references to China, which not only illustrate but also play an important defining role. Discussion of illustrative text in the OED2 thus borders on the earlier discussion of definition in Chapter 9. In Chapter 3, it was noted that from a semiotic perspective illustrative text in dictionaries is significant in two ways. First, it is indicative of the corpus of texts on which a dictionary is based. For example, the OED2 quotations indicate the range of literary and textual sources used in the compilation of the dictionary. Second, illustrative text may also be evaluated in terms of what it says directly about the language and the world, independently of its defining or illustrative functions. Since illustrative text is used in dictionaries for purposes particular to each dictionary, its precise semiotic functions will be specific to the dictionary in which appears. In the case of the OED2, there is a good deal to be said both about the defining and illustrative functions of quotations supporting words associated with China and about the content of quotations referring to China independently of these functions.

Quotations in the OED2 The OED2 contains 2,804 quotations containing a reference to China supporting 2,207 words. This is considerably more than the 646 words that contain a reference to China in their definition, but less than the total number of quotations supporting these 646 words, which I estimate to be 3,165. The majority of the quotations referring to China do not support words that are associated with China in their definitions. This observation is significant,

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because, in view of the defining function of OED2 quotations, it may be that there are many more words associated with China in the dictionary than has been assumed on the basis of references in definitions. However, references to China in quotations have various relationships to the words they support: 1 2 3 4 5

the word associated with China in the quotation is the same as word it supports; the reference to China in the quotation supports a similar reference in the definition; the reference to China in the quotation creates a strong association with China for a word that is not associated with China in its definition; the reference to China in the quotation creates a loose association with China for a word that is not associated with China in its definition; the reference to China in the quotation creates no association with China for a word that is not associated with China in its definition.

In all of these categories the quotation as a whole may have both illustrative and defining functions, but this is not necessarily true of the reference to China within the quotation. Thus, references in categories 1–4 have both illustrative and defining functions of some kind, while references in category 5 have no real illustrative or defining functions in relation to the words they support.2 Category 5 accounts for 931 of the 2,804 quotations referring to China and, since each occurs under a separate word, 931 of the 2,207 distinct words supported by them. The number of words associated with China through quotations is, therefore, 1,276 or almost double the number associated with China through definitions.

Associations with China in the OED2 quotations Given that a quotation normally gives more information about the contexts in which a word is used than can be accommodated in its definition, it is to be expected that the number of words associated with China through quotations will be greater than the number associated with China through definitions. It might also be expected that the words associated with China in quotations will include those associated with it in definitions. Although this proves to be true in most cases, there are a number where it is not. For 63 of the 646 headwords associated with China in definitions, there is no reference to China in the supporting quotations. These include words for which there is no quotation at all and also entries such as the following for skimmia, which is cited in full: skimmia … An evergreen shrub of the genus so called, belonging to the family Rutaceae, native to Japan, China, or the Himalayas, and bearing panicles of small white flowers followed by red berries. Cf. SHIKIMI . 1853 Curtis’ Bot. Mag. LXXIX. 4719 (heading) Japan Skimmia.

180 China in the OED: quotations 1866 Treas. Bot. 1064/2 Skimmia, the name of a genus of evergreen shrubs, with oblong entire stalked leathery dotted leaves, and flowers in terminal panicles. 1882 Garden 1 Apr. 210/1 These Skimmias are excellent evergreens. 1908 G. JEKYLL Colour in Flower Garden xi. 104 Here are green Aucubas and Skimmias. 1925 A. J. MACSELF Flowering Trees and Shrubs xi. 179 Cuttings of Skimmias root very well in sandy peat under bell-glasses. 1960 Times 24 Sept. 9/3 There are … the skimmias, but here we have to be … more careful, because some of them are monosexual. 1980 Plantsman I. 237 Skimmias prefer deep heavy fertile acid moist soils. Although the definition of skimmia includes the information that the plant is ‘native to China’, none of the five supporting quotations mention China at all. Indeed, the sources of most of the quotations suggest that the word is best known to the dictionary compilers as the name of a plant grown in Britain. In this and similar cases, although the word is defined as the name of a Chinese plant, the quotation section expresses a British perspective on the use of the word. In addition to these 63 entries, a further 91 have one or more quotations referring to China that are outnumbered by quotations with no reference to China. These entries are mostly for words that are seen as being either assimilated to non-Chinese contexts of use (e.g., panda, save face) or partially assimilated in the sense that they have acquired separate uses in Chinese and non-Chinese contexts (e.g., Gang of Four, yang/yin). The construction of these entries is interesting in that it tends to confirm the importance to the OED2 of the Chinese origins of concepts and things. The entry for save face (under face) serves as an example. The entry is again cited in full: To save one’s face … (tr. Chinese tiu lien): to be humiliated, lose one’s credit, good name, or reputation; similarly, loss of face. Hence face = reputation, good name. 1876 R. HART These from Land of Sinim (1901) App. ii. 225 Arrangements by which China has lost face. 1899 Harmsworth Mag. June 400 That will save my face in the City. 1915 W. S. MAUGHAM Of Human Bondage cvii. 563 To save his face he began making suggestions for altering it, but Mrs Hodges … advised him to show it to Miss Antonia as it was.

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1915 J. LONDON Lost Face 33 He had lost face before all his people. 1928 GALSWORTHY Swan Song i. 5 They’ve got to save face. Saving face is the strongest motive in the world. 1929 Times 3 Aug. 11/3 Each wishes to concede only what can be conceded without loss of ‘face’. 1945 E. WAUGH Brideshead Revisited 8 They … sidled away at the approach of an officer for fear that, by saluting, they would lose face with their new mistresses. 1957 L. DURRELL Bitter Lemons 22 To lapse into Greek with anyone who was not a peasant would involve a loss of face. 1957 (see FAIRY-TALE ). 1958 Times 5 July 12/1 The importance of ‘face’, whether individually or collectively, in Japan. 1968 G. JONES Hist. Vikings ii. iv. 129 Harald had lost face in his dealings with Norway. Save face is described as a translation of the Chinese expression tiu lien and the first of the supporting quotations makes reference to a Chinese context. Seven of the remaining eight quotations illustrate uses of the expression in non-Chinese contexts while the remaining (1958) quotation illustrates a parallel usage to the Chinese usage in a Japanese context. The Chinese usage appears first in the list because it is the earliest citation. But OED2 entries are also constructed as histories of words and the history of a Chinese word is very often constructed as one in which the word begins life in a restricted Chinese context that is gradually outgrown as the word is integrated into ‘the language’. Save face continues to be used in Chinese contexts, which could have been supported by more recent quotations. The quotations appear to have been selected and ordered, however, in order to demonstrate the assimilation of the word. This is typical of the cases where a definition associated with China is only partially supported by quotations referring to China, and provides further evidence of the OED2’s tendency to allocate words to their ‘proper places’ in the world. Strong association: the disappearance of Chinese words Quotations that imply an association between the cited word and China can be divided roughly into cases where the quotation implies a strong association (i.e., where a reference to China in the definition seems strongly justified) and cases that imply a loose association (i.e., where a reference to China in the definition

182 China in the OED: quotations seems less strongly justified). This distinction is partly a matter of judgement, but two examples, book name and plastic, may help to clarify the issues involved: book name … a name of a plant or animal, other than the scientific name, used only in books; also transf.; … Lisbon (Dakota) Star 27 Mar. 5 A Chinaman … gets a book-name when he goes to school. plastic … a. Made of plastic; of the nature of a plastic, or containing plastic as an essential ingredient. … 1961 Ann. Reg. 1960 510 Growers of flowers complained that imports of plastic flowers, mainly from Hong Kong, were having an adverse effect. Although the quotation for book name appears to illustrate the word as defined, a closer examination suggests that it actually refers to a Chinese naming practice for children. If so, the sense of book name illustrated in this quotation is part of the same lexical set as milk-name, which is defined in the OED2 as ‘the name given to a Chinese child at a ceremony held one month after birth’. The quotation for book name can, therefore, be said to imply a strong association with China that seems to justify a second entry for book name, which would, like milk-name, be associated with China. In the second example, the quotation cited is one of many listed to illustrate uses of the word plastic. The reference to Hong Kong reflects the fact that Hong Kong was the world’s leading producer of plastic flowers in the late 1950s. Although a separate definition for plastic flowers might be justified, the argument for including a reference to Hong Kong within it would not be strong. Such questions remain matters of lexicographical judgement, but the case for a separate definition for book name with a reference to China is clearly stronger than the case for a separate definition of plastic flowers with a reference to Hong Kong. These kinds of judgements can also be justified in terms of parallel cases. For example, the entry for milk-name would seem to argue for a similar entry for book name. The fact that the OED2 does not normally include the region where an industrial product is produced as part of its definition seems to argue against a reference to Hong Kong in a definition of plastic flowers.3 Cases of strong association with China in quotations fall into four categories. First, there are cases where a quotation clearly states that the cited word or its denotatum are associated with China in some way: economism … A belief in the primacy of economic causes or factors. … 1967 Times 19 Jan. 7/2 The past week has seen the coining (in China) of a new derogatory term, ‘economism’, which was linked today with the parallel errors of better wages and conditions.

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lion dog … a variety of dog having a flowing mane; also, a dog belonging to one of several breeds resembling miniature lions in colour or type of fur, or once used for hunting in country inhabited by lions. … 1921 V. W. F. COLLIER Dogs China and Japan xii. 183 Tibetan lion-dogs are bred to resemble lions, and they, like the Chinese, appear to be willing to call any shaggy coated dog a lion-dog. re-educate … trans. To educate again. Now often spec. with the object of changing political beliefs or social behaviour. … 1955 Treatment of Brit. P.O.W.’s in Korea (H.M.S.O.) 4 ‘Re-educating’ the prisoners. The Chinese technique of ‘re-education’ embraced every phase of daily life in the prison camps. snow pea = MANGE-TOUT … 1956 E. MCBAIN Cop Hater (1958) xx. 172 Chinese vegetables; luscious snow peas, and water chestnuts. Each of these quotations illustrates a slightly different relationship between the quotation and the word as defined. Economism is defined as ‘belief in the primacy of economic causes or factors’. Although the quotation does not define the Chinese usage, it appears to be linked more to the pursuit of economic goals in a political context. As in the case of book name, the cited item may not correspond to the item as defined. The definition of lion dog attempts to accommodate the fact that this word is used to name different breeds of dogs in different parts of the world. The quotation, however, refers to a specific breed, which might well deserve its own definition. Similarly, re-education is defined in a rather general way while the quotation illustrates its use as a term specific to a Chinese cultural context. Lastly, snow pea is defined by a cross-reference to mange-tout, but the quotation refers to snow pea as a Chinese vegetable, in which context it is not a synonym of mange-tout. In each case, therefore, the quotation given implies not only an association with China, but also a different use of the word to the use defined. Second, there are cases where the quotation states that the cited word originates in or is typically used in Chinese contexts: look-see … 1. A survey; a tour of inspection, a reconnaissance; an investigation. Also rare (quot. 1926), appearance, looks … 1927 Observer 9 Oct. 22 We must be grateful to the B.B.C. for letting us have a ‘looksee’, as the Chinese say. no can do … It is not possible; it is not within the power of (the speaker)

184 China in the OED: quotations … 1915 A. D. GILLESPIE Lett. from Flanders (1916) 69 ‘Nap poo’ … was once ‘il n’y a plus’, but now it’s used like the Chinese ‘no can do’ for everything. Taxi-girl … a young female taxi-dancer 1963 J. KIRKUP Tropic Temper xv. 163 The professional dance-girls, or taxigirls as they are sometimes called in Singapore and Hong Kong, sit in a long row in front of the band. In these cases, there is no justification for a separate definition of the words cited. It is simply that the origin or typical context of use of the words mentioned in the quotation is not acknowledged in the definition. For look-see and no can do, it is a matter of a probable origin in China Coast Pidgin. For taxi-girl, the only supporting quotation states that the word is typically used in Singapore and Hong Kong. Third, there are cases where a quotation states that the denotatum of an item originates in China, but the definition does not: moxibustion … cauterization by means of a moxa (Dunglison 1833–55); … 1965 New Scientist 15 July 129/1 Chinese surgery has clearly advanced at a pretty phenomenal rate. Presumably this is why traditional methods like acupuncture, moxibustion (the burning of a herbal mixture on part of the body to transfer the site of irritation from one place to another) are still respected. scissors … f. In phr. scissors and stones, scissors cut paper, scissors game, a game for two players using three postures of the right hand (see quot. 1934). Or the left hand if one is left-handed. 1934 P. FLEMING One’s Company ii. 198 From a room downstairs came that sound which so often accompanies meals in China – the staccato, competitive ejaculations of a party playing the ‘scissors’ game. In this you and your opponent shoot out your right hands at each other simultaneously, the fingers being arranged in one of three postures. A clenched fist means ‘stone’; two fingers extended mean ‘scissors’; all five fingers extended mean ‘paper’. Scissors cut paper but are broken on stone, and paper wins against stone because stone can be wrapped up in paper. According to the OED2 definition, the technique of moxibustion is attributed to Dunglison in the nineteenth century, whereas the quotation implies that it is a traditional technique in Chinese surgery. On the strength of this quotation there would be a strong case for defining moxibustion as a Chinese medical technique. The definition of scissors and stones relies upon a quotation that describes the

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game as played in a Chinese context, but again the definition makes no reference to this context. Lastly, there are cases where a word cited in a quotation is ‘hidden’ among a series of quotations illustrating combining forms: neo … 1. a. In combs. denoting a new or modern form of some doctrine, belief, practice, language, etc., or designating those who advocate, adopt, or use it, as … -Confucian adj., -Confucianism … , … 1948 Mind LVII. 535 Dr. Fung … does not, like many Chinese and most Occidental expositors, make Confucius teach medieval *Neo-Confucian doctrine. Ibid., Fung continues Chinese traditions by attempting to bring up to date medieval *Neo-Confucianism. one … 34. a. Attributive phrases consisting of one with a substantive (= ‘consisting of, having, containing, costing, lasting, measuring, characterized by, dealing with, or relating to one … ’); these may be formed at pleasure, and are unlimited in number; such are … -string, … 1970 Islander (Victoria, B.C.) 8 Feb. 10/1 Occasionally from some nearby window you caught the strains of the (Chinese) one-string fiddle blending with the sing-song street cries of the vendors of lottery tickets. proletarian … c. Of or pertaining to the proletariat in the modern sense. … 1976 Times 28 Sept. (China Suppl.) 10/3 Under the banner of ‘proletarian internationalism’ ideological motives seem to be distinguishable features of Chinese aid. Neo-Confucian and Neo-Confucianism are not defined, they are simply listed among the compounds formed on the base of the prefix neo-. One-string-fiddle is doubly hidden, since it appears only within a quotation illustrating one-string, which is itself not defined, but listed among the compounds formed on the base of the prefix one. However, each is arguably a word calling for its own entry and definition. Neo-Confucianism is a political doctrine and one-string fiddle a specific type of Chinese musical instrument. Proletarian internationalism also has no entry and appears only within a quotation illustrating the word proletarian. The meanings and uses of proletarian internationalism in Chinese contexts cannot be readily inferred, however, from the meanings of its component parts. Judging by the examples cited in this section, three reasons can be offered to explain why a word might not be associated with China in a definition when it is associated with China in a quotation: the lexicographer may have unintentionally confused the word cited with the word as defined (e.g., book name); the quotation may not furnish an adequate basis for a separate definition (e.g. snow peas); or the definition may have been truncated or

186 China in the OED: quotations excluded altogether for reasons of economy (e.g. proletarian internationalism). While these may all be valid reasons, quotations repeatedly show that words have a wider range of meanings than their definitions allow. This is, of course, one reason for including quotations and allocating a defining function to them. However, it is also worth noting that the process of definition often appears to be one of ‘centralisation’, in which variant meanings or usages in Chinese contexts disappear. In the semiotic scheme of the OED2, quotations are peripheral to definitions and information about China is more often found in the quotation section than in the definition section of a word. Loose association: the origins of Western technology It was noted in Chapter 9 that, for the names of flora and fauna especially, the OED2 tends to emphasise Chinese origin as a salient feature of definition. It was also noted that for many words in this category, the reference to Chinese origin is unsupported in the quotation section. In contrast, I have noted the case of moxibustion, where a quotation referring to China seems to offer a strong argument for the definition of the word as a Chinese medical technique. This is by no means an isolated case, and here I want to draw attention to some 20 quotations that state or imply that the denotatum of a word defined without reference to China may be of Chinese origin: aquiculture … 1868 PEARD Water-farming i. 2 Aqueculture actually existed in China centuries before luxury gave it birth in civilised Rome. chromoxylography … 1887 Q.R. Jan. 108 Chromo-xylography, effected by a series of blocks printed in succession, was derived from China. decimate … 1749 SMETHURST in Phil. Trans. XLVI. 22 The Chinese … are so happy as to have their Parts of an Integer in their Coins, &c. decimated. dictionary … 1849 Lond. Jrnl. 12 May 149 Morrison mentions a dictionary in the Chinese language of 40,000 hieroglyphical characters, as having been compiled 1100 years before Christ. encyclopaedia … 1859 DARWIN Orig. Spec. i. (1873) 24 An ancient Chinese encyclopaedia. inoculation … 1866 A. FLINT Princ. Med. (1880) 1041 As a means of rendering the disease … mild … and of preventing pitting, inoculation had been practised from time immemorial in China and Persia. marcottage … 1959 HARTMANN AND KESTER Plant Propagation xiv. 406 The ancient Chinese gootee or marcottage method consists of plastering a

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ball of clay or other soil mixture about the ring or girdle, which is then covered with moss or fiber. nickel … 1800 tr. Lagrange’s Chem. I. 396 It appears that nickel was employed by the Chinese long before it was proved to be a distinct metal. numeral … 1840 Penny Cycl. XVI. 366/2 Distinct numeral characters are found to have existed … among the Chinese, Indians, and Arabs. pearl … 1875 Ure’s Dict. Arts III. 518 Italy also manufactures pearls by a method borrowed from the Chinese: they are known under the name of Roman pearls, and are a very good imitation of natural ones. pyrobolical … 1732 Hist. Litteraria III. 114 If the Chinese have been so ancient in the Mystery of Pyroboly and Pyrotechnics. reflexology … 1976 M. SEGAL Reflexology 1 Like acupuncture, reflexology has been used by the Chinese for 5,000 years. rocket … 1944 T. N. DALTON Jet Propulsion 44 The Encyclopaedia Britannica says that rocket projectiles were used by the Chinese. semination … 1747 Gentl. Mag. XVII. 527 We are informed (by the learned Maitland) that this method of Semination of the small pox has been in use above 100 years among the Chinese. tabular … 1816 SINGER Hist. Cards ii. 75 As far as regards tabular printing, there is no reason to doubt that the Europeans derived their knowledge of printing from the Chinese. thimbled … 1884 Pall Mall G. 10 Dec. 3/2 Long before either Dutch or English thought of thimbles Chinese ladies were thimbled when they worked at their embroidery. variolization … 1910 Edin. Rev. Oct. 276 Variolisation … is said to have been known to the Chinese from the commencement of the eleventh century. water-mark v. … 1889 W. LOCKHART in Athenaeum 16 Mar. 345/1 The Chinese … for a long time past have had the art of water-marking paper. wavicle … 1962 J. NEEDHAM Sci. and Civilisation in China IV. i. 135 Old Chinese philosophers … thought of chhi as something between what we should call matter in a rarefied gaseous state on one hand, and radiant energy on the other. Though all our assured knowledge gained by experi-

188 China in the OED: quotations ment makes us infinitely richer than they, is the concept of ‘wavicles’ in modern physical theory so much more penetrating? zone therapy … 1979 D. E. BAYLY in A. Hill Visual Encycl. of Unconventional Med. 61 The origin of the reflex method is obscure. It is said that it came from China to the West.… It is known to have been used by the natives of Kenya, and also by some American Indian tribes. At the beginning of this century it was called zone therapy by one Dr Fitzgerald (sic) in America who used it as a form of anaesthesia to render the patient insensible to pain when performing small operations, and to ease childbirth. Characteristically, these quotations inform us that an artefact or technique that is known in the West was either borrowed from China or established in China before it was known in the West. However, in none of these cases is any reference made to China in the definition of the word. These quotations, therefore, furnish evidence of a particular kind of ‘knowledge of China’, of which Needham (1954–) and other writers have done much to make the Western world aware. This asserts that many of the scientific and technological advances of the West (including the dictionary and encyclopedia, according to the OED2) were preceded by similar advances in China, sometimes by several thousand years. It should be kept in mind that in the quotations cited above it is the denotatum of the word, not the word itself, that is associated with China. Thus, the entries for these words are often constructed so that the earliest citation refers to the origins of the word in an English-speaking context. The quotation associating the denotatum with China may fall in the middle of the chronologically ordered list of quotations but indicate that the first knowledge of the denotatum pre-dates the first record of the word as an English word. It may not be the business of dictionaries to explain the origins of the denotata of words, especially if they were not named by the word in question at the time of their origin. A point worth noting, however, is that the OED2 does tend to concern itself with the Chinese origin of the denotata of words when it is a matter of flora and fauna, but not when it is a matter of science and technology. This represents a particular way of structuring knowledge about China, which involves elevating the Chinese contribution to the world in some fields and diminishing it in others. Loose association: evaluative quotations All quotations in the OED2 perform a defining function of some kind and any association with China made through a reference to China can be seen as contributing a Chinese element to the definition of the word. The ways in which these contributions are made, however, are unpredictable. In this section, I want to examine a group of quotations that illustrate human or social attributes by reference to China and discuss the nature of their contribution to the definitions of the words they support.

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The quotations discussed here fall into three groups: the supposed physical attributes of Chinese people; aspects of personality; and attributes of Chinese society or culture. Twelve quotations refer to physical attributes: almond … 1915 W. S. MAUGHAM Of Human Bondage xxii. 94 He (a Chinaman) laughed … and his almond eyes almost closed as he did so. leiotrichy … 1935 HUXLEY AND HADDON We Europeans iv. 114 Leiotrichy: the condition of straight lank hair, hanging straight down, as among the Chinese and certain other yellow-skinned peoples of Asia, and among the Eskimo. mallet-pate / pig-eye … 1823 Blackw. Mag. XIV. 520 The mallet-pate, pig-eye Chinese. narrow-eyed … 1687 WOOD Life 5 Sept. (O.H.S.) III. 236 All the Chineses, Tartars, and all that part of the world was narrow-eyed. obliquity … 1871 DARWIN Desc. Man II. xix. 344 The obliquity of the eye, which is proper to the Chinese and Japanese, is exaggerated in their pictures. pigtail … 1874 M. E. HERBERT tr. Hübner’s Ramble i. xii. 193 Chinamen … with their black caps, and equally black pig-tails. pommel … 1861 W. BARNES in Macm. Mag. June 127 Man may be marred … by perverse fashions – as in the pummel feet of Chinese women. slit-eyed … 1894 Daily News 18 June 6/3 Bands of *slit-eyed Chinamen. squinney … 1885 W. B. FORFAR Poems 20 We saw the queer Chineese. Their fa-aces are so white as milk, With little squinney eyes. stumble … 1697 W. DAMPIER Voy. I. xv. 408 By this unreasonable custom they (the Chinese women) do in a manner lose the use of their Feet, and instead of going they only stumble about their Houses. Totter … 1796 MORSE Amer. Geog. II. 489 Chinese women … may be said to totter rather than to walk. unisex … 1972 Sat. Rev. (U.S.) 1 July 47/1 ‘How clean,’ ‘how Spartan,’ ‘how unisex’ the Chinese appeared to be. These quotations illustrate words that go to make up the characteristic stereotype of the Chinese physique. They refer especially to the shape of the head (mallet-

190 China in the OED: quotations pate) and eyes (almond, narrow-eyed, obliquity, pig-eye, slit-eyed, squinney), to the hair (leiotrichy, pig-tail) and to the bound-feet of Chinese women (pommel, stumble, totter). There is also one more recent reference to the unisex stereotype of Mao’s China. These references are indicative of a tendency in the OED2 to treat ‘the Chinese’ almost in the manner of a ‘species’. Most of the quotations are pre-twentieth century, however, suggesting that such ways of writing about Chinese people have either disappeared or have become unacceptable for inclusion in the dictionary. The 1935 quotation under leiotrichy, however, is worthy of special note as an almost quintessential example of Said’s (1991) ‘Orientalism’, in which ‘the straight, lank hair … [of the] yellow-skinned peoples of Asia’ serves its purpose as a pseudo-scientific description of ‘the other’ in a book entitled We Europeans. Similar comments can be made about the group of eight quotations that illustrate traits of personality by reference to Chinese people: assuetude … 1873 Contemp. Rev. XXII. 699 The petrified assuetudes and porcelain effeminacies of the Chinese. dolly … 1970 ‘D. HALLIDAY ’ Dolly and Cookie Bird vi. 89 The Chinaman … really was dolly, with a long yellow face. Don Quixotism … 1719 DE FOE Crusoe ii. xiii, The state he (a Chinaman of position) rode in was a perfect Don Quixoteism being a mixture of pomp and poverty. fungus (Often used fig. for something of rapid growth) … 1881 G. W. CABLE Mme. Delphine i. 2 That significant fungus, the Chinaman. heathen … 1870 B. HARTE Heathen Chinee 17 He went for that heathen Chinee. inaccentuated … 1882 E. C. BABER in R. Geog. Soc. Suppl. Papers I. i. 157 In every step and movement there was a decision and exactness widely different from the sluggish inaccentuation of the Chinese physique. oleaginously … 1912 L. J. VANCE Destroying Angel x. 119 Three doors, in one of which a rotund Chinaman beamed oleaginously. unathletic … 1888 Daily News 25 Aug. 5/2 The absence of nerves in the unathletic Chinaman. Like the physical attributes, the personality traits cited are stereotypical and by no means complimentary to their ‘owners’. Again, most of the quotations are from nineteenth-century texts and emphasise the ‘effeminacies of the Chinese’ (see assuetudes) – ‘the other’ to the active masculine character of the Victorian male.

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Lastly, there is a group of 18 quotations in which social and cultural attributes are illustrated by reference to China: banditry … 1924 Glasgow Herald 29 Oct. 8 The ponderous banditry which the Chinese dignify by the name of war. bureaucracy … 1858 Merc. Mar. Mag. V. 43 The brigand bureaucracy of China. double-dealing … 1748 Anson’s Voy. iii. x. 403 The malice and doubledealing of the Chinese. faith … 1653 H. COGAN tr. Pinto’s Trav. xlvi. 179 The bad faith of the Chineses. familial … 1903 E. C. PARSONS tr. Tarde’s Laws of Imitation vii. 252 The essentially familial character which this people (sc. The Chinese) has retained. fell (‘Of animals and men, their actions and attributes: Fierce, savage; cruel, ruthless; dreadful, terrible’) … 1653 H. COGAN tr. Pinto’s Trav. xxii. 78 Such fell and cruel people, as the Chineses were. foisty (‘Fusty, musty, mouldy’) … 1859 H. T. ELLIS Hong Kong to Manilla 219 Pure Indians, and pure Chinese (if such a term can be applied to so ‘foisty’ a race as the latter). opinionated … 1739 WESLEY Wks. (1830) I. 68 As opinionated of their own parts and wisdom, as either modern Chinese or ancient Romans. outpushing … 1894 Chicago Advance 2 Aug., Some outpushing Chinese and still more enterprising Japanese. practicality … 1961 E. BECKER Zen iv. 107 The ‘marvelous person’ that is supposed to result from Zen exhibits more Chinese practicality than Indian speculation. prosaic … 1892 WESTCOTT Gospel of Life 128 The Chinese are commonly held to be a prosaic people. ritualization … 1952 T. PARSONS Social System 414 The particularism, traditionalism, and ‘ritualization’ of traditional Chinese society. sober … 1885 Christ. World 15 Jan. 38/5 The Heathen Chinee … is generally civil and always sober.

192 China in the OED: quotations statu-quoism … 1848 STEINMETZ Hist. Jesuits III. 388 Another peculiarity of the Chinese was statu-quo-ism, their imitative faculties having from time immemorial completely palsied the inventive. unassimilable … 1882 Athenaeum 4 Mar. 286/1 America is being invaded by Socialist Germans … and unassimilable Chinese. us and them … 1984 Times Lit. Suppl. 26 Oct. 1206/1 The Chinese awareness of ‘us and them’ is intense, pervasive and hard to break down. war-hungry … 1962 E. SNOW Other Side of the River (1963) lx. 456 The Western caricature of the mad-dog war-hungry Chinese. wide awake … 1906 Spectator 18 Aug. 222/2 Foreign capitalists will not advance it … still less would the very wideawake Chinese merchant. Among these 18 evaluations of Chinese society there are some positive notes: ‘the Chinese’ are ‘familial’, ‘outpushing’, ‘practical’ and ‘sober’ (although ‘heathen’) and their merchants are ‘wideawake’. But the balance sheet leans towards the negative: China is characterised by ‘banditry’ masquerading as war, ‘brigand bureaucracy’, ‘ritualization’ and ‘statu-quoism’ while ‘the Chinese’ are ‘fell’, ‘foisty’, ‘opinionated’, ‘prosaic’, ‘war-hungry’ and guilty of ‘malice and double-dealing’ and ‘bad faith’. Not surprisingly, they are also ‘unassimilable’. Western views of China have varied over the centuries from which the OED2 quotations have been drawn but there is also no evidence here of any period in which Chinese society has tended to be evaluated positively. The question that arises from these three groups of quotations is whether attribution of negative stereotypes to Chinese people and Chinese society reflects the trend in Western writing on China or whether it represents the conscious or unconscious selection of quotations for the dictionary. This question cannot be answered definitively without more investigation of the sources used. Here, I will comment on one citation only. In the list of quotations cited above, the quotation for war-hungry stands out because the author of the text clearly intends to dissociate himself from the stereotype of the ‘war-hungry Chinese’ by describing it as a ‘Western caricature’. The quotation is taken from Edgar Snow, a writer known for his sympathetic accounts of communist China, and refers to an incident in which the author met two ‘smartly dressed young army officers’ each carrying a baby. The paragraph from which the phrase cited is taken reads as follows: In South China later I noticed several other baby-toting officers on planes and trains. Warriors seen in this homely role, so different from the Western caricature of the mad-dog, war-hungry Chinese – even as our military differ from the Chinese caricature of them – gave a sudden poignant sense of the

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profound pathos of man in uniform everywhere today, obsessed by the illusory pursuit of security for his loved ones through the perfection of the means of finally destroying himself and all he most cherishes. (Snow, 1963: 456; emphasis added) It could well be asked whether the OED2’s selection of the italicised text does justice to Snow’s purpose in using the word war-hungry. In this case at least, the dictionary seems to have preferred the ‘Western caricature’ to the ‘reality’ that Snow was seeking to describe. The way in which Snow’s text has been used to illustrate the word war-hungry touches upon a fundamental problem in the use of quotations in the OED2. The quotations discussed here are not simply decontextualised statements about China and Chinese people. They are contextualised within the dictionary, where they have the special function of assisting in the definition of words. War-hungry, for example, could be defined without reference to its typical contexts of use but such a definition would say little about how the word functions in the construction of Western versions of the world. One of the main purposes of quotations is to enrich definitions by providing authentic instances of these contexts of use. War-hungry is not, in fact, defined in the OED2, so that the reader is left to assume that its meaning is self-explanatory or can be inferred from our knowledge of the stereotypical characteristics of ‘the Chinese’. In order to clarify meanings and contexts of use, a stereotype of China seems to be more useful than an account of its complex realities. The same sentence from Snow’s book might also have been used to illustrate the word homely as an attribute of ‘the Chinese’. The fact that Snow’s more positive evaluations of China tend not to be used as citation material for the OED2 suggests that one of the functions of China in the dictionary may well be to serve as a point of reference for the illustration of negative attributes of the kind illustrated here.

What OED2 quotations say about China I have so far discussed references to China in OED2 quotations that have some defining or illustrative function in relation to the words they support. In many quotations, however, the reference to China is incidental and largely irrelevant to the word under which it is entered. These quotations nevertheless represent the corpus of texts on which the dictionary is based and are interesting simply for what they say about China. Three such examples are found under the entries for so, supply and survey: so … 1896 G. BOOTHBY Dr. Nikolai, ‘I know China as well as any living Englishman.’ ‘Quite so.’ supply … 1878 JEVONS Prim. Pol. Econ. 30 China supplies us with vast quantities of tea.

194 China in the OED: quotations survey … 1749 JOHNSON Van. Human Wishes 2 Let observation with extensive view, Survey mankind from China to Peru. In these three quotations, the reference to China adds little to the reader’s understanding of the cited word, but the quotations are of interest because each illustrates an aspect of the perspective on the world that underpins the OED’s treatment of China. The quotation under so refers to the Englishman’s ‘knowledge of China’, which fundamentally conditions the dictionary’s treatment of China and Chinese people. The quotation under supply seems to express an aspect of that knowledge: China as a supplier of certain goods to Western culture. The quotation under survey encapsulates much of the spirit of the OED project itself: a ‘survey of mankind from China to Peru’. We have no way of knowing why these particular quotations were selected, but it may be that quotations are selected, whether deliberately or accidentally, that convey a picture of the language and the world that will in some sense ring ‘true’ for the reader as an inhabitant of the cultural centre of the dictionary. The ‘truth’ produced within these quotations involves China as the object of English knowledge, China as a supplier for English culture and China as a marker of the extremities of the world. These are, moreover, not only truths about China but also truths about the world articulated on the axis of relationships between China and the West. Quotations containing references to China can be roughly classified, on the basis of their content, as being either positive, negative or neutral in their evaluations of China or Chinese people. For the purposes of this study, quotations are classified as ‘positive’ if they contain explicit praise or approval of China, Chinese people or a Chinese thing or concept, or if they associate China with an action or quality that is defined positively by the dictionary itself. They are classified as negative if they contain explicit condemnation or disapproval, or if they associate China with an action or quality defined as negative. Quotations are also classified as negative if they show Chinese people to be agents of war, crime, drug abuse, prostitution, and so on. They are classified as positive where Chinese people are represented as agents of peace or legality, or as victims of war or crime. Using these criteria, the majority of the 2,804 quotations referring to China can be identified as ‘neutral’, but a significant minority of 388 quotations can be identified as being strongly evaluative in some respect. Of these 388 evaluative quotations, 353 can be identified as negative and only 35 as positive. The ratio of negative to positive evaluations is approximately 10 to 1. Whether a quotation is identified as negative, positive or neutral is clearly a matter of judgement. Space does not permit a justification for the judgement made in each case, but some examples of positive and negative evaluations can be given. Among the quotations judged positive are, for example, those under A1, chow-chow, co-operative and pestilent: A1 … 1861 COL. G. WOLSELEY in Reynolds’ Newsp. Nov. 24 The Chinese police are certainly A 1 at such work.

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chow-chow … 1869 N. and Q. 6 Mar. 230 I got an invitation to a first-rate Chow-chow or Chinese dinner. co-operative … 1948 Oxf. Jun. Encycl. I. 112/1 Another organization which is doing valuable work in Chinese rural life is the Chinese Industrial Co-operatives.… Their job is to revive the old village handicrafts … and to set up rural industries. pestilent … 1880 Our Nat. Responsibility for Opium Trade 14 The English merchant empoisons China with pestilent opium. These examples illustrate positive evaluations of Chinese work practices (A1, cooperative) and of Chinese food (chow-chow) and an example of China being represented as the victim of Western aggression (pestilent). Quotations judged negative in relation to China are far more numerous, and the examples given below, which largely speak for themselves, represent less than 10 per cent of the total: adventure … 1958 Listener 30 Oct. 682/2 (citing Moscow radio) The intensification of the policy of adventure and provocation of People’s China, and the drawing up of plans for a new adventure in the Taiwan Straits area. Cantonese … 1861 Chambers’ Encycl. II. 575/2 The Cantonese are notorious for their turbulence and hatred of foreigners. Chinatown … 1889 Chambers’ Jrnl. 19 Jan. 39/2 For filth and wretchedness you must go to Chinatown (San Francisco) by night. commune … 1958 Listener 25 Dec. 1066/2 Mr. Dulles … had alleged that the communes (in China) represented a ‘backward system of mass slavery’. euphemous … 1859 Times 15 Mar. 9/3 The name of this noisy bustling quarrelsome discontented and insalubrious little island (Hong Kong) may … be used as a euphemous synonym for a place not mentionable to ears polite. foreign devil … 1969 V. G. KIERNAN Lords of Human Kind v. 167 Against these new barbarians China was building a new Great Wall, of hatred. Wherever they went they were saluted with cries of ‘foreign devil’. garbage … 1776 ADAM SMITH W. N. i. viii. (1869) I. 75 They (the Chinese) are eager to fish up the nastiest garbage thrown overboard. gourmand … 1845 DARWIN Voy. Nat. xx. 464 The slimy disgusting Holuthurizae … which the Chinese gourmands are so fond of.

196 China in the OED: quotations healthful … 1884 Manch. Exam. 14 Nov. 5/7 The Chinese will continue to be a clog upon the healthful progress of the world. improgressive … 1817 – Biog. Lit. (1870) 222 The immense empire of China improgressive for thirty centuries. incivilization … 1861 GRESLEY Sophron and N. 145 We have spoken, in a former paper, of the incivilization of China. institution … 1821 SHELLEY Hellas Pref., But for Greece … we … might have arrived at such a stagnant and miserable state of social institution as China and Japan possess. Japanese … 1839 Penny Cycl. XIII. 93/2 All travellers who have been acquainted with both nations prefer the Japanese to the Chinese. laundry v.… 1892 Daily News 15 Sept. 5/5 The great Chinese national industry is laundrying. mainland … 1975 Times 3 Mar. 14/5 Mainland China is about to fight back against … the degenerate Hong Kong cult of violence, Kung fu. mariage de convenance … 1955 Bull. Atomic Sci. Mar. 97/3 History suggests that the evil partnership between Communist China and the Soviet Union may yet develop the brittle quality of a mariage de convenance. monopolization … 1878 N. Amer. Rev. CXXVI. 524 The swarm of Chinese … and their monopolization of many branches of industry. new-born … 1764 BURN Poor Laws 228 A Chinese, according to their laws, may cast his new born child into the river. opium smoker … 1860 H. GREELEY Overland Journey 259 (The Chinaman) is … an *opium-smoker. poverty-stricken … 1865 TYLOR Early Hist. Man. v. 101 A language so poverty-stricken as the Chinese. quidsworth … 1977 F. BRANSTON Up and Coming Man v. 51 I went to a Chinese takeaway and bought a couple of quidsworth of indigestion. rely … 1748 Anson’s Voy. iii. x. 404 None of the Chinese … employed as Linguists, could be relied on.

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riddance … 1977 H. FAST Immigrants ii. 110 A dead Chinese was good riddance to bad rubbish. salt … 1879 M. ARNOLD Mixed Ess., Democracy 19 A people without the salt of these qualities would arrive at the pettiness of China. slope … 1978 R. THOMAS Chinaman’s Chance iii. 35 All the Chinaman’s gotta do is get into Saigon.… Once he’s in nobody’s gonna notice him, because all those slopes look alike. smelliness … 1892 Critic Mar. 139 The chronic smelliness of undrained China. Tong war … 1968 New York City (Michelin Tire Corp.) 83 Chinatown was then an area rife with debauchery and vice, the scene of ‘tong wars’ fought by rival ‘tongs’ to win control over opium dens, gambling haunts and houses of ill fame. Triad … 1976 Spectator 14 Feb. 3/2 Chinese Triad gangs made their mark in London by kicking to death a man in a Soho gambling club. wanton … 1601 I. R . World or Kingd. and Commw. 169 The inhabitants (of China) partly by their effeminate and wanton kinde of life, partly by their forme of gouernment, … haue little valour or manhood left them. yum-yum … 1960 S. HARVESTER Chinese Hammer xxv. 202 Yum-yum tarts from Hong Kong or ex-temple dancers from Java. Taken out of context, this list of quotations could well be taken as a catalogue of ways to insult a nation and its people by direct criticism and denigration, by belittlement of its cultural possessions and values, by imputations of hatred and aggression towards outsiders, by association with crime and prostitution, and by direct or reported racist comment. The quotations range across four centuries and come from sources as central to the development of the English language and its culture as Shelley, Adam Smith, Charles Darwin and Matthew Arnold, as well as from newspapers as unimpeachable as The Times of London. Among the quotations cited above, the earliest dates from 1601 (wanton) and the most recent from 1978 (slope). A brief review suggests that, although the style in which China is assessed has changed considerably from the directness of the earlier quotations to the indirectness of the more recent quotations, negative evaluations are not especially characteristic of any particular historical period. The kind of evaluation found under the entry for wanton (‘the inhabitants [of China] partly by their effeminate and wanton kinde of life, partly by their forme of gouernment, … haue little valour or manhood left them’) has a directness that is no longer to be found in modern writing on China. However, it seems entirely

198 China in the OED: quotations acceptable in the late twentieth century to write that all Chinese ‘look alike’ (slope), that ‘a dead Chinese was good riddance to bad rubbish’ (riddance), that Chinese food gives foreigners indigestion (quidsworth), and that kung fu is a ‘degenerate … cult of violence’ (mainland). Such notions are more acceptable in writing, it seems, when they are reported as words from the mouths of others. Yet when these words are placed in the context of a dictionary, they are taken out of the context of the author’s evaluation. It seems unlikely, for example, that Howard Fast was reporting his own point of view when he wrote that ‘a dead Chinese was good riddance to bad rubbish’, but in the recontextualised version of his words that appears in support of the phrase ‘good riddance to bad rubbish’ the author’s intention is far from clear.

OED2 quotations and the Chinese language Among the quotations containing negative evaluations of China cited above, one refers to the Chinese language: poverty-stricken … 1865 TYLOR Early Hist. Man. v. 101 A language so poverty-stricken as the Chinese. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the evaluation of Chinese as a language that was inferior to its European counterparts, by linguists and nonlinguists alike, was not uncommon, and the OED2 contains at least two other quotations containing evaluations of a similar kind, under fuse and inartificial.4 fuse … 1869 FARRAR Fam. Speech iv. (1873) 121 A Chinese grammar cannot … be fused into the moulds of our Aryan logic. inartificial … 1748 Anson’s Voy. iii. x. 412 The Chinese … adhere to the rude and inartificial method of representing words by arbitrary marks. These evaluations of the Chinese language and script illustrate two basic elements in the Western ‘knowledge of China’ that have yet to be entirely eradicated by the Saussurean orthodoxy of the equality of languages and language varieties. First, there is the belief that Chinese grammar is insufficiently complex to express the logic of Western thought. Second, is the belief that the Chinese script is essentially a pictorial system for representing concepts and words that is less sophisticated than the more abstract Western alphabets. In the nineteenth century, such beliefs did not simply reflect a ‘popular’ view of the Chinese language, they were also supported by linguistic thought. On the comparative structure of languages, for example, Humboldt wrote: We have everywhere set out at first from the structure of languages alone, and in forming a judgement about it have also confined ourselves solely to this. Now that this structure is better in one than another, is more excellent in

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Sanscrit than in Chinese, and in Greek than in Arabic, could hardly be disputed by any impartial scholar. However we might try to weigh off their respective virtues, we should always have to admit that one of these languages is animated by a more fruitful principle of mental development than the other. But now we should have inevitably misconstrued all the mutual relations of mind and language, if we were unwilling to extend the various consequences thereof to the reverse action of these languages, and to the intellectuality of the peoples who created them (so far as this lies within human capacity at all). (Humboldt, 1836/1988: 217; italics in original) The Chinese language was frequently represented as a mirror of Chinese thought and civilisation and evaluations of it occupied a pivotal position in Western knowledge of China. In this context, the choice of the Chinese language as an object with which to illustrate the concept poverty-stricken may not have been a random one. The quotations under poverty-stricken, inartificial and fuse cited above were not included in the OED to illustrate linguistic concepts, however. In conclusion to this chapter, I will therefore examine a number of quotations which make reference to China for the purpose of illustrating words that are defined in relation to the Chinese system of writing. An examination of these quotations may help to tie together some of the threads of the discussion in this chapter by exploring the complexity of relationships between quotations and definitions in the OED2. One reason for examining the OED2’s treatment of words from the field of language and linguistics is that dictionaries can be said to have a special responsibility in this field. This is illustrated by the entry for grammarless: grammarless … Having no grammar. 1. a. Of a language: Destitute of a system of grammatical forms, or of features susceptible of grammatical treatment. b. Of persons, speech, compositions: Showing ignorance of grammar. 1823 Blackw. Mag. XIV. 294 Miserable, bald, and even grammarless English is employed. 1868 FARRAR Jrnl. Philology No. 2. 20 Chinese has been for thousands of years monosyllabic and grammarless. 1891 Harper’s Mag. July 220/1 Ours is really a grammarless language. 1891 Daily News 14 Feb. 5/1 Futile romances, tasteless, senseless, grammarless. At one level, this entry simply informs the reader of the ways in which the word grammarless has been used and illustrates these uses with citations in context. At

200 China in the OED: quotations another level, the combination of definitions and quotations is problematic because it conflicts with the current state of our linguistic knowledge, which would argue that the concept of a ‘grammarless language’ lacks any real linguistic credibility. In itself, this does not constitute an objection to the entry, since the word grammarless has actually been used in the senses given. However, the second quotation is especially problematic as an authoritative statement from a noted philologist, writing in a leading philological journal of the time, that ‘grammarless’ languages do exist and that Chinese is one of them.5 The interaction between quotation and definition is of particular importance here, because without Farrar’s quotation, the reader would be left to interpret the phrase ‘destitute of a system of grammatical forms, or of features susceptible of grammatical treatment’ figuratively, or as a loose way of talking about language or style. The inclusion of Farrar’s authoritative quotation transforms ‘grammarlessness’ into an encyclopedic fact about the comparative structure of languages. Moreover, this ‘fact’ also reflects upon the more figurative uses of the word. If ‘grammarless’ languages exist, and Chinese provides the evidence that they do, then when we refer to ‘grammarless English’, we are more or less referring to a way of speaking or writing English that is ‘like Chinese’. Aside from grammarless, the OED2 has a number of entries for linguistic terms that are supported by quotations referring to the Chinese language. These include quotations under analysed, aptotic, determinative, differencing, differentiator, empty word, full word, homonym, homophone, humilific, isolating, monosyllabic, noninflectional, nonphonetic, numerative, phonemic, phonetic, pitch scheme, positional language, radical, root language, sentence word, signific, synonym-compound, tautologism, tone and transliteration. Here I want to focus on a group of the OED2 entries concerned with naming the modern Chinese script as a type of writing system: alphabet, character, hieroglyphic, ideograph, ideographic, lexigraphy, logographic, pasigraphy, picturewriting, word-writing. Each of these words is accompanied by one or more OED2 quotations containing a reference to Chinese. These quotations are listed below together with the relevant sections of the definitions of the words cited alphabet … The set of letters used in writing the Greek language; extended to those used by the Romans; and thence to any set of characters representing the simple sounds used in a language or in speech generally. … 1857 MAX MÜLLER Chips (1880) I. x. 261 The Chinese alphabet was never intended to represent the sound of words. character … A graphic symbol standing for a sound, syllable, or notion, used in writing or in printing; one of the simple elements of a written language; e.g. a letter of the alphabet. … 1837 Penny Cycl. vii. 32 The Chinese characters or written words are symbols of ideas.

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hieroglyphic … The characters or mode of writing used by the ancient Egyptians (or by transference, other peoples), consisting of figures of objects directly or figuratively representing words (picture-writing), or, in certain circumstances, syllables or letters. … 1638 SIR T. HERBERT Trav. (ed. 2) 338 They [Chinese] use not letters but Characters, or Hyerogliphicks, of which they have above 40000. ideograph … A character or figure symbolizing the idea of a thing, without expressing the name of it, as the Chinese characters and most Egyptian hieroglyphics. … 1951 H. KENNER Poetry E. Pound 89 The Chinese ideograph, like the metaphor, deals in exceedingly condensed juxtapositions … 1972 Computers and Humanities VI. 259 There is a basic corpus of 2,444 morphemes, each corresponding to a single Chinese logograph (ideograph) ideographic … Of the nature of an ideograph; symbolizing an idea directly, as distinguished from the word or words by which it is expressed; relating to or composed of ideographs. Of ideographs: representing ideas pictorially or figuratively. … 1869 FARRAR Fam. Speech iv. (1873) 121 Chinese has only some 450 sounds, and yet has upwards of 40,000 ideographic signs … 1964 M. A. K. HALLIDAY et al. Linguistic Sciences 49 The Chinese script is not ideographic: the symbols do not represent ideas, they represent formal items of the language … 1972 Computers and Humanities VI. 260 Because of an ideographic writing system extending back for 3,500+ years and still shared by all the Chinese languages, cognates can be visually identified. lexigraphy … A system of writing in which each character represents a word). … 1836 DU PONCEAU Chinese Syst. Writing (1838) 36 The Chinese system of writing is improperly called ideographic; it is a syllabic and lexigraphic alphabet … It is lexigraphic because every syllable is a significant word … Ibid. 32 Those nations … who use the Chinese characters lexigraphically. logographic … Consisting of characters or signs, each of which singly represents a complete word.

202 China in the OED: quotations … 1828 DU PONCEAU Chinese Syst. Writing (1838) 110, I would not call the Chinese characters a syllabic, but a logographic system of writing … Ibid. 114 It cannot be written with the Chinese character logographically. pasigraphy … A name given to a system of writing proposed for universal use, with characters representing ideas instead of words, so as to be (like the ordinary numerals 1, 2, 3, etc.) intelligible to persons of all languages. Applied originally to a system proposed in 1796; subsequently to others having a similar object. … 1839 Proc. Amer. Philol. Soc. I. 121 The Chinese alphabet forms a sort of pasigraphic system. picture-writing … The method of recording events or expressing ideas by pictures or drawings which literally or figuratively represent the things and actions; concr. a writing or inscription consisting of pictorial symbols. Such were the picture-writing of the Mexicans and the hieroglyphs of the Egyptians in their earliest form. … 1894 H. DRUMMOND Ascent Man 232 Chinese writing is picture-writing, with the pictures degenerated into dashes word-writing … Bloomfield’s term for ideographic writing. … 1942 (L. Bloomfield) in C. HOCKETT Bloomfield Anthol. (1970) 385 In word writing each word is represented by a conventional sign … Chinese writing is the most perfect system of this kind. In these quotations the Chinese writing system is described variously as an alphabet, as picture-writing and word-writing and as an ideographic, lexigraphic, logographic, pasigraphic or syllabic system. The units of the Chinese writing system are described as hieroglyphics, ideographs and logographs. In several cases, however, it is clear that the authors of the quotations did not intend to propose technical terms for the Chinese writing system. Max Müller, for example, in referring to the ‘Chinese alphabet’, clearly could not have meant the word in the sense that the OED2 defines it. Indeed, given that he uses the word in a sense that is contradictory to its OED2 definition, it is difficult to see what purpose the quotation serves. Similarly, the quotation under pasigraphy suggests that Chinese writing is ‘a sort of pasigraphic system’, whereas the definition suggests that it is not a pasigraphic system at all because it is in no sense ‘universal’. Of the definitions of the 10 words cited above, only the definition of ideograph contains a reference to China. This definition suggests that a Chinese character is a ‘character or figure symbolizing the idea of a thing’. Confusion arises, however, when definitions and quotations are cross-referenced. Thus, under ideograph, we find the phrase ‘as the Chinese characters and most Egyptian

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hieroglyphics’ but under hieroglyphic, Egyptian hieroglyphics are described as ‘figures of objects directly or figuratively representing words (picture-writing)’. Similarly, under ideographic we find ‘representing ideas pictorially or figuratively’. There is, therefore, some confusion as to whether ideographs are symbols or pictures. Since Egyptian hieroglyphics are again mentioned as examples under picture-writing, Drummond’s assertion in the supporting quotation that ‘Chinese writing is picture-writing’ is given some substance. A second confusion arises between definitions and quotations. Chinese characters are given as an example under the definition of ideograph but not under the definitions of lexigraphy or logographic. However, the dictionary also has quotations from two authoritative sources which suggest that lexigraphic or logographic are the more accurate terms: Du Ponceau’s claim that ‘the Chinese system of writing is improperly called ideographic; it is a syllabic and lexigraphic alphabet’ and Halliday’s claim that ‘the Chinese script is not ideographic: the symbols do not represent ideas, they represent formal items of the language’. In the distinction between logographic and ideographic lies a difference not only over what the Chinese system of characters should be called, but also over how it should be conceptualised. Halliday’s view appears to hold sway in modern linguistic thinking and is also repeated by Crystal: Logographic writing systems are those where the graphemes represent words. The best-known cases are Chinese and its derivative script, Japanese kanji … [B]ecause Chinese writing derives from an ideographic script, with several pictographic elements, the characters are commonly referred to as ideographs. However, this term is not really appropriate as the characters refer to linguistic units, and not directly to concepts or things. (Crystal, 1987: 200) Terminological confusion still exists, however, and is illustrated by the quotation from Computers and the Humanities under ideograph, which implies that ideograph and logograph are synonyms. The distinction between ideograph and logograph is an important one, however, because it touches upon the ‘status’ of Chinese as a language. If Chinese characters were really ‘ideographic’ rather than ‘logographic’, the Chinese writing system would be less flexible than it actually is. There would indeed be some justification for the assertion that the Chinese script is in some sense ‘inferior’ to Western alphabetic systems.6 The fact that OED2 entries for words that have been applied to the Chinese system of writing fail to clarify which is the most appropriate term in terms of current linguistic thinking is indicative of a fundamental problem in the relationship between quotations and definitions in the dictionary. First, it is not the main function of the dictionary to explain exactly what kind of writing system the Chinese system is. Questions of this kind are more properly left to specialist linguistic works and encyclopedias. The job of the dictionary is to define the relevant words accurately, a job which in this case the OED2 carries out reasonably well. Yet in quoting linguistic authorities in ways that often

204 China in the OED: quotations contradict its own definitions, the dictionary ultimately leaves the reader confused about the status of the Chinese writing system. At the same time, the defining force of the quotations is diminished by this confusion. Ultimately, however, it seems not to matter particularly what OED2 quotations say about China and the Chinese language, since they exist in the dictionary only to illustrate and serve as a counterpoint to the centralised view of language conveyed through definitions.

Conclusion In this chapter, I have reviewed a number of aspects of the treatment of China in OED2 quotations. I have emphasised two broad issues: the role of quotations in associating definitions of words with China and their role in constructing representations of China and Chinese people independently of their relationship to the definitions they support. The evidence suggests that quotations referring to China in the OED2 contribute towards the representation of China as a peripheral object of Western knowledge. In order to make sense of the role of China in OED2 quotations, it may help to begin from an understanding of illustrative text as peripheral to definitional text in the dictionary. The process of definition on the basis of quotations is a process of centralisation, in which peripheral contextual information is excluded to produce a definition that corresponds to the central meaning of the word. In the OED, the presentation of quotations leaves this process open to view and allows the reader to explore the ways in which a definition is formed. There are far more references to China in quotations than in definitions. In this sense, China is more prominent at the periphery of the dictionary than it is at the centre. And we also see that in many cases, information concerning the ‘Chineseness’ of words is lost in the formulation of words. We have also observed that there is a tendency for references to China in illustrative text to be more openly, and often negatively, evaluative of China than references in definitions. In one sense, the dictionary is absolved of responsibility for the content of these quotations, because they are merely illustrative. But OED quotations also serve to define and, even in their purely illustrative function, they also serve to suggest contexts in which these words are properly used. In dictionaries where illustrative text is intended to show the ways in which words are used in modern contexts, lexicographers have begun to pay attention to the avoidance of gender and ethnic stereotypes. In the OED, quotations are also a matter of historical record. It is through the selection and ordering of quotations, however, that the historical record of the language in use is constructed. Ultimately the record constructed in the OED shows the English language to be a language in which China exists in order to be represented, evaluated and judged. For the most part, Chinese contributions to and perspectives on the English language are excluded both in the sources and content of definitions and in their manipulation in the making of definitions.

11 Conclusion

My objective in this book has been both to demonstrate that the English dictionary is a fundamentally ethnocentric work and to locate the sources of this ethnocentrism in the structures of the dictionary itself. Ethnocentrism in the dictionary is in part a matter of the way in which lexicographers conceptualise the idea of ‘a language’. The OED2’s definition of the word language, for example, reveals much about the ways in which it goes about its task of representing the English language to its users: language … the whole body of words and of methods of combinations of words, used by a nation, people or race. Although the NODE, the latest major dictionary in the Oxford series, replaces the words ‘nation, people or race’ with ‘community or country’, the definition remains essentially the same: language … the system of communication used by a particular community or country. This form of the definition is more or less common to modern British dictionaries and US dictionaries tend to follow the norm. The RHUD will serve as an example: language … a body of words and the systems for their use common to a people who are of the same community or nation, the same geographical area, or the same cultural tradition. The feature that all of these definitions have in common is the idea that ‘a language’ is a thing that belongs to someone, whether it be a people, a nation, a race or a community. The first point to be made about such a definition is that it seems peculiarly inappropriate to the definition of English as an international language. Unless we are thinking of the human race or the global community, it is difficult to imagine which race or community English as an international language belongs to. Similarly, unless we have ‘the world’ in mind, it is difficult to imagine which

206 Conclusion geographical area has ownership over it. It is possible of course to argue that the English language belongs separately to each of the communities or regions in which it is used, but this would be, in effect, no more than another way of saying that it belongs to nobody at all. Clearly, the concept of English as an international language calls for a definition of language that acknowledges that a language may free itself from the control or ownership of any particular community or region. Unfortunately, modern English dictionaries, however strong their claims to internationalism, generally fail to provide a definition of this kind. The second point worth noting is that the definitions of language found in most modern dictionaries have a long history. Bailey’s Dictionarium Britannicum of 1730 defined a language as ‘a set of words upon which a particular Nation or People are agreed, to make use of to express their thoughts’, while Webster’s American Dictionary of the English Language of 1828 defined it as ‘the speech or expression of ideas peculiar to a particular nation’. Webster also added an encyclopedic note to inform the reader that ‘man had originally one and the same language, but the tribes or families of men, since their dispersion have distinct languages’. The survival of the definition into the modern day suggests that dictionaries tend to be conservative and slow to change. As lexicographers build upon each other’s achievements, they also tend to reproduce and preserve outdated definitions of words. But it also suggests the survival of a particular conception of the relationship between language and nation that is slow to disappear. The assumption that a language must be grounded in a particular community is essentially an extension of the idea, first developed in relation to English in the sixteenth century, that modern languages belong to those nations who claim them as their national property. As the MacqD shows, it is not, in fact, difficult to define a language without making this assumption: language … any set or system of such [arbitrary auditory] symbols as are used in a more or less uniform fashion by a number of people, who are thus enabled to communicate intelligibly with each other. According to this definition, a language does not necessarily belong to any group. It is simply a set of linguistic forms that allows those who use them to communicate with each other. The definition is sound in terms of our current knowledge of linguistics, yet it is also a definition that runs counter to the lexicographical norm.

The nature of ethnocentrism in the dictionary In earlier chapters, we have seen numerous examples of the ways in which the English dictionary treats English as an international language as if it were constructed around an Anglo-American centre. British dictionaries locate the centre of the language in Britain, while US dictionaries, which have been discussed in far less detail in this book, locate the centre of the language in their own country. Although the representation of regional varieties of British English has also received little mention, we might also note that British dictionaries in fact

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locate the centre of the language in the usage of a particular region and class. As Algeo (1995: 208) points out of the OED, the unacknowledged principle is ‘to equate the usage of southeastern England with English proper, so the standard language of establishment Britain is taken as the standard for all English speakers’. We might add to this that both British and US dictionaries tend to privilege each other’s standard varieties over those of other regions in the world. For Algeo, national bias in dictionaries is to be expected ‘since the dictionaries of each nation are designed to serve the interests of that nation’, but it is also ‘increasingly anomalous in a world in which the use of English by nonnative speakers challenges that by native speakers in extent and importance and in which the cultural walls between the the United Kingdom and the United States are collapsing in communication, transportation, entertainment, commerce and other spheres of human society’ (1995: 205). Algeo is indeed critical of national bias in dictionaries, but his concerns are mainly with the treatment of US English in British dictionaries and vice versa. The collapse of cultural and lexicographical walls may well to lead to the consolidation of a single AngloAmerican centre for the language. But as long as the vast majority of English dictionaries continue to be produced by or under the aegis of British and US publishers, it is likely that native and non-native speakers elsewhere in the world will remain on the periphery. Inequalities of treatment for regional varieties of English in the dictionary are evident in the selection of words, their labelling and definition, and in the selection and construction of illustrative examples. They are also evident in the structure of English lexicography as an international industry in which the representation of the language in general remains the preserve of the British and US dictionary. But these inequalities are not the essence of ethnocentrism in the dictionary, which lies rather in the structural assumption that the lexicographical treatment of English as an international language corresponds to properties that are natural to the language itself. In a diachronic sense, ethnocentrism consists in the assumption that the history of the language should seek to explain the dominant linguistic categories of the present. In a synchronic sense, it consists in the assumption that the language of others is to be explained in terms of one’s own. For the lexicographer, the history of the language follows a direct line from the language of Anglo-Saxon times to the present-day Anglo-American standards. The regional dimensions of the language are drawn in terms of direct lines to these central standard forms. For the lexicographer, these assumptions are more or less natural because the established structures of the dictionary dictate that the language can only be represented in this way. It is equally natural to assume that it is the role of the linguistic centre to represent the periphery and not the reverse, because the international structure of English lexicography dictates that this will necessarily be the case. The historical role of the dictionary in creating and perpetuating these assumptions is seldom questioned, because it is the role of the dictionarymaker in the age of scientific objectivity simply to represent the language ‘as it is’ according to the tried and tested principles of good lexicography. Once the

208 Conclusion assumption is made that the centre of the language lies in the usage of a particular community located in a particular region of the world, these principles work almost automatically to produce ethnocentric representations of the language that appear to correspond to the natural structure of the language itself. The OED’s treatment of China illustrates the point. This treatment is the result of innumerable lexicographical decisions, which collectively lead towards a particular representation of the role of China and the Chinese people as an object of Western knowledge inscribed within the language. This representation, it could be argued, is legitimate because there is no Chinese variety of English. Although the words associated with China appear in the dictionary because Chinese people have used English, they appear there only as words spoken to and interpreted by the representatives of the centre. Filtered through the perspectives of the centre, the Chinese contribution to the language is objectified, evaluated and judged, not as a contribution to the language, but as a set of images of China and the Chinese. The assumption that Chinese English is not a variety of English becomes the principle according to which the structures of the dictionary are applied to Chinese words. And it is through the regular application of these structures that this assumption becomes an unquestioned fact about the language. China lies in many respects on the extreme periphery of the English language and the world as it is viewed from the perspective of the Anglo-American linguistic centre. The Chinese contribution to the language is consequently objectified to an extreme degree. But the Australian, Welsh, Nigerian, Irish, New Zealand, Singaporean, South African, Indian, Canadian, Malaysian and Scottish contributions to the language each receive their own particular form of treatment along with those of other regions of the world. The forms of treatment differ according to assumptions of the cultural proximity of each region to the centre. The contributions of some, such as Australia and Canada, are assigned variety labels (Aus. E., Can. E., etc.). When their labelled words are added to the core vocabulary of the dictionary, they become varieties of English as an international language. Others receive much the same treatment as China. Some contributions, such as that of Singapore, although they have been recognised by many linguists as varieties of English, scarcely appear in the dictionary at all (there are only six references to Singapore in definitions in the OED2). The result is the construction of a hierarchy of varieties, quasi-varieties and non-varieties of English ordered in terms of their proximity to the cultural and linguistic centres of the language. Again, once an assumption is made about the status of a region’s contribution to the English language, the structures of the dictionary work inexorably to confirm that assumption as a fact about the language and its relations to the world. None of this is particularly surprising if we bear in mind that the structures of the English dictionary evolved first in the context of the construction of English as a national language, and later in the context of the construction of English as a language of empire. What is surprising is the extent to which the ethnocentrism inherent within these structures has been submerged beneath the assumption that they serve principally as mechanisms for the efficient and

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objective description of words and their meanings. The structures of the dictionary are almost ideally suited to the imposition of order on the heterogeneity of language and to the representation of an international language as an empire of signs. They are ideally suited, above all, to the representation of a language as one that belongs to one and only one of its communities.

The future of the English dictionary in the world If English dictionaries were simply objective descriptions of the details of the language as it is, it would not be difficult to imagine a natural evolution towards ever more representative accounts of the heterogeneity of English as an international language. We might also imagine that the dictionary would naturally evolve towards a more egalitarian treatment of the contributions of various regions to the language in line with changing attitudes towards the role of the English language in the world. Current trends suggest, however, that such a development is less likely than it may seem. To be sure, there have been a number of positive developments and innovations, but each is limited by the overall structure within which it operates. More and more dictionaries of regionalisms are being produced, but these perhaps only serve to reinforce assumptions about the supplementary character of the varieties they describe. The CanOD is perhaps the best regionally adapted dictionary yet to be produced, but it remains a dictionary produced by a British dictionary-maker for an overseas market. The international dimensions of the language are clearly becoming more visible in dictionaries such as the NODE and the EWED, but this increased visibility is compromised by its representation within the structures of lexicographical ethnocentrism. The MacqD represents an important break from the norm of the dictionary of regionalisms and the regionally adapted dictionary, but it seems unlikely that the model will be repeated in other parts of the world for some time to come. Pessimistic as this view may seem, it is worth noting that the centre–periphery model of the language is not the only model available to lexicographers. Leitner (1992: 180), for example, has described English as a ‘pluricentric language’ located between ‘centrifugal (nativizing) and centripetal (unifying) forces whose “pull” explains the dynamic situation of today’s English’. McArthur (1987) has represented English as an international language diagrammatically in the form of a wheel. At the centre of the wheel stands ‘world standard English’ and around it the various regional standards and popular forms. The essence of the diagram is that no particular regional form stands in a privileged position over any other. The problem for those concerned with ethnocentrism in the dictionary is to understand how such models might take on a lexicographical form. How can dictionaries begin to represent English as an international language as it actually is – heterogeneous, dynamic and infinitely variable in its regional, social and temporal dimensions? In the context of English as an international language, we might begin by asking a series of fundamental questions. Why must the dictionary be con-

210 Conclusion structed around a ‘core vocabulary’? Why must some words be labelled and defined by words that belong to the core? Why must each sense of a word have only one definition? Indeed, why must the senses of words be defined at all? Is it possible that the dictionary could actually include any or all the words of the language without regard to assumptions about their status? Is it possible that words could be listed and defined without the use of any descriptive labels? Is it possible that words could be defined from the perspectives of those who use them and, where competing definitions exist, they would simply be placed side by side without comment? Is it even possible that the dictionary could be written by its users, not by authorities who define words for them? The advent of the electronic information age holds out a number of interesting possibilities for the dictionary and its users. Notably, it removes the restriction of physical size that serves as a justification for the selection of words and economy of definition. Many electronic dictionaries (including the OED2) now function as lexical databases that allow the user to search multiple fields. The ability to search for words in labels, definitions and examples allows the user to circumvent the structures imposed on the language by the printed dictionary (and it must be acknowledged that the critical examination of the OED2 in this book was made possible by the availability of the dictionary in its electronic form). The Internet also offers the opportunity of interaction between the dictionary and its users. The web-based Alternative Dictionaries (AD) are an example of a set of dictionaries in which all the entries (consisting of words ‘not commonly found in printed dictionaries’) are contributed by their readers. The problem from the lexicographer’s point of view is, of course, that dictionaries such as the AD may not be recognisable as dictionaries at all. Certainly, they lack the authority and objectivity imposed by the structure of the conventional dictionary, but they are nevertheless an accurate depiction of the language ‘as it is’ for their contributors. Eventually, all must hope that the English dictionary will become a work in which all of its users, regardless of nationality, ethnicity, gender or social class, are able to see a reflection of their language and cultures. Centre–periphery metaphors in the dictionary serve well as a means of reducing the inherent variability of language to order, but they do so at the expense of many of the dictionary’s users, who are forced to view themselves through the eyes of alien linguistic and cultural authorities. If ethnocentrism is to disappear from the English dictionary, the idea of the dictionary as an authoritative and highly structured representation of the language may also have to disappear. For many, this may mean the end of the dictionary as we currently know it. The essential problem of the modern English dictionary is, however, that ethnocentrism survives precisely because it is so difficult for us to imagine the dictionary as anything other than it already is. If the authority of the dictionary of English as an international language is based upon its ethnocentrism, is it not time to see the deconstruction of authority in matters of language and culture as an opportunity of the post-imperial age?

Notes

Introduction 1 From a speech to the Royal Society of St George, reported in the Independent, 23 April 1998, and cited in Greenbaum (1990: 15). 1 Dictionaries and theories of language 1 See also Pêcheux (1982: 111; italics in original): ‘The meaning of a word, expression, proposition, etc., does not exist “in itself ’’ (i.e. in its transparent relation to the literal character of the signifier), but is determined by the ideological positions brought into play in the socio-historical process in which words, expressions and propositions are produced (i.e. reproduced).… Words, expressions, propositions, etc. change their meaning according to the positions held by those who use them, which signifies that they find their meanings by reference to those positions, i.e. by reference to the ideological formations … in which those positions are inscribed’. 2 The semiotics of the dictionary 1 To what real need does the registration of regularly derived, perfectly understandable and usable words respond, if not to anticipate and control the uses to which language is put by its users? 2 … in excluding most regional terms, dictionaries – along with administrative centralisation, the development of public education and a certain standardisation of ways of living and forms of activity – participated in the unification of French on the basis of Parisian speech. 3 Dictionaries furnish information according to a sociocultural model which tends to erase the diversity of cultures coexisting within a society, so as to privilege the culture and ideology of the dominant classes or groups (called ‘cultured’), ideology being understood in the sense of a conception of the world, not necessarily a conceptual system. 4 The fact is that the general dictionary of language and culture … is located from the outset within the framework of the dominant ideology, supported in that by the Saussurean alibi, the sign defined in such a way that its ideological function is carefully erased, emptied by what must called an abstract objectivism … 5 Even if most (West German) dictionaries claim not to be influenced by ideology, in many cases their definitions indicate the contrary. 6 Cited in Sands (1980–1: 45) – (WDG will from the 4th volume on) present the entire lexicon in terms of the fundamentals of the Marxist-Leninist world view.

212 Notes 7 The dictionary functions, then, as a rallying sign, a sign of recognition: owning and consulting a large general dictionary allows me, through a relationship that is halfamorous and half-narcissistic (recognising myself in the eyes of the other), to recognise myself as belonging to a certain milieu, a certain elite (in all simplicity and in all modesty, of course). 8 Said’s comments echo Gramsci (1971: 447–8): ‘Obviously East and West are arbitrary and conventional, that is historical, constructions, since outside of real history every point on the earth is East and West at the same time. This can be seen more clearly from the fact that these terms have crystallised not from the point of view of a hypothetical melancholic man in general but from the point of view of the European cultured classes who, as a result of their world-wide hegemony, have caused them to be accepted everywhere. Japan is the Far East not only for Europe but also perhaps for the American from California and even for the Japanese himself, who, through English political culture, may then call Egypt the Near East. So because of the historical content that has become attached to the geographical terms, the expressions East and West have finished up indicating specific relations between different cultural complexes. Thus Italians often, when speaking of Morocco, call it an “Eastern” country, to refer to its Moslem and Arab civilisation. And yet those references are real; they correspond to real facts, they allow one to travel by land and by sea, to arrive where one has decided to arrive, to “foresee” the future, to objectivise reality, to understand the objectivity of the external world. Rational and real become one.’ 9 Murray’s General Explanations are reprinted with minor changes in the front matter of OED2, published more than a century later in 1989. 3 The centre–periphery metaphor in action 1 The decision to locate the zero meridian on a line passing through Greenwich was taken at an international meeting in 1884 and was contested for a number of years. American and French cartographers continued to construct maps of the world centred on Washington and Paris until the early years of the twentieth century. The map centred on the Greenwich meridian has been described as a suitable AngloAmerican compromise because it places Britain at the centre and North America in the top left corner, which is for Western cultures the customary point at which to begin reading a text (Black, 1997: 37–8). 2 Usage labels signal distance in relation to a lexical norm that is socioculturally, rather than linguistically, grounded. These labels imply a judgement in relation to a standard language which is, for its part, unmarked. 3 There are evident exceptions to this rule. OED definitions for the common names of flora and fauna, for example, include scientific names that are not included within the wordlist. 4 The monolingual English dictionary up to Johnson 1 The citation is from Lehmberg’s introduction to the 1962 edition of the work. 2 William Bullokar was the author of the Pamphlet for Grammar (1586), often described as the first grammar of English. His namesake John Bullokar was the compiler of the second monolingual English dictionary, the English Expositor (1616). 3 It is significant perhaps that Richardson chose to begin the preface to his New Dictionary of the English Language (1836) with the same extract from Daniel’s poem. 4 Osselton (1958: 64–5) points out that the volume referred to is an additional volume to the main dictionary which may not have been compiled by Bailey himself. If it was compiled by Bailey, the brands may have been added later by the publisher. The ratio of asterisks to daggers is given as 25:1 with approximately 900 items ‘branded’. Approximately twice that number are left unmarked.

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5 Hayashi (1978: 58) cites Phillips’ (1658) definition of Babel or Babylon, in which the biblical account of the origin of languages is reported as historical fact: ‘… so called from the confusion of languages which was there caused, it was anciently the Chief seat of the Assyrian monarchs, being built by Nimrod, and afterwards walled by Semiramis, it is now called Bagadeth or Bagda’. Green (1996: 188–9) cites the preface to the Gazophylacium Anglicanum: ‘The Confusion of Languages at Babel (for before it, all the then World spoke one and the same Dialect, supposed to be Hebrew) gave rise to all the several Languages in the Universe; of which the primitive Language of this Nation was one; and, had it not been corrupted, perhaps as good and intelligible as the best; but being so alter’d by the aforesaid Accidents, it has quite lost its primitive Glory, as well as that of the French and other Nations’. 6 It is assumed that J.K. is John Kersey although this has been questioned (see Hayashi, 1978: 81; Starnes and Noyes, 1991: 69). 7 Similar comments appear in the preface to Martin (1749), who omitted entries that would result in a ‘redundancy of useless and obsolete words’. 8 In this respect also, the monolingual dictionary drew upon the bilingual dictionary. J.K.’s used several late seventeenth-century English-French and Latin-French wordlists as his source for the ordinary words of the language (Bately, 1988). 9 This kind of ambiguity is characteristic of the treatment of international items in modern English dictionaries. See, for example, CollED3: ‘kampong … (in Malaysia) a village’. 5 From Johnson to the OED 1 The cartographic metaphor was apt, for the search for ever more precise methods of measuring longitude was also a national concern of the early eighteenth century. Precision in language, like precision in navigation, would serve the interests of Britain’s colonial expansion. 2 The reaction of Sambo, the black servant who travelled with them, is not recorded. 3 These include, in addition to American dictionaries, several glossaries. Yule and Burnell’s glossary of Asian words, Hobson Jobson (1886) was used extensively in the NED and Dennys’ Descriptive Dictionary of British Malaya (1894) and Whitworth’s An Anglo-Indian Dictionary: A Glossary of Indian Terms used in English (1885) are cited as sources for OED2. 6 The lexicography of English as an international language 1 The dictionary in question was the British Encyclopedic World Dictionary (EWD, 1971), which was in turn based on the 1969 edition of Barnhart’s American College Dictionary (AmCD). Unusually, the use of this source was acknowledged in Delbridge’s introduction to the MacqD. 2 Informal discussions with overseas consultants to British dictionaries tend to confirm that they also see their role as one of ‘answering questions’ about their own varieties of English. They are rarely consulted on matters pertaining to the language in general and often feel a lack of control over the form in which their contributions appear in the published dictionary. 3 This policy is unusual since many dictionaries now include both British and American pronunciations. The EWED does include British and American spelling variants, but in order to find out, for example, that defense (Am.) and defence (Br.) are also pronounced differently, the reader would need to consult both the British and American editions. 4 Similar definitions are also found in US dictionaries. 5 I am grateful to Anthony Cowie for his comments on the ‘pedagogic core’ and for much of the background information on the learner’s dictionary in this section.

214 Notes Cowie’s (2000) English Dictionaries for Foreign Learners: A History had not yet appeared in print at the time the manuscript for this book was completed. 6 It is to be assumed that the writer of this definition was not aware of the origins of the term. The description of the Chinese as the ‘yellow race’ originates in late nineteenth-century China and derives not from skin colour, but from the supposed descent of the Chinese people from the Yellow Emperor. 7 I should at this point declare an interest as a contributor of Malaysian words to the MacqD3 and the MacqJD. 7 China in the OED: the wordlist 1 These were counted by a search of the CD-ROM edition of the OED2. For the purposes of this study, a reference to China means the occurrence of one of the words China, Chinese, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Canton, Cantonese, Peking or Shanghai. 2 The figure for the number of references to China is based on a search of a version of the CollED3 published on floppy diskette. The total number of entries is an estimate based on figures given in the CollED2 and the CollED3. 3 The figure of 547 is my own calculation of the number of independent Chinese words listed in Cannon’s Appendix. The paper itself claims that the list contains more words than it actually does. In addition, Cannon lists different parts of speech of the same word as separate items and includes as loanwords items with only a tenuous etymological connection to Chinese (e.g. any two-word item containing Japanese or tea). 4 The quotation does not, in fact, support the definition wholeheartedly, since Nixon’s kowtow is described as ‘dignified’ rather than ‘obsequious’. 5 It is doubtful that Little Red Book is, in fact, a loan translation. No etymological source is given in the OED2 and supporting quotations are all from non-Chinese sources. It seems more likely that the phrase belongs to a particular category within the English of China of words that are coined outside China to refer to things Chinese. 6 Although pak pai is one of the more recent Chinese items to be entered in the OED2, it has already become obsolete in Hong Kong. Originally referring to the white number plates issued to private cars, the word disappeared when the colour of the number plates was changed. 9 China in the OED: definitions 1 The following use of coolie was found in a Hong Kong South China Morning Post report: ‘In mitigation Mr Barry Sceats said Chan had fought in the war in China before coming to Hongkong in the 1950s to work as a coolie’ (2.9.92). The reference here is historical, but a contemporary use is also recorded in a citation for coolie fees – apparently a charge made for unloading a ship: ‘Between June 1989 and March 1990 she solicited and accepted rebates or ‘coolie fees’ ranging from US$30 to US$200, depending on the size of the containers’ (2.11.92). It is likely that the word is still used in similar ways elsewhere in East and Southeast Asia. 2 A second sense of coolie is even less sensitively dealt with in the OED2: ‘An Asian or Indian, esp. one of the lower classes’. The most recent supporting quotation, from the Guardian 4.10.67, reads: ‘In South Africa the word “coolie” is used by some whites to describe Asians, and is as bitterly resented by them as the word “Kaffir” is resented by Africans’. 3 The CollED3 carries a similar definition of cumshaw: ‘(used, esp. formerly, by beggars in Chinese ports) a present or tip’. 4 The CollED3 has a similar definition for Boxer: ‘ … a member of a nationalistic Chinese secret society that led to an unsuccessful rebellion in 1900 against foreign

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interests in China. (as modifier) the Boxer Rebellion (C18: rough translation of Chinese I Ho Ch’uan, literally: virtuous harmonious fist)’. 5 For a recent historian’s assessment of the Boxer movement along these lines, see Welsh (1993: 338–9): ‘Then, after the Court gave its support to the absurd Boxer revolt, and forced an issue with the Western powers that could have only one result, there was no hope at all. When the violently anti-foreign boxers besieged the Western legations in Peking, an expeditionary force was despatched, and the rising, which had for the most part been restricted to north-west China, was speedily suppressed’. 6 Again the CollED3 has a similar definition: ‘Opium Wars … two wars (1839–42; 1856–60) between China and Britain resulting from the Chinese refusal to allow the importation of opium from India. China ceded Hong Kong after the British victory in 1842. The British and French victory in the second war established free trade in Chinese ports and the legalization of the opium trade’. 7 For a more detailed discussion of ideology in definitions of the words terrorism and terrorist, see Chomsky (1988: 664). 10 China in the OED: quotations 1 The exceptions are quotations marked mod. which are invented examples of modern spoken forms for which no printed citations could be found. 2 These quotations fall into four categories: (a) the reference to China is a point of comparison for the item cited; (b) the reference to China is part of a list of which the cited item is also a member; (c) the cited item is said to be not related to China; (c) the reference to China has no relation to the meaning or usage of the cited item. 3 If plastic flowers were recognised as a botanical species, however, they would almost certainly be defined in the OED2 as ‘native to Hong Kong’. 4 Inartificial is defined as ‘not in accordance with the principles of art; constructed without art or skill, rude, clumsy; inartistic’. 5 Farrar is cited in the OED2 1,544 times from his religious and philological works. His philological writings are frequently cited in support of technical linguistic terms. 6 The CollED3 also has two entries that are inaccurate in their reference to Chinese script: ideogram or ideograph (‘a sign or symbol, used in such writing systems as those of China or Japan, that directly represents a concept, idea, or thing rather than a word or set of words’) and pictograph (‘a picture or symbol standing for a word or group of words, as in written Chinese’).

References

Dictionaries published after 1900 (Reference is to the first edition or to the editions indicated by the number in the abbreviation.) AD AmCD AmHDEL AusCOD4 AusLD AusND

AusPOD AusSD CanOD CCELD ChamED7 ChamSED ChronED

The Alternative Dictionaries (no date) H-C. Holms, (http://www. notam.uio.no/~hcholm/altlang/). The American College Dictionary (1969) C.L. Barnhart, New York: Random House. The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (1969) W. Morris, Boston: Houghton Mifflin. The Australian Concise Oxford Dictionary (1997) fourth edition, B. Moore, Melbourne: Oxford University Press. Australian Learners Dictionary (1997) C.N. Candlin and D. Blair, Sydney: National Centre for English Language Teaching and Research. The Australian National Dictionary: A Dictionary of Australianisms on Historical Principles (1988) W.S. Ramson, Melbourne: Oxford University Press. The Australian Pocket Oxford Dictionary (1976) G. Johnstone, Melbourne: Oxford University Press. The Aussie Slang Dictionary for Old and New Australians (1990) J. Blackman, Melbourne: Macmillan. The Canadian Oxford English Dictionary (1998) K. Barber, Toronto: Oxford University Press. Collins COBUILD English Language Dictionary (1987) J. Sinclair, London: Collins. Chambers English Dictionary (1988) S.I. Landau and W.S. Ransom, Cambridge: Chambers; first edition, 1872. Chambers Shorter English Dictionary (1952) A.M. McDonald, Edinburgh: Chambers; first edition, 1949. A Chronological English Dictionary (1970) T. Finkenstaedt, Heidelberg: Winter.

References CIDE COD8

CollED CollED4AusEd CULD DAm DAmE DAmRE DAusC DBahE DCan DCarEU DCC DJamE DNfE DNZE DOScT

DPEIE DSAfE DSAfEHP EDD EWD

217

Cambridge International Dictionary of English (1995) P. Procter, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Current English (1990) eighth edition, R.E. Allen, Oxford: Clarendon Press; first edition, 1911, H.W. Fowler and F.G. Fowler. Collins English Dictionary (1979) P. Hanks, London: Collins; third edition, 1991. Collins English Dictionary (1998) fourth Australian edition, E. Summers, G.A. Wilkes and W.A. Krebs, Glasgow: HarperCollins. Chambers Universal Learners’ Dictionary (1980) E.M. Kirkpatrick, Edinburgh: Chambers. A Dictionary of Americanisms on Historical Principles (1951) M.M. Matthews, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. A Dictionary of American English on Historical Principles (1934) W.A. Craigie and J.R. Hulbert, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Dictionary of American Regional English (1986) F.C. Cassidy, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. A Dictionary of Australian Colloquialisms (1978) G.A. Wilkes, Sydney: Sydney University Press. Dictionary of Bahamian English (1982) J. Holm and A.W. Shilling, New York: Lexik House. A Dictionary of Canadianisms on Historical Principles (1967) W.S. Avis, Toronto: Gage. Dictionary of Caribbean English Usage (1996) R. Allsopp, Oxford: Oxford University Press. A Dictionary of Contemporary Chinese (in Chinese) (1979) Beijing. Dictionary of Jamaican English (1967) F.C. Cassidy and R.B. Le Page, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dictionary of Newfoundland English (1982) G.M. Story, W.J. Kirwin and J.D.A. Widdowson, Toronto: University of Toronto Press. The Dictionary of New Zealand English (1997) H.W. Orsman, Auckland: Oxford University Press. A Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue (1931–) W.A. Craigie and A.J. Aitken, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press. Dictionary of Prince Edward Island English (1988) T.K. Pratt, Toronto: University of Toronto Press. A Dictionary of South African English (1978) J. Branford with W. Branford, Cape Town: Oxford University Press. A Dictionary of South African English on Historical Principles (1996) P. Silva, Cape Town: Oxford University Press. English Dialect Dictionary (1898–1905) J. Wright, London: Henry Frowde. Encyclopedic World Dictionary (1971) P. Hanks, London: Hamlyn.

218 References EWED

FD HNZD LDEL LDCE LPD MacqD MacqJD NED NODE NSDEL NZPOD OALD4 OALD5 OED1 OED2 OEDS1–4 PBAusS POD RHDEL RHUD SAfPOD ScND

Encarta World English Dictionary (1999) K. Rooney and A. Soukhanov, London: Bloomsbury; US edition, St Martin’s Press; Australian edition, PanMacmillan. A Feminist Dictionary (1985) C. Kramarae and P.A. Treichler, Boston: Pandora. Heinemann New Zealand Dictionary (1979) H.W. Orsman, Auckland: Heinemann Educational. Longman Dictionary of the English Language (1984) H. Gay, London: Longman. Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English (1978) J. Whitcut, London: Longman. Longman Primary Dictionary (1982) London: Longman. The Macquarie Dictionary (1981) A. Delbridge, Sydney: Macquarie Library. The Macquarie Junior Dictionary (1999) Sydney: Macquarie Library. A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles (1884–1928) J.A.H. Murray, Oxford: Clarendon Press. The New Oxford Dictionary of English (1998) J. Pearsall, Oxford: Clarendon Press. New Standard Dictionary of the English Language (1913) F. Vizetelly, New York: Funk & Wagnalls. The New Zealand Pocket Oxford Dictionary (1986) R. Burchfield and R.E. Allen, Auckland: Oxford University Press. Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary (1989) fourth edition, A.P. Cowie, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary (1995) fifth edition, J. Crowther, Oxford: Oxford University Press. The Oxford English Dictionary (1933) first edition, J.A.H. Murray, Oxford: Clarendon Press. The Oxford English Dictionary (1989) second edition, J.A. Simpson and E.S.C. Weiner, Oxford: Clarendon Press. A Supplement to The Oxford English Dictionary (1972–86) 4 volumes, R.W. Burchfield, Oxford: Clarendon Press. The Penguin Book of Australian Slang (1988) L. Johansen, Ringwood, Victoria: Penguin. Pocket Oxford Dictionary of Current English (1927) H. Fowler, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Random House Dictionary of the English Language (1966) L. Urdang, New York: Random House. Random House Unabridged Dictionary (1993) S. Flexner, New York: Random House. South African Pocket Oxford Dictionary (1987) W. Branford, Cape Town: Oxford University Press. Scottish National Dictionary (1931–76) W. Grant, Edinburgh: Scottish National Dictionary Association.

References SOED STCLD TCEED2 UDEL W3NID WDG

219

The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (1933) C.T. Onions, Oxford: Clarendon Press. The Straits Times Chambers Learners Dictionary (1985) Singapore: Federal Publications. Times-Chambers Essential English Dictionary (1997) second edition, A. Seaton, Singapore: Federal Publications; first edition, 1995. The Universal Dictionary of the English Language (1932) H.C. Wyld, London: G. Routledge & Sons. Webster’s Third New International Dictionary of the English Language (1961) P.B. Gove, Springfield, MA: G. & C. Merriam Co. Wörterbuch der deutschen Gegenwartssprache (1964–77) R. Klappenbach and W Steinitz, Berlin: Academie Verlag.

Dictionaries published before 1900 Alexander Anon. Ash Bailey Bailey Bailey

Barlow Blount Boag Boucher Bullokar Cawdrey Clarke Cockeram Coles Dennys

The Columbian Dictionary of the English Language (1800) C. Alexander, Boston: I. Thomas & E.T. Andrews. Gazophylacium Anglicanum (1689) London: E. Holt & W. Horton. The New and Complete Dictionary of the English Language (1775) J. Ash, London: E. & C. Dilley, R. Baldwin. An Universal Etymological English Dictionary (1721) N. Bailey, London: E. Bell, etc. The Universal Etymological English Dictionary (1727) N. Bailey, London: T. Cox. Dictionarium Britannicum. a more compleat universal etymological English dictionary than any extant (1730) N. Bailey, London: T. Cox; second edition, 1736. A Complete English Dictionary. Containing a copious explanation of all the words in the English language (1772) F. Barlow, London: The Author. Glossographia (1656) T. Blount, London: Tho. Newcomb. The Imperial Lexicon of the English Language (1852–3) J. Boag, Edinburgh: A. Fullarton & Co. A Supplement to Dr. Johnson’s Dictionary, or a Glossary of Archaic and Provincial Words (1807) J. Boucher, London. An English Expositor (1616) J. Bullokar, London: Iohn Legatt. A Table Alphabeticall (1604) R. Cawdrey, London: I.R. (James Roberts) for Edmund Weauer. A New and Comprehensive Dictionary of the English Language (1855) H. Clarke, London: John Weale. The English Dictionarie: or, an Interpreter of Hard English Words (1623) H. Cockeram, London: H.C. Gent. An English Dictionary (1676) E. Coles, London: Samuel Crouch. A Descriptive Dictionary of British Malaya (1894) N.B. Dennys, London: London and China Telegraph Office.

220 References Elyot

The Dictionary of Syr T.E., Knyght (1538) T. Elyot, London: Thomas Berthelet. Gouldman A Copious Dictionary in Three Parts (1664) F. Gouldman, London: John Field. Grose A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue (1785) F. Grose. London: S. Cooper. Holyoake A Large Dictionary in Three Parts (1677) T. Holyoake, London: W. Rawlins. J.K. A New English Dictionary. a compleat collection of the most proper and significant words, commonly used in the language (1702) J.K., London: Robert Knaplock. Johnson A Dictionary of the English Language (1755) S. Johnson, London: W. Strahan, etc. Johnson and Elliot A Selected Pronouncing and Accented Dictionary (1800) S. Johnson Jr. and J. Elliott, Suffield: E. Gray for O.D. & I. Cook. Kenrick A New Dictionary of the English Language (1773) William Kenrick, London: J & F. Rivington, etc. Kersey Dictionarium Anglo-Britannicum (1708) John Kersey, London: J. Wilde for J. Phillips et al. Martin Lingua Britannica Reformata (1749) B. Martin, London: J. Hodges et al. Morris Austral English. A Dictionary of Australasian Words, Phrases and Usages (1898) E.E. Morris, London: Macmillan. Ogilvie The Imperial Dictionary of the English Language (1850) J. Ogilvie, London: Blackie & Son. Palsgrave Lesclaircissement de la langue françoyse (1530) J. Palsgrave, London: John Haukyns. Phillips The New World of English Words (1658) E. Phillips, London: E. Tyler for Nath. Brooke. Pickering A Vocabulary, or Collection of Words and Phrases which have been supposed to be peculiar to the United States of America (1816) J. Pickering, Boston. Porter Webster’s International Dictionary of the English Language (1898) N. Porter, New York: G & C. Merriam Co. Ray A Collection of English Words not Generally Used (1674) J. Ray, London: H. Bruges for T. Burrell. Richardson A New Dictionary of the English Language (1836) C. Richardson, London: Bell & Daldy. Salesbury A Dictionary in Englyshe and Welshe (1547) W. Salesbury, London: Iohn Waley. Sheridan A General Dictionary of the English Language (1780) T. Sheridan, London: J. Dodsley, C. Dilly & J. Wilkie. Skinner Etymologicon Linguae Anglicanae (1671) S. Skinner, London: Apud H. Brome, etc. Walker A Critical Pronouncing Dictionary and Expositor of the English Language (1791) J. Walker, London: G.G.J. & J. Robinson & T. Cadell.

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Index

Academies 13, 84, 86, 92 Adams, J. 92 Addison, T. 84 Aitken, A.J. 115 Allen, R.E. 55 Alternative Dictionaries 210 American College Dictionary 213 American Dictionary of the English Language, An (Webster) 2, 88, 91–4, 206 American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, The 9 Anglo-Indian Dictionary 213 Aristotle 11–12 Aussie Slang Dictionary for Old and New Australians 125 Austral English (Morris) 106, 108, 124–5 Australia: Australian English 20, 108, 113, 123; lexicography in 124–31 Australian Concise Oxford Dictionary 126 Australian Learners Dictionary 128–9 Australian National Dictionary 107, 128 Australian Pocket Oxford Dictionary 126 Australian Slang Dictionary 124 Bacon, F. 12, 19 Bahamian English 110 Bailey, N. 74, 75 Bailey, R.W. 115 Baker, S.J. 125 Bakhtin, M.M. 21–2 Balfour, A.J. 40 Beaujot, J-P. 27, 32–3 Béjoint, H. 3–4, 11, 26, 27, 32, 105, 114, 115 biblical theory of language 12, 19, 75–6 Blake, N.F. 62–5 Borges, J.L. 42 Boulanger, J.-C. 27, 32, 45, 46 branding 71–3 British National Corpus 58 Buck, P. 133

Bullokar, W. 66 Burchfield, R.W. 9, 35, 44–5, 50, 100, 107, 114– 15, 127–8 Buzon, C. 29 Cambridge International Dictionary of English 123 Campbell, G. 89 Canadian English 113 Canadian Oxford Dictionary 113, 209 Cannon, G. 135 Carter, R. 121–2 centre–periphery metaphors 16, 43–4 Century Dictionary (Whitney) 94–6 Chambers English Dictionary 78 Chambers Shorter English Dictionary 126 Chambers Universal Learners’ Dictionary 47 Chesterfield, Lord P. 85 China: Chinese English 208; treatment in dictionaries 58–9; treatment in the OED 5–7, 115, 133–204, 208–9; Chinese script 198–204 Chronological English Dictionary 70 Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue (Grose) 89 Cobbett, W. 96–7 Collection of English Words not Generally Used (Ray) 77 Collignon, L. and Glatigny, M. 27 Collins COBUILD English Language Dictionary 10, 55, 57, 58, 59, 122–3 Collins English Dictionary 47, 49, 50, 55, 78, 113, 116–17, 119, 133, 135–6, 213, 214, 215 Columbian Dictionary of the English Language, The (Alexander) 91 communism 30 Compendious Dictionary of the English Language (Webster) 92 Complete English Dictionary, A (Barlow) 74 Complete English Dictionary, The (Wesley) 74, 88 Concise Oxford Dictionary 73, 111 Copious Dictionary in Three Parts, A (Gouldman) 73, 74

230 Index core vocabulary 121–2, 144 corpora, 10, 57–8 critical discourse analysis 11 Critical Pronouncing Dictionary, A (Walker) 74, 88 Crowley, T. 13, 89, 99, 102 Crystal, D. 87, 203 Daniel, S. 68 definition 87, 119–20; defining vocabulary 51–3, 79, 121–2; definitional style 49–51; encylopedic 53–4, 150–61, 167; of ‘English’ 59–60, 113; labelling function of 144–62; of ‘language’ 205–6; in OED 150–61, 164–77; of proper nouns 166–70; pseudo-bilingual 52–4, 69–71; and quotations in OED 204; semiotics of 48–55 Delbridge, A. 47, 130 DeMaria, R. 86 Descriptive Dictionary of British Malaya 213 descriptive labelling 46–8, 77–81, 127, 144–62, 208; see also branding descriptivism 8–11, 25, 44 Dictionarium Anglo-Britannicum (Kersey) 72, 75, 79, 80 Dictionarium Britannicum (Bailey) 74, 75, 206 Dictionary in Englyshe and Welshe, A (Salesbury) 65 Dictionary of American English 106, 109 Dictionary of Americanisms 106, 109 Dictionary of Australian Colloquialisms 126 Dictionary of Bahamian English 106, 110 Dictionary of Canadianisms 106, 113 Dictionary of Caribbean English Usage 107 Dictionary of Contemporary Chinese 49 Dictionary of the English Language, A (Johnson) 2, 13, 55, 74, 78, 80, 83, 85–9; literary citations 85–6 dictionary of English-speaking peoples, proposed 115 Dictionary of Jamaican English 106, 109 Dictionary of New Zealand English 107 Dictionary of Newfoundland English 106 Dictionary of Prince Edward Island English 106 Dictionary of South African English 106, 110, 112 Dictionary of South African English on Historical Principles 107, 110 Dictionary of Syr T.E., Knyght (Elyot) 65 Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue 109 dictionary of West African English, proposed 107 dictionary of world English, 114–21 discourse, the dictionary as 33–42 Dryden, J. 84 Eagleton, T. 84 Edney, M.H. 37–9

electronic dictionaries 210 Elyot, T. 65, 66 Encarta World English Dictionary 117–21, 209 Encyclopaedia Britannica 133–4 Encyclopedic World Dictionary 213 English Dialect Dictionary 78, 80, 102–3, 109 English Dictionarie, The (Cockeram) 69, 70, 74 English Dictionary, An (Coles) 74, 77, 78 English Expositor, An (Bullokar) 74 ethnocentrism 4, 63, 206–9 Etymologicon Linguae Anglicanae (Skinner) 75, 77, 79 etymology 75–6 examples see illustrative text Fairclough, N. 17–18, 48 Feminist Dictionary 31 foreign words in English dictionaries 27 Foucault, M. 33–6, 41 Fournier, H. and Russell, D.W. 56 Gates, E. 9, 44 Gazophylacium Anglicanum 75 General Dictionary of the English Language, A (Sheridan) 74, 88 Gershuny, H.L. 56 Ghanaian English 111 Girardin, C. 29, 46 Glossographia (Blount) 69, 75 Görlach, M. 144 Gramsci, A. 212 Great Exhibition (1851) 97–8 Great Trigonometrical Survey 37–9 Green, J. 61, 65, 92 Han Suyin, 133 hard words 69–71 Harley, J. B. 36–7 Harris, R. 11–12 Hartmann, R.R.K. 47 Hastings, W. 38 Heinemann Australian Dictionary 126 Heinemann New Zealand Dictionary 56, 112 heteroglossia 21–2 Hjelmslev, L. 15 history of English 61–5, 98–100 Hobson Jobson 213 Hong Kong English 21 Horne Tooke, J. 96 Hulbert, J.R. 69, 87 ideology in dictionaries 28–33 Idiomatic and Syntactic English Dictionary 122 illustrative text 55–9, 178–204

Index Imperial Dictionary of the English Language, The (Ogilvie) 88, 93, 97, 119–20 Imperial Lexicon of the English Language, The (Boag) 88, 93, 97 India: Indian English, 111; mapping of 37–9 Jamaican English 109 Johnson, S. 13, 76, 85–9, 92, 96–7, 124 Jones, W. 95–6 labels see descriptive labelling Landau, S.I. 29, 32, 46 Large Dictionary in Three Parts, A (Holyoake) 74 learner’s dictionaries 121–4 Leibniz, G.W. von 12 Leith, D. 61 Lesclaircissement de la langue françoyse (Palsgrave) 65 Lingua Britannica Reformata (Martin) 71, 84–5, 213 Locke, J. 12, 19 Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English 52, 56 Longman Dictionary of the English Language 50, 55, 60, 116, 120 Longman Primary Dictionary 56 McArthur, T. 1, 70 Mackerras, C. 133 Macquarie Dictionary 94, 113–14, 126–30, 206, 209 Macquarie Junior Dictionary 129 macrostructure 26–8, 43–4, 134 Malaysian English 110, 112–13, 123–4, 129 maps: critical work on 36–9; of India 37–9; of the world 37, 43 meaning potential 48 Mengham, R. 35, 86 metalanguage 24–5 Mey, J.L 15–16 microstructure 26–8, 43–4 Moon, R. 8, 28–9, 30, 32, 57 Mulcaster, R. 68, 84 multiplicity of meaning 16 Murray, J.A.H. 40–1, 87, 94–5, 103–4 Murray, K.M.E. 94–5 New and Complete Dictionary of the English Language, The (Ash) 74, 88 New and Comprehensive Dictionary of the English Language (Clarke) 88, 97 New Dictionary of the English Language, A (Kenrick) 74 New Dictionary of the English Language, A (Richardson) 55, 88, 212 New English Dictionary, A (J.K.) 74, 76, 80 New English Dictionary on Historical Principles see Oxford English Dictionary

231

New Oxford Dictionary of English 116–18, 205, 209 New Standard Dictionary of the English Language 93 New World of English Words, The (Phillips) 71–2, 74 New Zealand Pocket Oxford Dictionary 112 Nigerian English, 111 Nile, exploration of 98 Orientalism 39–40, 95 Osselton, N.E. 70, 73, 79–80 Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary 52, 55, 58, 59, 122 Oxford English Dictionary 2, 40–2, 62, 64, 78, 83, 102–3, 105, 109, 114, 119, 120, 127, 131, 205, 210; definitions in 164–77; labelling in 144–62; origins of 94–104; overseas words in 101, 115–16; political vocabulary in 142–3, 172–6; quotations in 55–7, 137–42, 178–204; regional dialect in 100; treatment of China 5–7, 115, 133–204, 208–9; wordlist 133–43 Oxford University Press 3, 50, 107, 110, 128–9 Palsgrave, J. 65, 66–7 panopticon 35–6, 37 Pêcheux, M. 211 Penguin Book of Australian Slang 125 Phillips, A. 84 Pocket Oxford Dictionary 50, 111 Pope, A. 84 Port Royal grammar 12 Powell, E. 1 prescriptivism 9–10 Proctor, P. 123 Promptorium parvulorum clericorum 65 pronunciation 88, 127, 129 pseudo-bilingual definition 52–4, 69–71 Puttenham, G. 66 quotations see illustrative text; Oxford English Dictionary Random House Dictionary of the English Language 56 Random House Unabridged Dictionary 205 Ray, J. 77–8, 80 Read, A.W. 114 regional dialect in dictionaries 77–81, 100, 102–3 regional dictionaries 106–11 regionally adapted dictionaries 111–14 Rey, A. and Delesalle, S. 52 Russel, W. 90–1 Said, E. 39–40 Saussure, F. de 13–14, 20

232 Index Scherer, K.R. and Giles, H. Scottish National Dictionary 107, 109 Selected Pronouncing and Accented Dictionary, A (Johnson and Elliott) 91 semiotics of the dictionary 24 Shorter Oxford English Dictionary 111 Simpson, J. 9, 100 Sinclair, J.M. 10 Singaporean English 21, 111, 112–13, 123–4, 129, 208 Skeat, W.W. 98–9 Sledd, J.H. and Kolb, G.J. 86–7 Snow, E. 133, 192–3 South African Pocket Oxford Dictionary 112 standardisation 19–23, 61–5, 84–90, 89–90 Straits Times Chambers Learners Dictionary 111 Supplement to Dr. Johnson’s Dictionary, or a Glossary of Archaic and Provincial Words (Boucher) 89 supplementary dictionaries 88–9, 103, 106–11 supplements of regional words 111, 125 Swift, J. 84 Table Alphabeticall, A (Cawdrey) 65, 67, 69, 74 Taylor, T.J. 9–10 Thackeray, W. 97 Times-Chambers Essential English Dictionary 111, 112, 123–4, 129 Trench, R.C. 9–10, 12, 19, 95, 97 United States: contribution to the OED 95; lexicography in 90–4 Universal Dictionary of the English Language, The (Bailey) 19

Universal Etymological English Dictionary, An (Bailey) 75, 78, 80 Universal Etymological English Dictionary, The (Bailey) 72 variability in language 19–23 Vocabulary (Pickering) 92 Vocabulary of the Flash Language 124 Vološinov, V.N. 16–18, 22, 29 Warburton, W. 84 Webster, N. 90–94 Webster’s International Dictionary of the English Language (Porter) 93, 111, 125 Webster’s Third New International Dictionary of the English Language 47 Weiner, E.S.C. 101, 107 Wells, R.A. 92 Whitcut, J. 2, 32 Whitney, W.D. 14 Wierzbicka, A. 30 Willemyns, R. 48 Williams, G. 11–13 Willinsky, J. 56–7, 116 Winchester, S. 6, 87 wordlist: ‘completeness’ in 73–7, 97; comprehensiveness 97; of the OED 133–43; semiotics of 44–6; see also macrostructure World Englishes, 20, 110 Wörterbuch der deutschen Gegenwartssprache 30–1 Wyld, H.C. 19, 89–90 Zgusta, L. 9, 10, 54