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Monarchs and minnows vs. broadband and bungee jumping

Content, correctness and cultural bias: ‘language as it is used’ in children's English language dictionaries

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 February 2016

Charlotte Brewer
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Extract

‘Some of our predecessors in the science of lexicography thought it was part of their duty to improve the English language,’ wrote an editor of the first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) in 1934 (Craigie, 1934: 26). ‘We have got beyond that stage, and consider that if it is to be improved it is not our business to do so, but record it as it was and as it is.’ Such claims for unbiased and objective descriptivism in dictionary-making became standard over the course of the twentieth century and are regularly repeated in dictionaries today. In the words of the first edition of the New Oxford Dictionary of English, published in 1998 and reprinted in many other Oxford dictionaries, ‘A good dictionary reports the language as it is, not as the editors (or anyone else) would wish it to be’ (Pearsall, 1998: xv).

Type
Research Article
Information
English Today , Volume 32 , Issue 2 , June 2016 , pp. 31 - 37
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

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