[rohrpost] Is a Word's Definition in the Mind of the User?

[Krystian Woznicki <krystian@snafu.de>]

Is a Word's Definition in the Mind of the User?
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/11/25/arts/25SHEL.html
November 25, 2000

SHELF LIFE

By EDWARD ROTHSTEIN

In England in 1857, an ambitious proposal was made to create an
encyclopedic concordance of English words. Such a dictionary, it
was argued, would be a "historical monument"; it would represent
"the history of a nation" recounted from a distinctive "point of
view." The result, completed 70 years later, was the first edition
of the Oxford English Dictionary. In that work's 441,825 words and
1,827,306 quotations, the grandeur of the English language was
displayed in all its expanse, every transformation chronicled by
citations from English poetry and prose.

Times have changed. In the fourth edition of the American Heritage
Dictionary, the monument is dismantled, multiple points of view are
proffered and the authority of the past is rejected along with the
privileged position of written poetry and prose. This edition is
the climax of several decades of lexicographical evolution. Though
many authorities are consulted for this dictionary, the ultimate
authority is the ordinary person's ordinary speech. Nothing is
absolutely correct; nothing is ever incorrect. It is just a matter
of who uses a word and why.

This dictionary aims to be endearingly up to date and informative;
it often is. It is handsome, colorful, plainly written if not
elegant. This edition includes 10,000 new entries like
"shopaholic," "mommy track," "acid reflux" and "control freak."
Four thousand color illustrations and photos accompany entries that
range from the helpful ("ophthalmoscope") to the superfluous
("Oprah Winfrey"). Notes accompanying entries helpfully explain
"flotsam" while defining "jetsam," or show how "mosquito" and
certain forms of weaponry share etymological pasts.

The main ambition is to create something distinctively American: a
democratic dictionary that describes, not prescribes. Of course the
debate over whether dictionaries should be prescriptive asserting
that a word has relatively determined meanings and a proper usage;
or descriptive, asserting that a word has shifting meanings
determined by its popular use has been raging for several
decades. The best dictionaries maintain a precarious balance.
The problem here is that too often the balance tips. The
dictionary recalls at times Humpty Dumpty's famous declaration to
Alice in "Through the Looking Glass": "When I use a word, it means
just what I choose it to mean neither more nor less."
"The question is," Alice replies, "whether you can make words mean
so many different things."
"The question is," Humpty Dumpty says, "which is to be master
that's all."

In this dictionary the master is not the word but the user of the
word. Competing claims are never firmly settled; there are no
rules. In the dictionary's "usage notes," for example, traditional
distinctions between "who" and "whom" are noted, but it is also
suggested that such distinctions tend to become irrelevant in
informal speech. "Incentivize," a variety of boorish bureaucratic
misspeak, has an entry simply because the word has come into use
(meaning "to motivate").

In an introductory essay, Geoffrey Nunberg, the chairman of the
dictionary's usage panel, implies that social issues so deeply
affect notions of linguistic propriety that any linguistic decision
is an implicitly political one; it is best, he suggests, simply to
take note of differing preferences without issuing a verdict. In
controversial cases the usage panel was consulted, consisting of
two hundred writers and scholars "who have distinguished themselves
by their command of the English language." The panel, which
includes the novelists Oscar Hijuelos and Mona Simpson, the
humorists Garrison Keillor and Calvin Trillin, the poets Robert
Pinsky and Rita Dove and such scholars as the economist Robert J.
Samuelson and the computer scientist Douglas R. Hofstadter, was
regularly polled about various words. Results appear in the "usage
notes" accompanying major entries.

Thus we learn that the panel was split 50-50 on how to pronounce
"harass." We find out that 61 percent thought "schism," should be
pronounced "skism," 31 percent voted for "sism" and 8 percent chose
"shism," (the "traditional" pronunciation, the dictionary points
out, is "sism"). The word "man" was accepted as meaning "human" in
certain contexts ("modern man") by 81 percent of the panel, but
only 58 percent of the women on the panel thought that meaning
appropriate: to each his or her own.

Yet it is difficult to reconcile this demotic vision with the
authoritative role courted by this very dictionary. Mr. Nunberg
affirms, for example, that "the fundamental linguistic virtues
simplicity, clarity, intelligibility are unassailable." He argues
that in "specialized" cases, there might even be definitions having
more authority: for example, that the word "ironic" requires
special consultation with literary specialists because "the meaning
of ironic is not at the disposition of the general public."

But doesn't that mean that some standards of accuracy exist?
Shouldn't this be the function of a dictionary in dealing with
every word: to allow access to subtle and accurate meanings that
may not be at the disposition of the general public? Why give
"ironic" more attentiveness, for example, than "disingenuous?" In
the latter case, one "usage note" points out that "the meaning of
disingenuous has been shifting about lately, as if people are
unsure of its proper meaning." One "proper meaning" is offered:
"not straightforward or candid; insincere or calculating," a
meaning that is supported by 94 percent of the Usage Panel. But
another meaning cited is "unaware or uninformed, naïve"; 75 percent
of the panel rejected this use but the dictionary cannot bring
itself to call the other 25 percent incorrect. I prefer Samuel
Johnson's more pungent and accurate definitions of disingenuous in
his imposing 1755 dictionary, "meanly artful, viciously subtle."
I don't think this dictionary is disingenuous in Dr. Johnson's
sense; I think it is disingenuous in the incorrect popular sense.
With all its usefulness and sophistication, it is naïve. It cannot
take responsibility for the words it describes. Yes, all usages are
of interest, and yes, language is mercurial, and yes, a dictionary
needs multiple perspectives. But this dictionary, like many other
contemporary counterparts, sits comfortably amid the swirl of
conflicting assertions, nodding this way and that, deferring to the
mastery of each and all, while urging the reader to hop up and join
it on its precarious Humpty Dumptyish perch.

THE AMERICAN HERITAGE DICTIONARY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE, FOURTH
EDITION
2,074 pages. Houghton Mifflin. $60; with CD-ROM, $74.95


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