DARE: The View from the Letter Z

In 1978 when Richard W. Bailey began planning for the first issue of the journal Dictionaries (which appeared in 1979), he asked Frederic G. Cassidy to write an article about the progress of the Dictionary of American Regional English (DARE). By that time DARE's editorial practices had been established, the letters A and E had been substantially finished, and work had begun on the letters B, C, D, F, G, H, I, L, and M.

Although Fred agreed that such an article would be appreciated by members of the Dictionary Society of North America, he also felt over-committed by other obligations. (A look at his bibliography suggests that at that time he would have been working on a review of J. L. Dillard's American Talk for Language in Society, an article about Gullah and Jamaican Creole for the Georgetown University Round Table on Languages and Linguistics, and a contribution to the four-volume festschrift for Archibald A. Hill.) Rather than simply plead overwork and decline Bailey's request, Fred offered the assignment to me. And as a newcomer to the field of lexicography, I was glad for the opportunity to get my feet wet.

Engrossed at that time in editing DARE's letter F, I used an analysis of the first thousand entries in that letter to provide a preview of what the full Dictionary might look like. "DARE: The View from the Letter F" offered a detailed analysis of categories of entries, treatment of pronunciation and etymology, application of regional, social, and usage labels, and fine points of entry presentation. Now that Volume V (Sl-Z) is close to publication, it is possible to have a much more panoramic view of the whole and to assess the impact of DARE as a scholarly undertaking and as a utilitarian tool.

In re-reading early articles about DARE, I have been impressed not only by how much has changed over the last half-century, but also by what has remained constant. The changes, of course, are particularly obvious in terms of computer technology. In early descriptions of DARE's intended use of "electronics," Fred Cassidy eagerly embraced the idea that computers could drastically reduce the burden of the detailed, exacting analysis of data required in a massive survey of language. In 1968, for instance, he exulted that new computer methods had "already rendered the punch-card and punch tape archaic," and that there was now a way to actually delete a symbol or tell a scanner to ignore it, with the result that "nothing has to be rubbed out or re-punched and substituted — one deletes and goes straight on" (1968:140).

By 1977, his enthusiasm had been somewhat tempered by experience:

We got off to a bad start when the CDC machine to which we were committed was pulled out of the Computing Center. The program associated with it would not run on other machines, and had to be converted. Time and money lost. The author of our program left the project, and his successors failed conspicuously to make it run. . . . At last we found a man who could and did make our program completely over and produce the material processed as we wanted it. But during all the conversions, errors were introduced and parts of the data lost. More time and money spent for special proofreading and for redoing some of the input

(1977:141).

That article, which was written with the hope that DARE's experience might "be of interest for the future," ended with this thoughtful reflection:

Perhaps the chastening is inevitable — it is the 'vanity of human wishes' to hope that life and lexicography can be trouble-free. If a good Dictionary of American Regional English can come out of it, the use of computers — in some ways — will have been justified

(1977:142).

Cassidy's enthusiasm for digital technology began to revive as the programs that sorted the DARE fieldwork data and allowed computer mapping finally proved to be workable, and he applauded the progress as methods were developed to send the text of DARE to Harvard University...