Reflecting on Digital Dictionaries

I want to discuss the responsibilities and opportunities that digital dictionaries, as described by our symposium contributors, create for members of the Modern Language Association and others, as scholars, teachers and users of lexicons.

David Jost’s paper on the digitizing of the American Heritage Dictionary reminds us of the opening paragraphs of Samuel Johnson’s “Preface to A Dictionary of the English Language,” his weary description of the labors of the lexicographer:

It is the fate of those who toil at the lower employments of life, to be rather driven by the fear of evil, than attracted by the prospect of good; to be exposed to censure, without hope of praise; to be disgraced by miscarriage, or punished for neglect, where success would have been without applause, and diligence without reward.

Among these unhappy mortals is the writer of dictionaries; whom mankind has considered, not as the pupil, but the slave of science, the pionier of literature, doomed only to remove rubbish and clear obstructions from the paths of Learning and Genius, who press forward to conquest and glory, without bestowing a smile on the humble drudge that facilitates their progress.

Jost and his colleagues at Houghton Mifflin, as well as other publishers who have innovated with digital lexicography, have indeed been “pioneers of literature,” both in Johnson’s sense of laborers in advance of an army—“clearing obstructions from the paths of Learning”—and in the optimistic American sense of the word: trailblazers, adventurers and risk-takers. Colonizers, too: the metaphor that Johnson develops in his image of a wild terrain populated by intransigent barbarians is echoed in Ben Zimmer’s characterization of the “digital natives.” Of course, Jost does sound a lot more cheerful about Houghton’s profitable trailblazing in digital lexicography than Johnson did about the Dictionary of the English Language, and I suspect the Houghton team consisted of more than six amanuenses in a chilly attic.

Still, we in the academy need to be aware of how dictionaries have been, and how they now are, made. Those of us who publish scholarly monographs negotiate with publishers; as teachers we have regular conversations about textbooks and other tools with those publishers’ agents who stop by our offices. But we tend to take dictionaries for granted. Have you ever told a dictionary publisher what you want, what you need, or what you imagine a dictionary could be? Even among this professedly interested audience, how many of us consciously shopped for an online dictionary? Did you talk to your university library about its lexicographical purchases? How many of us formally assign a dictionary (other than the OED) to our students? We have been hearing a lot lately about digital humanities; let us remember that the dictionary is one of the most valuable tools of humanistic study. Johnson’s preface reminds us that it is easy to complain about a dictionary, and very hard to write one.

As for the present moment: Zimmer tells us that, “Dictionaries and thesauruses are being reinvented, and in the process are becoming more valuable resources than ever. This is a golden opportunity to build much better lexical references, ones that honor the legacy of the print tradition while taking full advantage of the benefits of online content and design.” I repeat his conclusion, and connect it to Jost’s more technical presentation, to emphasize that as scholars and teachers we need to participate in building those better lexical references, and not just as hobbyists sending antedatings to the Oxford English Dictionary, recommending the latest neologism to the folks at Collins or killing time on Urban Dictionary.

So how can we help? The papers by Ben Zimmer and Peter Sokolowski suggest some possibilities. The first thing we need to do is to have fun. Sokolowski has the inside track, so sign up for his Twitter feed! Root around on the Merriam-Webster site! Especially if you teach English Education students, make sure your library subscribes to the Visual Thesaurus, and have your students read its terrific and diverse columnists, who offer valuable pedagogical suggestions as well as amusing and instructive essays on usage and...