Book contents
- Standardising English
- Standardising English
- Copyright page
- Contents
- List of Figures, Maps and Tables
- List of Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Part I Norms and Margins: Ideology and Concepts
- Part II Norms and Margins: A Historical Perspective
- 4 Norms and Rules in the History of Grammar: French and English Handbooks in the Seventeenth Century
- 5 The End of Toleration? Language on the Margins in Samuel Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language
- 6 Eighteenth-Century Pronouncing Dictionaries: Reflecting Usage or Setting Their Own Standard?
- 7 Setting a Standard: Authors and Sources in the OED
- 8 Conflicting Linguistic Norms in the Letters of Virginian Soldiers during the American Civil War
- 9 Correcting English: Josephine Turck Baker (1873–1942) and the Early American Usage Guide Tradition
- Part III Norms and Margins: Moving into the Twenty-First Century
- Author Index
- Subject Index
- References
5 - The End of Toleration? Language on the Margins in Samuel Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language
from Part II - Norms and Margins: A Historical Perspective
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 March 2018
Book contents
- Standardising English
- Standardising English
- Copyright page
- Contents
- List of Figures, Maps and Tables
- List of Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Part I Norms and Margins: Ideology and Concepts
- Part II Norms and Margins: A Historical Perspective
- 4 Norms and Rules in the History of Grammar: French and English Handbooks in the Seventeenth Century
- 5 The End of Toleration? Language on the Margins in Samuel Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language
- 6 Eighteenth-Century Pronouncing Dictionaries: Reflecting Usage or Setting Their Own Standard?
- 7 Setting a Standard: Authors and Sources in the OED
- 8 Conflicting Linguistic Norms in the Letters of Virginian Soldiers during the American Civil War
- 9 Correcting English: Josephine Turck Baker (1873–1942) and the Early American Usage Guide Tradition
- Part III Norms and Margins: Moving into the Twenty-First Century
- Author Index
- Subject Index
- References
Summary
For Lord Chesterfield in 1754, Johnson’s dictionary was to emblematize the end of both 'toleration', and naturalization. The time for both was past, he declared; Johnson’s work was, in this and other respects, to be firmly distinguished form the ‘mere word-books’ which, in Chesterfield’s opinion, previous English lexicographers had produced. Johnson, as the ‘Preface’ to the published Dictionary of 1755 confirms, had indeed engaged with the remit of dictionary-making as a means of repulsing ‘unwanted foreigners’ – even if such engagement would, in reality, not be entirely in alignment with Chesterfield’s expectations of prescriptive (and proscriptive) process. This chapter examines the cross-currents of prescriptive and descriptive method in Johnson’s work, looking in detail at his engagement both with normativity and uncertainty, with censure and with the flux a living language must necessarily evince (and which the dictionary-maker might, in turn, record). Examining Johnson’s treatment of loanwords, as well as the projected regularization of spelling (also advocated by Chesterfield ), it focuses on Johnson’s interest in power as topos, and the stated limits of its legitimate use.
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- Standardising EnglishNorms and Margins in the History of the English Language, pp. 89 - 105Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2018
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