The Cambridge Companion to English Dictionaries (Cambridge Companions to Literature)

Cambridge University Press, 9/24/2020
EAN 9781108451680, ISBN10: 1108451683

Paperback, 382 pages, 22.9 x 15.2 x 2.2 cm
Language: English
Originally published in English

How did a single genre of text have the power to standardise the English language across time and region, rival the Bible in notions of authority, and challenge our understanding of objectivity, prescription, and description? Since the first monolingual dictionary appeared in 1604, the genre has sparked evolution, innovation, devotion, plagiarism, and controversy. This comprehensive volume presents an overview of essential issues pertaining to dictionary style and content and a fresh narrative of the development of English dictionaries throughout the centuries. Essays on the regional and global nature of English lexicography (dictionary making) explore its power in standardising varieties of English and defining nations seeking independence from the British Empire: from Canada to the Caribbean. Leading scholars and lexicographers historically contextualise an array of dictionaries and pose urgent theoretical and methodological questions relating to their role as tools of standardisation, prestige, power, education, literacy, and national identity.

Introduction Sarah Ogilvie
Part I. Issues in English Lexicography
2. How a word gets into an English Dictionary Kory Stamper
3. Technology and English dictionaries Michael Rundell, Miloš Jakubíček and Vojtěch Kovář
4. Diachronic and synchronic English dictionaries Judy Pearsall
5. Description and prescription
the roles of English dictionaries Edward Finegan
6. European cross-currents in English lexicography Giovanni Iamartino
7. English slang dictionaries Michael Adams
Part II. English Dictionaries throughout the Centuries
8. A dictionary ecosystem
four centuries of English lexicography John Considine
Seventeenth-Century English Dictionaries
Hard Words
9. Cawdrey, Coote, and 'Hard Vsual English Wordes' Roderick W. McConchie
10. Seventeenth- and eighteenth-century English lexicography Rebecca Shapiro
Eighteenth-Century English Dictionaries
Prescriptivism and Completeness
11. Recording the most proper and significant words Allen Reddick
12. Samuel Johnson and the 'first English dictionary' Jack Lynch
Nineteenth-Century English Dictionaries
Descriptivism
13. The making of American English dictionaries Michael Adams
14. The Oxford English Dictionary Sarah Ogilvie
Twentieth and Twenty-First Century Dictionaries
15. The English period dictionaries Robert E. Lewis and Antonette diPaolo Healey
16. English-as-a-foreign-language lexicography Howard Jackson
17. Electronic dictionaries Orin Hargraves
18. English dictionaries and corpus linguistics Patrick Hanks
19. Natural language processing in lexicography C. Paul Cook
Part III. Dictionaries of English and Related Varieties
20. Dictionaries of Canadian English Stefan Dollinger
21. Australian lexicography
defining a nation Pam Peters
22. New Zealand's lexicographic legacy John Macalister
23. Hobson-Jobson and dictionaries of Indian English Traci Nagle
24. South African English dictionaries
from colonial to post-colonial Jill Wolvaardt
25. Dictionaries of Caribbean English
agents of standardization Jeannette Allsopp
26. Dictionary of American Regional English George Goebel
27. The Scottish dictionary tradition Maggie Scott.