An Introduction to Applied Linguistics

Oxford English Dictionary
and Webster’s third edition each
contains less than 500,000 words. ‘For the most part what to leave out will not be in
contention. There are, for example, more than 6 million registered chemical com -
pounds: the great majority of these will not be selected. But there are seriously
contentious areas such as the obscenities, those taboo words for sexual and excretory
activities, and their inclusion arouses anger and must now be treated with care or
relegated to specialist dictionaries of slang even though such reticence is a fairly
modern phenomenon’ (Green 1996: 24).
Their targets may change over time (thus the conservative outrage at the changes
in the third edition of Webster have been replaced by current ultra-liberal demands,
notably of the politically correct variety in relation to terms of racist and gender
abuse, insisting that that terms such as ‘nigger’ and ‘Jew’ should be excluded. For the
applied linguist there is need to balance the reality of actual language use and at the
same time to be sensitive to the attitudes towards that use since attitudes are part of
that context of use. As Green writes:
[T]he lexicographer is in an invidious position. Damned if he (or she) does and
damned if he (or she) doesn’t. The role of the dictionary-maker is to reflect the
language, which in turn is a reflection of the culture in which it exists. If the
culture in part is racist, sexist and in other ways politically incorrect, then so too
in part must the dictionaries be. The best they can offer is some parenthetical
declaration that a given word or phrase, in a given definition or usage, is so.
Otherwise, if they start censoring out such material, of what real worth can they
be considered.
(1996: 379–80)
Selection in a different sense can be an indication of the extent of separation of a
language variety from its origins. Thus the first dictionary of American English
appeared in 1828 (Noah Webster) and the first of Australian English in 1981. There
are dictionaries of New Zealand, Canadian, South-African English, Caribbean
English, Singaporean English, Indian English but not of German English, Mexican
English and so on. At least if there are, then they are essentially lists of local terms. It
appears that a dictionary is a symbol of separation. Which explains why there is no
German or Mexican since their separation is otherwise declared.
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