How do British and American attitudes to dictionaries

differ?
blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2014/02/british-american-attitudes-dictionaries/
Lynne Murphy
For 20 years, 14 of those in England, Ive been giving lectures about the social
power afforded to dictionaries, exhorting my students to discard the belief that
dictionaries are infallible authorities. The students laugh at my stories about nuns
who told me that aint couldnt be a word because it wasnt in the (school)
dictionary and about people who talk about the Dictionary in the same way that
they talk about the Bible. But after a while I realized that nearly all the examples in
the lecture were, like me, American. At first, I could use the excuse that Id not
been in the UK long enough to encounter good examples of dictionary jingoism.
But British examples did not present themselves over the next decade, while
American ones kept streaming in. Rather than laughing with recognition, were my
students simply laughing with amusement at my ridiculous teachers? Is the notion
of dictionary-as-Bible less compelling in a culture where only about 17% of the
population consider religion to be important to their lives? (Compare the U.S.,
where 3 in 10 people believe that the Bible provides literal truth.) Ive started to
wonder: how different are British and American attitudes toward dictionaries, and
to what extent can those differences be attributed to the two nations relationships
with the written word?
Our constitutions are a case in point. The United States Constitution is a written
document that is extremely difficult to change; the most recent amendment took
202 years to ratify. We didnt inherit this from the British, whose constitution is
uncodified its an aggregation of acts, treaties, and tradition. If you want to freak
an American out, tell them that you live in a country where [n]o Act of Parliament
can be unconstitutional, for the law of the land knows not the word or the idea.
Americans are generally satisfied that their constitution which is just about
seven times longer than this blog post is as relevant today as it was when first
drafted and last amended. We like it so much that a holiday to celebrate it was
instituted in 2004.
Dictionaries and the law
But with such importance placed on the written word of law comes the problem of
how to interpret those words. And for a culture where the best word is the written
word, a written authority on how to interpret words is sought. Between 2000 and
2010, 295 dictionary definitions were cited in 225 U.S. Supreme Court opinions. In
contrast, I could find only four UK Supreme court decisions between 2009 and
now that mention dictionaries. American judicial reliance on dictionaries leaves
lexicographers and law scholars uneasy; most dictionaries aim to describe
common usage, rather than prescribe the best interpretation for a word.
Furthermore, dictionaries differ; something as slight as the presence or absence of
a the or a usually might have a great impact on a literalists interpretation of a law.
And yet U.S. Supreme Court dictionary citation has risen by about ten times since
the 1960s.
No particular dictionary is Americas Biblebut that doesnt stop the worship of
dictionaries, just as the existence of many Bible translations hasnt stopped people
citing scripture in English. The name Webster is not trademarked, and so several
publishers use it on their dictionary titles because of its traditional authority. When
asked last summer how a single man, Noah Webster, could have such a profound
effect on American English, I missed the chance to say: it wasnt the man; it was
the books the written word. His Blue-Backed Speller, a textbook used in
American schools for over 100 years, has been called a secular catechism to the
nation-state. At a time when much was unsure, Webster provided standards (not
all of which, it must be said, were accepted) for the new English of a new nation.
American dictionaries, regardless of publisher, have continued in that vein. British
lexicography from Johnsons dictionary to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) has
excelled in recording literary language from a historical viewpoint. In more recent
decades British lexicography has taken a more international perspective with
serious innovations and industry in dictionaries for learners. American
lexicographical innovation, in contrast, has largely been in making dictionaries
more user-friendly for the average native speaker.
Local attitudes: marketing dictionaries
By and large, lexicographers on either side of the Atlantic are lovely people who
want to describe the language in a way thats useful to their readers. But a look at
the way dictionaries are marketed betrays their local histories, the local attitudes
toward dictionaries, and assumptions about who is using them. One big general-
purpose British dictionarys cover tells us it is The Language Lovers Dictionary.
Another is The unrivalled dictionary for word lovers.
Now compare some hefty American dictionaries, whose covers advertise expert
guidance on correct usage and The Clearest Advice on Avoiding Offensive
Language; The Best Guidance on Grammar and Usage. One has a badge telling
us it is The Official Dictionary of the ASSOCIATED PRESS. Not one of the British
dictionaries comes close to such claims of authority. (The closest is the Oxford
tagline The worlds most trusted dictionaries, which doesnt make claims about
what the dictionary does, but about how it is received.) None of the American
dictionary marketers talk about loving words. They think youre unsure about
language and want some help. There may be a story to tell here about social class
and dictionaries in the two countries, with the American publishers marketing to
the aspirational, and the British ones to the arrived. And maybe its aspirationalism
and the attendant insecurity that goes with it that makes America the land of the
codified rule, the codified meaning. By putting rules and meanings onto paper, we
make them available to all. As an American, I kind of like that. As a lexicographer,
it worries me that dictionary users dont always recognize that English is just too
big and messy for a dictionary to pin down.

Lynne Murphy blogs about differences between American and British English at
http://separatedbyacommonlanguage.blogspot.com and on Twitter at @lynneguist.

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The opinions and other information contained in OxfordWords blog posts and
comments do not necessarily reflect the opinions or positions of Oxford University
Press.