arrangement of items (such as his statistical
analysis of and generalizations about email) are
necessarily his own. Another author might have put
his or her thumb in di¤erent parts of the pie and
pulled out di¤erent plums. The language and
behaviour of discussion lists, news groups, and
chat rooms di¤er significantly, and might perhaps
have benefited from having their own chapters. The
name of Jakob Nielsen1 who has done so much
influential work on web design and usability, was
curiously absent from the bibliography. And surely
any study of early Internet language should at least
pay lip service to that prototypical newbie and kool
dood wannabee hacker B1FF, whose spirit lives on
in the warez communities and the pseudo hacker
language l33t, and has resurfaced in the current
flood of SMS texting, (which Crystal does cover in
some detail) (See Glossary).
But these are minor quibbles. Crystal faces the
diªcult feat in Language and the Internet of having
to appease a dual audience: linguists who may be
unfamiliar with the Internet, and Internet
enthusiasts who know little about linguistics. This
he pulls o¤ extremely well, and the heady blend of
linguistics and technology is o¤set by just the right
portion of anecdote and whimsy, making for an
absorbing read regardless of which direction one
takes to approach it. That said, don’t be fooled by
the occasional refreshing lack of gravitas. On no
account should this book be dismissed as a curious
‘popsci’ compendium of informative and
entertaining tidbits. On the contrary, it is a serious
and essential linguistic record of these early days of
‘computer mediated language’, and one that we
would all do well to read.
Glossary
B1FF For a brief history of the B1FF phenomenon
see http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/jargon/html/
entry/B1FF.html
emoticon One or more ASCII symbols used in text
to indicate an emotional state, such as the rapidly
disappearing smiley :—) and its kin.
ICT Internet and Communications Technology.
IRC Internet Relay Chat—a chat network that
allows users to converse in real time.
l33t Read as ‘élite’. A pseudo hacker’s language—
see http://www.cscentral. com/features/l33t/
LISTSERV A well-known proprietary brand of
software used for management of email discussion
lists.
MOO s A MOO is a MUD which is ‘Object
Oriented’, that is, with a graphic rather than a text
user interface.
Reviews
MUD s Variously known as Multi-User Dungeons,
Multi-User Dimensions, or Multi-User Domains.
These combine real-time chat forums and
adventure games, have multiple ‘locations’, and
often allow players to build or ‘extend’ the ‘world’ in
which they are located.
newbie A ‘new boy’ in a chat or discussion group;
an inexperienced user.
SMS Short Messaging Service (aka ‘texting’).
USENET ‘Users’ Network’, a bulletin board system
hosted mainly by UNIX machines and home to
many ‘news groups’.
warez Referring to the pirating of software that has
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been (illegally) stripped of copyright protection.
Note
1 See http://www.useit.com/
The reviewer
Martin Eayrs is a freelance consultant with a
particular interest in ICT and publishing. He is
editor of IATEFL Issues and administrator of the
Materials Development Association (MATSDA ) and
Modern English Teacher web sites. He is also
production controller for the MATSDA journal Folio,
and produces teaching materials for a number of
web-based publishing projects. From 1980 to 1999
he lived in Argentina, where he published a
magazine for Latin American teachers of English:
ELT News & Views. He is the author of Computer
English (Penguin 2001), and in daylight works as a
part-time language and study skills tutor at the
University of Essex.
Email: martin@eayrs.com
Macmillan English Dictionary for Advanced
Learners
M. Rundell (Editor-in-chief)
Macmillan Education 2002. 1,692 pp. with
cd-rom. £16.99
isbn 0 333 96668 6
It’s not every day that we welcome a new kid on the
block (the definition, according to this dictionary,
being ‘someone who has just started a new
activity’), but that’s what this is; a rare artefact, a
brand new dictionary for advanced learners, a new
player in the monolingual dictionary field, designed
to rival flagship editions from Cambridge University
Press, Cobuild, Longman, and Oxford University
Press. The question now is how to react to this
brash newcomer—though with Editor-in-chief
421
Michael Rundell, Associate editor Gwyneth Fox,
and Michael Hoey as Chief adviser, this child
arrives with a wealth of experience and expertise at
the helm (definition ‘in charge, or in the position of
a leader’).
Open any double-page spread of the Macmillan
English Dictionary for Advanced Learners (MED ), and
some things strike you straight away: headwords
are printed either in black or in red; notes, of
various kinds, are set on a light red (= pink)
background, some of the red headwords have one
or more stars against them, and the whole is clear
and easy to read. Between ‘m’ and ‘n’ there are 22
which the clearest examples should be given. Since
words outside the core are in many ways less
central to the language (and less likely to have
many variations), they only need clear and easily
accessible definitions, so entries for them are
shorter.
A closer look at the double-page spread on which
‘new kid on the block’ appears (pp. 784–5) gives us
a clearer picture of what MED is like. So the word
‘kickstand’, for example, which falls outside the
core, is printed in black, and is explained, with no
example sentence, as ‘a metal bar that holds a
bicycle or MOTORCYCLE upright when it is not

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one-page articles on di¤erent aspects of language moving’. The noun ‘kid’, on the other hand, is a
awareness. There are 11 full-colour pages three-star red entry (which means it is a very high
illustrating cars, plants, clothes, the kitchen, the frequency word). It is given two explanations (child
oªce, etc. and young goat) with examples (There was a group of
kids playing football in the street). Subsidiary
MED comprises over 100,000 references, with
meanings are also given (e.g. young adult—
30,000 idioms and phrases. It uses a defining
example: a bunch of middle class kids, or leather
vocabulary (listed on pages 1,677–89) of under
made from a young goat’s skin—example: elegant
2,500 words. Where a word outside this list is used
kid gloves). Entries are also given, as we have seen,
in a definition it is capitalized, so that students can
for ‘new kid on the block’ and ‘kid’s stu¤ or kid
then look it up elsewhere in the dictionary.
stu¤’. Apart from its two main meanings, the verb
Definitions have been based on a ‘World English
‘kid’ has a number of lexical phrases, such as
Corpus’ of 200,000,000 words, which consists of
‘just/only kidding, kid you not’, etc. For the verb
the Bloomsbury Corpus of English, with additional
‘kill’, a separate pink-shaded box describes ‘other
material developed especially for the dictionary
ways of saying kill’ (e.g. ‘murder’, ‘assassinate’,
(including a learner error corpus). The dictionary
‘slaughter’, ‘massacre’, ‘wipe out’, ‘exterminate’,
editors have worked with software developed in
‘execute’, ‘put to death’, ‘commit suicide’, and ‘put
partnership with the University of Brighton’s
down’/‘put to sleep’).
Information and Technology Research
Institute. Three features on the previous double-page spread
(pp. 782–3) are also worth mentioning. For ‘key’
In his Introduction, the MED Editor-in-chief Rundell
(noun) the heading starts with a pink-backed menu
draws attention to a ‘dual track’ approach, seen as
of five di¤erent possibilities (1 for opening/locking,
a ‘major innovation’ of the dictionary (p. x), which
2 for achieving something, 3 on computer/
involves separating out ‘core vocabulary’ from the
instrument, 4 in music, 5 list of meanings/
rest. This core vocabulary in the dictionary (some
answers). Users can then go straight to the
7,500 words) comprises the most frequent words
numbered definition and example they are
found in the corpus which the MED editors used for
interested in, rather than having to read through
their research. These are words which students
the whole entry. Where ‘key’ is given as an adjective,
may not only wish to decode (that is, find meanings
another pink-tinted box lists ‘words frequently used
for) but also encode (that is, check their behaviour,
with key’ (nouns: element, factor, feature, figure,
so that they can use them with confidence). That
issue, point, role, word). Entries for both ‘keyboard’
is why some words in the dictionary are in red
and ‘kick’ have accompanying two-colour
type: they are core vocabulary words, and their
illustrations. Elsewhere in the dictionary there are
relative frequency is indicated by one, two, or three
boxes for notes on usage and metaphor.
stars.
In the 22-part Language Awareness section there
The argument on which the dictionary is based is
are articles on a variety of topics. ‘Metaphor’, by
that it is the core words which have the most
Rosamund Moon, has the following headings:
interesting variations of meaning and behaviour
‘What is a metaphor?’, ‘How do metaphors work?’,
(both collocational, and in their grammatical
‘Metaphors we live by’, ‘Idioms and similes’,
patterning), and that therefore these are the words
‘Reading about metaphor’, ‘About metaphor
which should be most carefully explained, and for

422 Reviews
boxes’, ‘Thinking further about metaphor’,
‘Metaphors in other languages’, and ‘Other
metaphors in the dictionary’. There are similar
articles about topics such as Computer words,
Pragmatics, Spoken discourse, Sensitivity:
avoiding o¤ence, and British and American
English.
Tucked inside the dictionary’s back cover is a cd-
rom , with an accompanying small manual. The cd-
rom provides the dictionary, together with some
extra software which allows the users to access the
dictionary, even when they are working in other
applications. It has recordings of British and
American pronunciations of the words, and allows
users to record their own pronunciations so as to
compare them with those of native speakers. The
cd-rom has various search options, and also
allows the users to make their own notes, and
create their own vocabulary lists.
It is clear, to this reviewer at least, that MED will be
a substantial presence in the dictionary field. It has
obvious merits, being easy to read, with clear
guidance to di¤erent meanings (see the reference
to ‘key’ above), and excellent usage notes (see ‘kill’
above). The red/black distinction between core
vocabulary and ‘the rest’ has an attractive face
validity to it, at the very least, and the ‘words
frequently used with’ boxes (see ‘key’ above) will be
helpful to many users. MED is conscious of
contemporaneous language, too. Quite apart from
phrases such as ‘new kid on the block’, there are
also entries such as (p. xiv) 24/7 (infml [= informal]
all the time: He thinks about her 24/7), ‘i¤y’ (spoken 1
unlikely to happen: DOUBTFUL: It’s still pretty i¤y
about us going to live in the Algarve) on p. 711 and,
believe it or not, on p. 1,535, Trekkie (informal a FAN
of the television programme Star Trek).
Some of this is not new. Other dictionaries have
usage notes. Other dictionaries have two- and full-
colour illustrations, for instance, and the idea of
marking out high frequency words has been done
before—though not in the same ‘dual-track’ way.
However, one of my concerns is that marking the
relative frequency of a word (taken here,
presumably, to be a ‘grapheme’, or collection of
letters between two spaces) does not tell you of the
relative frequency of the di¤erent lexemes (i.e. the
di¤erent meanings of the word). While I like the
many boxes of ‘words frequently used with …’ I
miss the relative frequency charts provided by the
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, for
example. While I am most impressed by the usage
notes for ‘kill’, for instance, I am disappointed not
Reviews
to find a forward reference to them in the entries for
‘assassinate’ or ‘assassination’. And will someone
tell me, please, why publishers persist with
computer apartheid: PC good, Apple Mac bad? My
Virtual PC program (on my Mac) could just about
handle the cd-rom guide, but balked at the whole
dictionary. The economic argument just won’t
work—except to make publishers look mean and
petty-minded. Apple Mac users may be in the
minority, but we are a significant minority,
especially within the EFL profession. Publishers
ignore us at their peril (definition, ‘used for saying
that doing something is dangerous or could cause
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serious problems’).
Where was I? Oh yes. Only time will tell whether
MED is the very first dictionary to reach for in the
classroom. It is through constant use that its
strengths and weaknesses will become more
apparent. But personal preference plays a part, too.
For my money, the design here is attractive. The red
and black di¤erentiation works well—though there
may be a danger of overdosing (informal to eat,
drink, read, watch, etc., too much of anything) on
pink. There’s an energy to some of the definitions
and examples here, and the use of contemporary
English in this British version (there is a separate
American English edition) is attractive—though
much will depend on how often MED is updated in
the future. All in all, then, schools, teachers, and
students should welcome this new pretender
(definition: ‘someone who claims to be the king,
queen or leader of a country when another person
holds this position’); it’s got a lot going for it
(definition? ‘Oh come on, look it up for yourself and
see how well you like the Macmillan English
Dictionary for Advanced Learners!’).
The reviewer
Jeremy Harmer taught in the UK and in Mexico,
where he was for four years the director of the
Guadalajara branch of the Instituto Anglo-
Mexicano de Cultura. He has trained teachers and
o¤ered seminars all over the world. He has also
written and co-written a number of coursebooks,
supplementary materials, readers, and
methodology titles, including How to Teach English
(1998) and The Practice of English Language
Teaching (3rd edn. 2001). He is the General Editor
of the Longman methodology list, and hosts a
teacher development web site at
www.eltforum.com.
Email: jeremy.harmer@btinternet.com
423