The Unidentified Authorizing Dictionary
Raymond S. Wise
identify a given word as being a non-word because it is "not in the
dictionary." I have seen it claimed, for example, that "ain't" is not
a word, and that "irregardless" is not a word, and I have read of (and
posted about) a case that came before the Missouri Supreme Court in
1846, *Edgar v. McCutchen,* in which the defendant Edgar attempted to
defend himself from the charge of slander by claiming that "the word
used to convey the slander was unknown to the English language and was
not understood by those to whom it was spoken." "Noting that McCutchen
sued Edgar for slander, the [court's] opinion said: 'The slanderous
charge was carnal knowledge of a mare and the word "f--k" was used to
convey the imputation.'" Those two quotes are from
Edgar lost the appeal.
While reading *Chasing the Sun: Dictionary Makers and the Dictionaries
They Made* by Jonathon Green, New York: Henry Holt and Company, (C)
1996, I came across an interesting term which is relevant to the
phenomenon: "the Unidentified Authorizing Dictionary," or "UAD."
[quote, from page 18 of Green]
The writer John Algeo, suggesting that only the Bible is similarly
revered, has coined the term "lexicographicolatry" for the concept.
That, again like the Bible, the book became "more venerated than
used...mattered little. A literate household without a dictionary (and
it mattered not what dictionary) was as badly exposed as a shoe
salesman without his pants." The whole concept is epitomized in the
use of a single, all-encompassing phrase: _the dictionary,_
characterized by Rosamund Moon as "UAD: the Unidentified Authorizing
Dictionary, usually referred to as 'the dictionary,' but very
occasionally as 'my dictionary.'" As McDavid notes, the actual
publisher--Random House, Merriam-Webster, OUP--is of marginal
interest. In such remarks as "Is it in the Dictionary?" or "Look it up
in the Dictionary" the dictionary is as monolithic an entity as is
"The Bible," and carries for believers a similar weight of intrinsic
authority.
[end quote]
Moon coined the term in "Objective or Objectionable: Ideological
Aspects of Dictionaries" in _English Language Research 3,_ Birmingham,
England, 1989. Green later quotes again from that work:
[quote, from page 457 of Green]
The mistake, suggests Rosamund Moon, is to believe in any myth of
authority in the first place. "The real subversiveness of dictionaries
does not lie in their condoning or even encouraging nonstandard uses,
as the critics of WNID3 [W3] claimed, but rather in their practice of
covertly promoting the personal views of lexicographers responsible
while overtly setting out those views as if fact. Dictionaries' claims
to 'authority' are hollow: the UAD [Unidentified Authorizing
Dictionary] is a myth."
[end quote]
--
Raymond S. Wise
Minneapolis, Minnesota USA
E-mail: mplsray @ yahoo . com
Schainbaum, Robert
> The writer John Algeo, suggesting that only the Bible is similarly
> revered, has coined the term "lexicographicolatry" for the concept.
This is like the graven image problem, right?
> The mistake, suggests Rosamund Moon, is to believe in any myth of
> authority in the first place. "The real subversiveness of dictionaries
> does not lie in their condoning or even encouraging nonstandard uses,
> as the critics of WNID3 [W3] claimed, but rather in their practice of
> covertly promoting the personal views of lexicographers responsible
> while overtly setting out those views as if fact. Dictionaries' claims
> to 'authority' are hollow: the UAD [Unidentified Authorizing
> Dictionary] is a myth."
This prejudice you have against dictionaries is unpatriotic and
willfully illiterate.
Kevin Plumley
pot, kettle and what?
Schainbaum, Robert
You could call me the pot or the kettle or the ironic son of a bitch.
Raymond S. Wise
"Eric Walker" <ewa...@owlcroft.com> wrote in message
news:rjnyxrebjypebsgpb...@news.cis.dfn.de...
> On 19 May 2002 09:23:25 -0700, Raymond S. Wise wrote:
>
> [... but I leave a lot in, lest it seem that no one could
> really be so loopy.]
> sense and then extending just that least bit farther, the bit
> that takes it not only beyond common sense, but beyond sense at
> all.
>
> "Lexicographicolatry" is indeed a pernicious disease (as well
> as a term no one will ever use again).
>
> But Rosamund Moon, and Jonathon [?] Green for quoting her, err
> marvelously. Consider:
>
> The real subversiveness of dictionaries does not lie in
> their condoning or even encouraging nonstandard uses, as the
> critics of WNID3 [W3] claimed, but rather in their practice
> of covertly promoting the personal views of lexicographers
> responsible while overtly setting out those views as if
>
> That may not be a record for unjustified and unsupported
> assumptions stated as fact per paragraph-word-count, but it
> must come close. When are you going to stop beating _your_
> spouse?
>
> What a farrago of nonsenses!
>
> "[C]ondoning or even encouraging nonstandard uses" is not
> "subversiveness"; well, look up any definition of
> "subversive"--I daresay that condoning (much less encouraging)
> nonstandard usages "subverts" English.
>
> Of "their practice of covertly promoting the personal views of
> lexicographers responsible while overtly setting out those
> example the OED, are famed for their literally scrupulous
> avoidance of personal view, while others, notably the WNID3
> [W3], are notorious for just that thing. To paint all the same
> color is to exhibit an ignorance far beyond any sense of the
> words "willful" and "ignorant." What fact-based bases are
> there for such extravagant and far-reaching generalities? The
> usual: none.
>
> But, finally, "Dictionaries' claims to 'authority' are hollow"
> is just stupid spleen. The OED meticulously records--pay note
> to that word, _records_--what has gone in in history regarding
> words. To challenge the OED's "authority," one would have to
> show that for a significant fraction of words examined, the
> makers have presented explanations of etymology, elaborations
> of sense, or representative citations that are significantly
> and, in some consistent way, incorrect--as established by, dare
> one say it, authority. Pfui.
>
> Those claims make us seek a word well beyond "assholery" to
> characterize them in the cases of sound works. On the other
> hand, in the case of garbage like Merriam products, the exact
> remarks do apply.
>
> It is the blind or willful inability of the propounders of such
> horseshit to distinguish sound research and meticulous fairness
> from politically correct posturing that--among other things--
> utterly invalidates their pronunciamentos.
>
>
"Eric Walker" <ewa...@owlcroft.com> wrote in message
news:rjnyxrebjypebsgpb...@news.cis.dfn.de...
> On 19 May 2002 09:23:25 -0700, Raymond S. Wise wrote:
>
> [... but I leave a lot in, lest it seem that no one could
> really be so loopy.]
> I am always amazed at the results one can get by taking common
> sense and then extending just that least bit farther, the bit
> that takes it not only beyond common sense, but beyond sense at
> all.
>
> "Lexicographicolatry" is indeed a pernicious disease (as well
> as a term no one will ever use again).
>
> But Rosamund Moon, and Jonathon [?] Green for quoting her, err
> marvelously. Consider:
>
> The real subversiveness of dictionaries does not lie in
> their condoning or even encouraging nonstandard uses, as the
> critics of WNID3 [W3] claimed, but rather in their practice
> of covertly promoting the personal views of lexicographers
> responsible while overtly setting out those views as if
> fact. Dictionaries' claims to 'authority' are hollow . . .
>
> That may not be a record for unjustified and unsupported
> assumptions stated as fact per paragraph-word-count, but it
> must come close. When are you going to stop beating _your_
> spouse?
>
> What a farrago of nonsenses!
>
> "[C]ondoning or even encouraging nonstandard uses" is not
> "subversiveness"; well, look up any definition of
> "subversive"--I daresay that condoning (much less encouraging)
> nonstandard usages "subverts" English.
>
> Of "their practice of covertly promoting the personal views of
> lexicographers responsible while overtly setting out those
> views as if fact," what can one say? Some dictionaries, for
> example the OED, are famed for their literally scrupulous
> avoidance of personal view, while others, notably the WNID3
> [W3], are notorious for just that thing. To paint all the same
> color is to exhibit an ignorance far beyond any sense of the
> words "willful" and "ignorant." What fact-based bases are
> there for such extravagant and far-reaching generalities? The
> usual: none.
>
> But, finally, "Dictionaries' claims to 'authority' are hollow"
> is just stupid spleen. The OED meticulously records--pay note
> to that word, _records_--what has gone in in history regarding
> words. To challenge the OED's "authority," one would have to
> show that for a significant fraction of words examined, the
> makers have presented explanations of etymology, elaborations
> of sense, or representative citations that are significantly
> and, in some consistent way, incorrect--as established by, dare
> one say it, authority. Pfui.
>
> Those claims make us seek a word well beyond "assholery" to
> characterize them in the cases of sound works. On the other
> hand, in the case of garbage like Merriam products, the exact
> remarks do apply.
>
> It is the blind or willful inability of the propounders of such
> horseshit to distinguish sound research and meticulous fairness
> from politically correct posturing that--among other things--
> utterly invalidates their pronunciamentos.
>
There are two meanings of the word "authority" as applied to a person which
are relevant to the current discussion:
(1) A person who has been given the power to exercise power over others. For
the purposes of this post, I will refer to this as "power authority."
(2) An expert. For the purposes of this post, I will refer to this as
"knowledge authority."
Another relevant meaning of "authority," "a book to which one turns for
guidance," can be the work of either type of authority given above. I will
refer to such works as a "power-authority work" and a "knowledge-authority
work," respectively.
Examples of the difference between the two types of authority:
The Bible is a power-authority work. A dictionary of New Testament Greek is
a knowledge-authority work.
A county sheriff is a power authority. A forensic pathologist is a knowledge
authority.
On matters of disputed usage, the dictionary of the Académie Française is a
power-authority work. The French dictionary commonly known as the *Grand
Robert* is a knowledge-authority work.
On matters of disputed usage, there are no power-authority works in English
except for *The Unidentified Authorizing Dictionary,* which is mythical.
Now, what did Jonathon Green and Rosamund Moon intend when they used the
term "authority"? By using the word "authorizing" when speaking of *The
Unidentified Authorizing Dictionary,* Moon was clearly referring to power
authority only: "authorizing" is, as far as I can tell, meaningful only when
used with a power-authority work.
It is not necessary to deduce what Green meant: In the context in which he
discussed the matter, he clearly meant power authority. It was while
discussing the difference between American dictionaries and those of Great
Britain that he made a clear distinction between the tendency of American
dictionaries to be taken for power authorities by the American reader while
the British reader does not generally take his dictionaries to be so. The
distinction in practice led to popular dictionaries in America, scholarly
dictionaries--what in my temporary terminology equal knowledge-authority
works--in Great Britain, with popular dictionaries essentially playing
catch-up in the latter country.
The Oxford English Dictionary and Webster's Third both belong to the
tradition of scholarly dictionaries, by Green's terminology, and to
knowledge-authority works, by my temporary terminology. Webster's
Collegiate, the American Heritage Dictionary, and Microsoft Encarta belong
to the tradition of popular dictionaries. They are taken by many Americans
to be power authority works, and I am of the opinion that the sales
departments of these dictionaries do not mind that they are seen to be so.
However, it is also my opinion that no modern dictionary which is the
product of a committee and has linguists on staff ever ends up being
anything but a variation of a knowledge-authority work. I consider any
pretense to prescriptivism in such modern dictionaries to be just that--a
pretense.
This is not to say that knowledge authority works are entirely free of
prejudice, by the way. On the subject of modern dictionaries, Richard
Lederer once made an interesting observation. In one of his works, a usage
guide--and I am paraphrasing here--Lederer pointed out that modern
dictionaries base their view of what is standard usage on the usage of
"educated speakers." The problem, as Lederer saw it, is that the makers of
those dictionaries are likely to think of "educated speakers" as being
people like themselves. This view may very well distort their findings.
To summarize: the UAD, which does not actually exist, is a power-authority
work. Many Americans mistakenly take modern popular dictionaries as being
examples of the UAD, but in truth such dictionaries are knowledge-authority
works. Furthermore, if Green is correct, the British are much less inclined
to lexicographicolatry than are Americans.
Michael J Hardy
> The writer John Algeo, suggesting that only the Bible is similarly
> revered, has coined the term "lexicographicolatry" for the concept.
I think "lexicographolatry" (without the letters "ic") is more
euphonious and perhaps otherwise better. -- Mike Hardy