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Books > Language & Literature > Language & linguistics > Semantics (meaning) > Lexicography
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Samuel Johnson and the Journey into Words (Hardcover)
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Samuel Johnson and the Journey into Words (Hardcover)
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Popular readings of Johnson as a dictionary-maker often see him as
a writer who both laments and attempts to control the state of the
language. Lynda Mugglestone looks at the range of Johnson's
writings on, and the complexity of his thinking about, language and
lexicography. She shows how these reveal him probing problems not
just of meaning and use but what he considered the related issues
of control, obedience, and justice, as well as the difficulties of
power when exerted over the 'sea of words'. She examines his
attitudes to language change, loan words, spelling, history, and
authority, describing, too, the evolution of his ideas about the
nature, purpose, and methods of lexicography, and shows how these
reflect his own and others' thinking about politics, culture, and
society. The book offers a careful reassessment of Johnson's
prescriptive practice, examining in detail his commitment to
evidence, and the uses to which this might be put.
Dictionary-making, for Johnson, came to be seen as a long and
difficult voyage round the world of the English language. While
such images play their own role in lexicographical tradition,
Johnson would, as this volume explores, also make them very much
his own in a range of distinctive, and illuminating, ways.
Johnson's metaphors invite us to consider-and reconsider-the
processes by which a dictionary might be made and the kind of
destination it might seek, as well as the state of language that
might be reached by such endeavours. For Johnson, where the
dictionary-maker might go, and what should be accomplished along
the way, can often seem to raise pertinent and perhaps troubling
questions. Lynda Mugglestone's generous, wide-ranging account casts
new light on Johnson's life in language and provides a convincing
reassessment of his impact on English culture, the making of
dictionaries, and their role in a nation's identity. She ends by
considering the power of Johnson's legacy and the degree to which
his work continues to guide our attitudes to language and what we
variously expect dictionaries to be and do.
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