Dictionaries are compiled by people, they are made of discrete bits; lexicographical is the word for compiling dictionariesPeople often think the dictionary/lexicographers are more like cops, than warm snugly things; deciding what words are good or bad is not easy or fun.
The fisherman is metaphor for work of lexicographers - it's like casting a net and seeing what marvelous words can be found.
Why do people want lexicographers to be more like traffic cops and direct language? Because dictionary has not changed for a long time and isn't really the best format.
What about computers? They don't do much other than speed up process of compiling dictionaries, the end result remains the same. The dictionary is Victorian design with modern propulsion. What about online dictionaries? They must be different. Rather, they replicate almost all problems of print except search-ability... which takes away one advantage of print: serendipity, finding things you aren't looking for because what you are looking for is difficult to find.
When people find a word that's not in the dictionary, they think it must be a bad word rather than it's a bad dictionary. Therefore, paper is the enemy of words. The book is not the best shape for the dictionary. Artifical restraint leads to a constrained world view. We should study all words rather than just the ones that make it into dictionaries.
Lexicography is more about material science, examining the tolerance of materials that are used to build the structure of expression. How do I know this word is real? If words are a tool, how can you say one tool (word) is better than another? It's just the right tool (word) for the job. If you love a word, use it, and that makes it real. Being in the dictionary is an artifical distinction that doesn't validate a word in any way. If people worry less about control and more about description, then the English language becomes a beautiful mobile and any time you use a word in a new context or verb it you- make mobile move; English is pushed into a new position or direction and it's beautiful.
There are 17 million books in Library of Congress, half in English, if only half of those had one word not in dictionary, it'd be two abridged dictionaries. That doesn't even account for new words on the internet, blogs, or the tendency for a word to take more than one meaning for itself. Therefore, shouldn't we all be able to find new words?
We could make the dictionary the whole language, rather than use it as a symbol of the whole English language, but we need a format that works better than the constraining paper book.
You forgot the period at the beginning of the first sentence:
ReplyDelete"Dictionaries are compiled by people, they are made of discrete bits; lexicographical is the word for compiling dictionaries"
Also I think that the word should have been lexicography rather than lexicographical.
This sentence:
"Because dictionary has not changed for a long time and isn't really the best format."
doesn't really make sense to me. Maybe saying "Because dictionaries have not changed for a long time and aren't in the best format" would have been clearer.
In this sentence:
"People often think the dictionary/lexicographers are more like cops, than warm snugly things; deciding what words are good or bad is not easy or fun."
The comma after "cops" is unnecessary and makes it difficult to understand.
You managed to capture all of the important parts of this speech good job.