The Development of Johnson's Dictionary
The Development of Johnson’s Dictionary and its Consequences
In 1755 Samuel Johnson’s A Dictionary of the English Language (DEL) was published and with it a change in language was brought about. It contained 40,000 entries, each with etymology, pronunciation keys, definitions and example quotes to demonstrate the word in use. All of this was compiled by one man over seven years, a feat in itself. Although not the first ever dictionary; Bailey released the Universal Etymological English Dictionary in 1721 and Cawdrey published the first dictionary of hard words in 1604, it soon became the arbitrator on English language (Willinsky, 1994). This paper will look at why The Dictionary was developed, focusing upon social issues regarding language during this period; Johnson’s personal motivation in writing The Dictionary; the authors he chose to use as sources in his writing and the words that Johnson thought to be vulgar. It will then further look at the consequences The Dictionary had upon language at that time and in future years.
Towards the end of the seventeenth century there was a feeling of unease about the direction that the English language was moving. The lack of a standard for people to adhere to was thought to have caused a corruption in the language and that for some time it had been steadily going down (Baugh, 1993). It was felt that there was a need to ‘fix’ the language, to stabilise it and to create a form that would in some sense be permanent which Swift, an active commentator on the English language, further agreed with in his Proposal for Correcting, Improving, and Ascertaining the English Tongue. Here he stated that the English tongue needed the most improvement, that the corruptions that had appeared in our language had not equalled its refinements. This prescriptive approach was centred on one word: ‘ascertainment’, which was defined by Dr Johnson as ‘a settled rule; an established standard’ (DEL, 1773). This demonstrates how in
In 1755 Samuel Johnson’s A Dictionary of the English Language (DEL) was published and with it a change in language was brought about. It contained 40,000 entries, each with etymology, pronunciation keys, definitions and example quotes to demonstrate the word in use. All of this was compiled by one man over seven years, a feat in itself. Although not the first ever dictionary; Bailey released the Universal Etymological English Dictionary in 1721 and Cawdrey published the first dictionary of hard words in 1604, it soon became the arbitrator on English language (Willinsky, 1994). This paper will look at why The Dictionary was developed, focusing upon social issues regarding language during this period; Johnson’s personal motivation in writing The Dictionary; the authors he chose to use as sources in his writing and the words that Johnson thought to be vulgar. It will then further look at the consequences The Dictionary had upon language at that time and in future years.
Towards the end of the seventeenth century there was a feeling of unease about the direction that the English language was moving. The lack of a standard for people to adhere to was thought to have caused a corruption in the language and that for some time it had been steadily going down (Baugh, 1993). It was felt that there was a need to ‘fix’ the language, to stabilise it and to create a form that would in some sense be permanent which Swift, an active commentator on the English language, further agreed with in his Proposal for Correcting, Improving, and Ascertaining the English Tongue. Here he stated that the English tongue needed the most improvement, that the corruptions that had appeared in our language had not equalled its refinements. This prescriptive approach was centred on one word: ‘ascertainment’, which was defined by Dr Johnson as ‘a settled rule; an established standard’ (DEL, 1773). This demonstrates how in
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