The Linguist

22 The Linguist Vol/62 No/2 thelinguist.uberflip.com FEATURES How the OED and Duden revolutionised the dictionary. Joanna Biernat on the birth of modern lexicography I t's not just linguists and language lovers who are familiar with the Oxford English Dictionary (OED); every British person consults it at some point – in the same way that Germans know their Duden. This raises the question: what is so different, appealing or special about these dictionaries that makes us rely on them when we want to be absolutely correct about definitions, pronunciation and spelling, or deal with broader linguistic dilemmas, such as etymology, specific grammar topics, synonyms, writing styles, figures of speech, translations or quotations? When searching online for information on these subjects in the UK or Germany, the OED and Duden tend to appear among the top results. We could argue, therefore, that they go beyond dictionaries as we usually understand them, and are more like encyclopaedias of English and German language knowledge. There are many similarities between the two works, starting with their origin. They were both born in the 19th century, a "time of profound and accelerated change", 1 globalisation, industrial revolution, social motion and political debates. There was strong criticism of previous dictionaries, mainly for their enormous subjectivity, and lack of scientific rigour and systematic research. From 1850, we start to observe a significant change in the approach to science and language-related subjects. It had become apparent to researchers and linguists that a reevaluation of existing knowledge and publications was needed. The Philological Society took on the aspirational challenge of reassessing prior language work dating back as far as Anglo-Saxon times. However, they clearly underestimated the amount of work they were undertaking. Richard Chenevix Trench, Frederick Furnivall and Herbert Coleridge proposed the creation of an entirely new dictionary that would incorporate the attributes of modern lexicography, including descriptive character, a link between the historical principle and the structure, an in-depth and detailed lexicon and, more importantly, a "method of collaborative compilation". 2 Some early 19th-century dictionaries did include descriptive features (Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm's Deutsches Wörterbuch of 1854, for instance), but the OED drew on emerging continental philology to establish a new way of elaborating on a language. The collaborative study behind the OED, which began in 1857, was initially expected to take five years, but grew to a ten-year project. It aimed to create an exhaustive inventory of the English language, including the history, meaning and usage of every word in English from 1150 CE (when, they determined, Middle English began to be spoken) to the present day. In 1879, when James Murray became editor, the Philological Society joined forces with the Oxford University Press and officially announced their work on the New English Dictionary – known from that moment on as the Oxford English Dictionary. The descriptive approach could only be accomplished through a deep analysis of an extensive number of printed sources, enabling the compilers to document word usage over time. This thorough method of collecting knowledge about words, and examining them in innovative ways, made a huge impact on the creation of modern dictionaries. It proved that an objective view of language development can only be achieved through very detailed and accurate investigation of all available sources. It is important to mention here that the OED was the first project to integrate the scientific with the public perspective, now known as crowdsourcing – i.e. reaching out to citizens to gain their knowledge and views on different words. 3 A lifetime achievement Duden held the status of repräsentativ ('prestigious') in the century in which it was published. It is the lifetime achievement of one of the most famous German teachers, school directors, lexicographers and linguists: Konrad Duden. 4 He published his work for the first time in 1872 as Die deutsche Rechtschreibung ('The German Spelling'). It was primarily aimed at pupils and students, as Duden had The word on words The OED was the first project to integrate the scientific with the public perspective, reaching out to citizens © SHUTTERSTOCK

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