In this article, Ong explores the roots of the critical attack on Webster’s New International Dictionary, Third Edition<\/i>, published shortly before the article itself.\u00a0 Ong maintains that the rationale behind the criticism offered by Karl Dykema, in “Cultural Lag and Reviewers of Webster III<\/i>” (AAUP Bulletin<\/i> 49 (1963) :\u00a0 364-69), is sound.\u00a0 He asserts, as does Dykema, that many of the reviewers maintain a “medieval linguistic outlook” and thus are uncertain about many of the new additions to the text.\u00a0 Also, there is a failure to acknowledge that many additions to the text come from groups outside the elite, or so-called “cultivated groups.”<\/p>\n
Ong notes that one of the overlooked reasons for the criticism relates to the “psychological structures which alphabetic literacy fosters and on which a dictionary builds.”\u00a0 That is, one cannot truly understand the dictionary without first understanding the role which the alphabet plays in speech.\u00a0 Ong underscores the tremendous differences between hearing a word and viewing it on a printed page.\u00a0 After describing the process by which typographers set type, Ong explains that the process, indeed the use of the alphabet, is a constraining element in the world of language.\u00a0 It is important to understand that it is a world of such constraint from which the dictionary was born.<\/p>\n
Created in this world of constraint, the dictionary is thus expected to adhere to many constraints of its own.\u00a0 Ong indicates that early entries into the previous editions of the dictionary were those words used by the elite, not the vernacular.\u00a0 In Webster III<\/i>, there is more of a reliance on what is heard than ever before.\u00a0 Indeed, Ong indicates that the dictionary is just one more sign of the trend in “oral-aural” culture.\u00a0 After examining such an argument, Ong asserts, the rationale behind the criticism of Webster III<\/i> is clear; however, Ong argues that critics should abandon such an exacting, rule-centered schema.\u00a0 Ong also addresses the subject of grammar and usage in his article “Grammar and the Twentieth Century.”<\/a><\/p>\n P. Gregory Gibson In this article, Ong explores the roots of the critical attack on Webster’s New International Dictionary, Third Edition, published shortly before the article itself.\u00a0 Ong maintains that the rationale behind the criticism offered by Karl Dykema, in “Cultural Lag and Reviewers of Webster III” (AAUP Bulletin 49 (1963) :\u00a0 364-69), is sound.\u00a0 He asserts, as … Continue reading Annotation: Hostility, Literacy, and Webster III<\/span>
\nUniversity of Dayton<\/p>\n
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