Reformed Prescriptivism: Dictionaries Of Usage

Abstract

Dictionaries of usage, though popular with the general public in English-speaking countries, often meet with modest acclaim in academic linguistics. The paper reviews standard-setting policies employed by dictionaries of usage over time and explores recent changes in the concept of the standard of usage in practical lexicography, stimulated by the development of large corpora, now commonly used as data sources by general-purpose dictionaries. Differentiation of usage by several levels employed by Longman Guide to English Usage (1989), viewed as one of the landmarks in the history of usage guides, has been analysed. The key terms of its metalanguage relating to parameters of usage were collected from the text of all entries, since Longman Guide employs no labels outside the main text. The resulting list of key terms showed that it followed the trend set by corpus studies and later by grammars and general-purpose dictionaries. It attempted to bridge the gap between dictionaries of usage and requirements of corpus linguistics which insists that the descriptive approach to language should find its way into dictionaries. The analysis of the metalanguage of the dictionary entries and of eight parameters of usage employed by the dictionary reveals that in Longman Guide to English Usage appropriateness substituted correctness in the concept of the standard of usage, thus justifying and legitimising variations within the standard which had been formerly viewed by lexicographers and grammarians as unitary.