Beware Wrong Contexts!

A Bonus Laugh

My “Words Count…” posting of July 8 was funnier than I anticipated, as a sharp follower of this blog alerted me offline.

Oops! Wrong context!

It seems that the acronyms I used, i.e., MWM -- referring to “Million Word March,” and GLM – referring to “Global Language Monitor” -- have totally different import when they show up in the “Personals.” In that context, when someone seeking or offering to meet up refers to MWM, it means “Married White Male”, and when he refers to GLM, it’s “Gay Latin Male.”

Oops!

On the other hand, if I had planned it, I couldn’t have found a better way to highlight a central point about definitions – not just of acronyms, but of ordinary words too: How well a definition works always depends on context.

Hilarious or Disastrous?

Usually, we share enough about the contexts in which we use words that we don’t need to make the context explicit. But sometimes that assumption is wrong. The result can be hilarious, or disastrous.

Dictionaries can never pin down all the contexts that apply for every definition, but they do often try, especially dictionaries aimed at new learners of a second (or more) language – those are users most likely to miss, or misread, subtle contextual cues.

MWM and GLM in Dictionaries

For the fun of it, I looked up these sneaky identity-shifting acronyms in some of the many online dictionaries handling abbreviations.

In www.abbreviations.com, I found “Married White Male” as the 3^rd most popular definition out of 12 listed for MWM, assigned to the category (i.e., the context) of “Community>Law.” My usage (“Million Word March”) doesn’t even appear there. Most popular by far is “Motif Window Manager”, found in the category “Computing>Software.”

Just the opposite applies to GLM: The definition “Gay Latin Male” doesn’t even appear among the 14 definitions there. But you or anyone can enter it, since the site invites definitions. (That variant of what I’ll jokingly call the “happy Hispanic hombre” definition does show up in some other dictionaries.) “Global Language Monitor” appears in www.abbreviations.com as the 2^nd most popular usage for those initials, in the category “Computing>software.” The most popular definition for GLM comes from Business, specifically stock exchange symbols, and refers to “Global Marine Inc.”

What is a “Word” Anyway?

In closing, it’s intriguing that this discussion relates also to my last posting (July 24) because it shows yet another way that OED and other dictionaries may violate themselves. They define dictionaries as defining “words.” So what about dictionaries of acronyms? Are acronyms “words”?

Once again, what dictionaries are doesn’t seem like such a straightforward matter.

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OED Violates itself, On a Leaky Raft, Caught by a Sculptor!

No, This Won't Be Titillating

Dictionaries – I’m referring here mainly to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) -- are bodies ofknowledge, not physiological bodies, so be assured this posting will be tantalizing, but not titillating.

A Side Comment, Sort of:

Younger readers probably have no idea what I just referred to. After all, giving “self-violation” a sexual connotation is so day-before-yesterday!

Actually, that “side comment” is central because it illustrates this posting’s main point:

Dictionary definitions change as society changes – but not in real time. (See “Leaky Raft” below).

Back to OED

The OED is generally considered the gold standard in lexicography. So it’s newsworthy -- at least blog-worthy -- to report that OED (Ready for this?) has violated one of its own definitions!

To make the situation truly involuted, the word it has violated is “Dictionary.”

Evidence? Consider OED’s definition of “Dictionary” in both the print and online editions. It begins:

“1. a. A book dealing with the individual words of a language ….” (OED online, accessed 7/7/09)

I highlighted the guilty word -- “book.” Guilty, that is, of appearing under false pretenses as of 2008, when Oxford University Press announced it has no plans to publish OED again in book form; future updates will be incorporated in its online edition.

The media response was quick but, let’s face it, underwhelming. Predictably, it was a New York Times Magazine columnist who gave expression to a rarified emotion: “Lexicographical Longing.” In her column (May 11, 2008) with that title, Virginia Heffernan reminisced about the OED her father gave her many years before, and bemoaned:

“…the O.E.D. was forever. Wasn’t it?

No.

The future is here, and the immortal O.E.D., the one that lives in bound pages last published micrographically in 1991, is obsolete — at least according to the folks who publish it.”

Some Get It, Some Don’t

Several other long-respected book-form dictionaries that are also online -- Webster’s Collegiate, Random House, among others culled on www.dictionary.com – also anachronistically limit their definition of “Dictionary” to “A book that….”

Others waffle. For example, Wordsmyth (www.wordsmyth.net) which I believe was “born” (i.e., first appeared) online, at first is limiting, but inclusive in its second definitiion:

“1. a reference book that contains a list of words ….

2. the electronic form of such a list of words….”

Merriam-Webster Online (www.merriam-webster.com) has caught up with itself by starting its definition as “1 : a reference source in print or electronic form...” [my highlighting], but then reverts to old-fashioned definitions for bi-lingual and other specialized dictionaries, saying both are “reference books…” even though online versions exist.

Cambridge University Press one-ups Oxford with this offering from its Advanced Learners Dictionary (dictionary.cambridge.org ): “1. A book… or a similar product for use on a computer.”

The Wiki Approach. Wiktionary (en.wiktionary.org) – a product of non-experts’ collaboration, and the only dictionary of those mentioned here not bound (pun intended) by any print tradition -- shows that it is embedded in the wide-ranging and ever-changing media of contemporary communication. Its definition of dictionary begins: “A publication, usually a book…” and defines publication as “The act of publishing printed or other matter.”

A Leaky Raft .

You wondered about the leaky raft? It is my metaphor for the point about dictionaries and social change.

Think of words, and especially meanings, as fluid -- constantly flowing like a more-or-less tumultuous river. (Theorists will find that metaphor used even more broadly, in Harrison White’s 2008 book, Identity and Control: How Social Formations Emerge.)

In that flow of meanings, dictionaries are one type of socially-organized attempt to carry groups of people along together – that is, enable groups to share meanings and therefore to carry on reasonably coordinated conversations and activities.

Dictionaries help stabilize meanings, for a while, and their creators do manage to repair broken slats in the metaphoric rafts, but they can never be completely up-to-date – at best, they are leaky rafts.

Art has the Final Word.

Using a wonderfully pun-ny title (“Atlanta artist digs old books”), a reviewer for the Atlanta Journal Constitution (7/3/09) describes 30-something sculptor Brian Dettmer’s work. In Catherine Fox’s words:

“Dictionaries and encyclopedias, once library stalwarts, are fast becoming relics. Now that information is in a state of constant update and available almost instantly to anyone with an Internet connection, what is the use of any compendium of knowledge bound between two covers?

Brian Dettmer has found one. Wielding knives, tweezers, surgical tools and the patience of Job, the Atlanta artist transforms book has-beens into art…”

To see how Dettmer’s use of words in their material form, not their “dictionary meanings,” dramatically closes this posting, follow this link (or google him yourself): centripetalnotion.com/2007/09/13/13:26:26/

Words Count. But Why Count Words?

Million Word March?? I’ve just slogged through what feels like a million words written about the “Million Word March.” Words vigorously promoting the “March” battling more words roundly panning it, What’s causing all that vehement verbiage? An ongoing project mounted by Global Language Monitor (www.languagemonitor.com). GLM self-describes as a site that:

“… documents, analyzes and tracks trends in language the world over, with a particular emphasis upon Global English.”

The MWM project claims to have an up-to-the-minute count of words in the English language. For years, GLM predicted the date when the millionth word would meet the entrance requirements (criteria set by GLM), revising its predictions to later and later, grabbing some media attention each time. Finally, this June, the magic moment arrived! To be precise: June 10, 2009 at 5:22 am Eastern Time. Too bad most of us were sleeping.

Lots of media covered it, but by now the focus had morphed: controversy the project has sparked among linguists became as newsworthy as the GLM-hyped lexical (non)-event.

CNN reported (www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/06/09/million.words) that GLM’s founder, Paul J.J. Payack, had become “somewhat of a pariah in the linguistic community.” That’s putting it mildly.

Back in 2006, Jesse Sheidlower, editor at Oxford University Press in New York, wrote in Slate (www.slate.com/id/2139611/#Return) that Payack’s claims were “suckering even the respectable press.” By 2009, New York Times reporter Jennifer Scheussler (June 14, “Keeping it Real on Dictionary Row”) wrote, “It’s hard to find scholars who react with anything less than blunt outrage at the headline-garnering ‘Million-Word March’ ” Some reactions, wrote Scheussler, were unprintable. Printable ones included “it’s bushwa, fraud, hokum … a sham… hoax....“

A Bonanza! Like ambulance-chasers at a gruesome car wreck, sociologists typically race to get material from a sharp controversy, especially if it erupts in a usually staid community. What could be more staid than the community of dictionary scholars (“lexicographers”, to the cognoscenti)?

But the sociologists haven’t clustered at this sometimes nasty debate basically because so few of them study language issues – and fewer still focus on lexicography. Yet a bonanza of issues for sociology of language, and of culture, lurks here. A few:

· Why is counting words newsworthy in the first place?

· How and why does word counting happen regularly in the dictionary world? How does that relate to thing-counting in many parts of our culture?

· Zeroing in on the controversy, what is at stake that gets so many people so riled up? [“Zeroing in” pun intended !].

Too much, in fact, to tackle in one post. I’ll just circle around the broadest question:

· Why the fascination with counting words?

Give or take 3 million? About three decades before Payack launched his maligned “March,” a scholar appropriately named Read estimated about 4 million words in English. Sidney Landau cites that tidbit in his respected book: Dictionaries: The Art and Craft of Lexicography (2^nd ed, , 2001, Cambridge U. Press). But Landau uses it only to pronounce the effort futile: “Read’s was as good a guess as any, but even so it is not very meaningful.” (Landau, p.28)

So, why do linguists even bother? Reasons vary from, at one extreme, nationalistic pride resting on questionable theories that languages with more words support more sophisticated thinking, to a more modest aim that Landau proposes. For his study, even a very approximate answer could be useful as a base to figure, roughly, what percentage of a language (in this case, English) is covered by its most complete dictionaries. The answer: Noone knows, except the certainty that even an “unabridged dictionary” is nowhere near “complete.”

So, forget about the denominator, i.e., number of words in English. But what about the numerator -- the word count in any given dictionary? That’s a highly competitive game they all seem to play, even though most reasons linguists gave to belittle Payack’s claimed count, also apply within the clearer boundaries of a dictionary.

Consider verbs: Should you count each form separately? For example: Is the dictionary entry for “count” one word? Or should it be four, by also including: “counts,” “counted,” and “counting”? There are an awful lot of verbs, so your decision would have major impact.

Furthermore, like many words, “count” is polysemous (that’s jargon for “having multiple meanings.”) So, maybe “count” should be counted three times – once for its meaning as a verb, to enumerate; another time for its meaning as a noun, i.e., the result of enumerating, and yet again as a noun that refers to a title in British society? And how should we treat different “senses” of a word, such as the sense of “count (enumerating)” which means the non-numeric value placed on something – “In a democratic society, your opinion counts.”

Those are just a few of the complexities!

And yet, the same dictionary publishers whose word-mavens smartly itemize pitfalls preventing useful counts that can be reliably compared to each other, typically feature just such counts on their book covers or their websites. Inconsistent? Not really, because it’s not the lexicographers sullying their purity, it’s the marketing departments doing their thing.

More Words for Your Money!! And that moves us into another topic worth probing: the struggle between the “professional and scientific” (or “the art and craft”) model of creating dictionary content versus the practical matter of financially supporting that expensive habit – after all, flashy word counts can pull in purchasers.

But that’s for another time – you’ve already gotten 907 words – totally free! (Now, 912).