Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 1996. Vol. 1. Eger Journal of English Studies.(Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 24)

Geoff Barnbrook: From description to prescription and back again

the language, the illustrative quotations, are to be selected for their moral uplift as well as for their appropriateness to the perceived correct usage of a word. 4.2 The Dictionary The Preface to A Dictionary of the English Language (Johnson, 1773) shows that, in practice, he did not find the exercise quite so straightforward: When we see men grow old and die at a certain time one after another, from century to century, we laugh at the elixir that promises to prolong life to a thousand years; and with equal justice may the lexicographer be derided who being able to produce no example of a nation that has preserved their words and phrases from mutability shall imagine that his dictionary can embalm his language, and secure it from corruption and decay, that it is in his power to change sublunary nature, or clear the world at once from folly, vanity and affectation.' (Johnson, 1773, p.xi) Despite this retraction, the fundamental notion of the dictionary as a prescriptive and authoritative source of the standard spelling, the correct meaning and even the inherent validity of a word as a piece of English vocabulary seems firmly entrenched in this dictionary and many of its successors, including those being published today. Johnson himself goes on to make a case for an attempt at prescription: It remains that we retard what we cannot repel, that we palliate what we cannot cure. Life may be lengthened by care, though death cannot be ultimately defeated: tongues, like governments, have a natural tendency to degeneration; we have long preserved our constitution, let us make some struggles for our language.' (Johnson, 1773, p.xii) If his dictionary cannot be wholly prescriptive, it will at least exercise as much linguistic conservatism as it can to slow the changes that it cannot wholly prevent. This attitude means that current usages may not coincide with those that lexicographers wish to fix and preserve in their dictionaries. In Johnson's Dictionary, the quotations, examples of the 23