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Unit 11 But Whats Dictionary For?Teaching Pointsn I. Background informationn II. Introduction to the passagen III. Text analysisn IV. Rhetorical devicesn V. Analysis of the structure and languagen VI. Questions for DiscussionI. Background Informationn 1.Noah Webstern 2.Civil Rights Movement n 3.Leonard Bloomfield II. Introduction to the Passage n 1. The type of literature: -descriptionn 2.The purpose of a piece of objective description: -to record and reproduce a true picture with opinions and emotions of the author excluded n 3. Ways of developing a piece of objective description: -to begin with a brief general picture, divide the object into parts and organize the detailed description in order of space III. Aims and Contents of Teaching l 1. the comprehension of the text and the mastery of the important language pointsl 2. the paraphrases of certain complicated or difficult sentences l 3. the enlargement of the students vocabularyl 4. the familiarisation with the styles of composition and devices of figuration (Procedure of teaching: 1. Questions and answers; 2. Analysis of the structure and language; 3. Detailed study of the text; 4. Supplementary and text-book exercises)IV. Rhetorical Devices1. metonymy 2.synecdoche 3. sarcasm 4. alliteration V. Text AnalysisVI. Special Difficulties n 1.identifying figures of speech n 2.translating some sentences n 3.paraphrasing some sentences n 4.outline requirements VII . Questions for Discussion n 1. What critical views did the popular press express on the publication of Websters Third New International Dictionary n 2.How much effort and money was spent on the making of this dictionary? n 3.Why are new dictionaries needed? n 4.What does the writer say about spelling and pronunciation? n 5.Has the Third New International Dictionary any faults? I. Background informationl Webster, Noah (Oct. 16, 1748 - May 28, 1843) American lexicographer and philologist, born in West Hartford, Conn. A Yale graduate.l His Elementary Spelling Book (the first part of the Grammatical Institute of the English Language) and The American Dictionary of the English Language established the nobility and vitality of the American Language.l He holds that the spelling and grammar of a language must be based on actual usage rather than artificial principles. And thus laid a foundation for the 20th century lexicography. l The Elementary Spelling Book, first published in the late years of the 18th cent., standardized American spelling and by 1850, when the whole population was under 23 million, was sold at 1 million copies annually. l The American Dictionary of the English Language, his greatest work, was published in 1828. Of the 70,000 words, 12,000 had not appeared in any other dictionaries before. Within one year, all the 2,500 copies issued in American and the 3,000 copies in Britain were sold out. l In 1840, the second edition was a failure and he had to sell the copy right to Merriam Publishing Company which thereafter became the Merriam-Webster Incorporation. Websters other contributions include efforts in the passage of a national copyright law, in the founding of the Amherst College etc.l Dictionary: a published list, in alphabetical order, of the words of a language, explaining and defining them, or in the case of a bilingual dictionary, translating them into another language. l In the 20th cent., American dictionary makers began to adopt criteria of use rather than of etymological purity. Dictionaries were produced in China, Greece, Islam, and other complex early cultures.l The first modern examples of lexicography are thought to be Nathan Baileys Universal Etymological English Dictionary (1721) and his larger Dictionarium Britannicum (1730), which served Samuel Johnson,l who was considered as Englands first complete man of letters, in preparing his Dictionary of the English Language (1755), the first comprehensive English lexicography. l The next great lexicographer was Noah Webster. His American Dictionary of the English Language has been skilfully revised and abridged over the years, thereby retaining its popularity. A six-volume American encyclopaedic dictionary, The Century Dictionary, was completed in 1891. l American Dictionary of the English Language -1828l 1840, second edition, failure, copyright sold to Merriaml 1961, third edition, 2752 pages, 460,000 entries, 200,000 usage examples, 3,000 pictorial illustrations and more than 1,000 synonymsl British lexicographers from the 19th C. on, began to collect and organize examples of usage.l In 1857, the Philological Society began collecting dated examples of usage, culminating in the publication (1928) of the monumental, unrivalled lexicon known as the New English Dictionary, the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) or Murrays Dictionary. l Two major shorter editions exist: The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Current English and the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary. Other advances in lexicography are reflected in the frequently revised collegiate or desk dictionaries, such as the Websters New Collegiate Dictionary. l Encyclopedia: book or set of books giving information about every branch of knowledge, or about one particular subject, with articles in alphabetical orderl lexicon: dictionary, esp. of an ancient language or of words from a single subjectl thesaurus: book containing lists of words and phrases grouped according to their meanings or types (a thesaurus of slang)What is a dictionary? Dictionary is a book that contains a selected list of words arranged in a alphabetical order. It explains their meanings and gives information about them. In a dictionary, a person can look up a word quickly, discover what it means, and learn how it is pronounced. Most modern dictionaries describe the facts of a language as educated speakers and writers use it. They are called descriptive dictionaries because a dictionary editor does not change the facts of a language. Many older dictionaries tried to describe rules. Some of which did not agree with the way people commonly talked or wrote. Theses books are called prescriptive dictionaries. How to use a dictionary? Before using a dictionary, one should become familiar with the methods, principles and scope of the book because various dictionaries are arranged in different ways. Many American dictionaries arrange all entries in a single alphabetical list. Others put abbreviations, geographical and biographical names, and foreign words and phrases in separate lists, usually at the end of book. All good dictionaries today have introductory sections that explain what the book contains and how it is arranged. The first thing a dictionary entry shows is how to spell a word and how to divide it into syllables. Accent marks and symbols that are explained in the book tell how to pronounce the word. Many dictionaries also tell what part of speech the word is. For example, they list boy as a noun, and speak as a verb. Definitions of the word usually follow. Some dictionaries list the most commonly used meaning of the word first. Others arrange the meanings historically, so that the first meaning listed is the one that occurred first in the language. Some dictionaries also use the word in a sentence or phrase to help define it. Sometimes pictures or drawings are added to provide more information about the entry. After the definition, many dictionaries include a list of synonyms, or words with about the same meaning as the words being defined. Other information is often included about etymology (the history or origin of a word). Many dictionaries also have usage labels, such as Slang and Dialect; subject labels, such as Biology or Electronics; and regional labels, such as British or US In addition, usage notes explain important points about the way a word is commonly used. What information do dictionaries contain? Dictionaries give the meanings of many kinds of words. Most general dictionaries include (1) the ordinary words of everyday life, such as bread, run, and with; (2) literary words used in formal writing, such as aggregation, despoil, and incontrovertible; (3) technical words used chiefly on informal occasions, such as gab and wimp; (5) words used in writing to give an old-fashioned flavor, such as aweary and avaunt; (6) words not used today but found in the writings of some authors, such as plaister fro plaster; (7) words or phrases from other languages, such as coup detat from French, tofu from Japanese, and barrio from Spanish; (8) idioms (groups of words with meanings different from their literal meanings), such as split hairs and under the thumb of; (9) abbreviations, such as U.S.A., and (10) important proper names, such as Buddha and Jupiter. Why do dictionaries have to be adapted and expanded? No dictionary records all the words of our language. In fact, no one knows exactly how many English words there are. Besides ordinary words used in everyday speech, the English language includes thousands of geographical names. There are thousands of words that are no longer used. And there are hundreds of thousands of technical terms, including mire than 750,000 names of insects alone. New words are coined fro new scientific and technical discoveries, and slang words and special vocabularies constantly spring up. As nations draw closer together through trade and travel, satellite communication, and sharing of technology, languages tend to borrow more and more words from each other. That is why dictionary editors must be selective in the words they decide to include. Cultural Background1) Noah Webster and Americas First Dictionary2) Websters Third New International3) Atlantic, New York Times, Life, The Journal of American bar Association4) Samuel Johnson and the First English Dictionary 5) Leonard Bloomfield ( 1887-1949) 6) Abraham Lincoln and Gettysburg Address7) About Websters and G & C Merriam Company1) Noah Webster(1758-1843) and Americas First Dictionary Noah Webster was an American lexicographer, journalist, textbook author, and spelling reformer. He was born at West Hartford, Connecticut, on the 16th of October 1758. He was descended from John Webster of Hartford, (who was Governor of Connecticut in 1656-1657), and on his mothers side from Governor William Bradford of Plymouth.Noah Webster was born in West Hartford, Connecticut in 1758, Noah Webster came of age during the American Revolution and was a strong advocate of the Constitutional Convention. He believed fervently in the developing cultural independence of the United States, a chief part of which was to be a distinctive American language with its own idiom, pronunciation, and style. In 1806 Webster published A Compendious (brief and concise)Dictionary of the English Language, the first truly American dictionary. Immediately thereafter he went to work on his magnum opus, An American Dictionary of the English Language, for which he learned 26 languages, including Anglo-Saxon and Sanskrit, in order to research the origins of his own countrys tongue. This book, published in 1828, embodied a new standard of lexicography; it was a dictionary with 70,000 entries that was felt by many to have surpassed Samuel Johnsons 1755 British masterpiece not only in scope but in authority as well. One facet of Websters importance was his willingness to innovate when he thought innovation meant improvement. He was the first to document distinctively American vocabulary such as skunk, hickory, and chowder. Reasoning that many spelling conventions were artificial and needlessly confusing, he urged altering many words: musick to music, centre to center, and plough to plow, for example. While Webster was promoting his dictionary, George and Charles Merriam (the two brothers)opened a printing and bookselling operation in Springfield, Massachusetts, in 1831.On Websters death in 1843 the unsold copies and publishing rights of his dictionary were acquired by George and Charles Merriam, who in 1847 brought out a version edited by Noah Websters son-in-law, professor Chauncey A. Goodrich of Yale College. The 1847 edition became the first Merriam-Webster unabridged dictionary. At the same time they secured the rights to create revised editions of that work. It was the beginning of a publishing tradition that has continued uninterrupted to this day at Merriam-Webster.Websters Third New International DictionaryWebsters Third New International Dictionary has its beginning in Noah Websters American Dictionary of the English Language (1828). In content, size, shape, and design, this dictionary of 2,752 pages is the great library of the English language. It has over 460,000 entries, 200,000 usage examples, over 3,000 pictorial illustrations, and more than 1,000 synonym articles. In a single volume it defines the English language as it is written and spoken today. This unabridged Merriam-Webster involved enormous work and money. It is the product of over 300 permanent staff of language experts who specialized in dictionary making, together with a hundred special outside consultants, 27 years and 43.5 million were spent on the preparation and making of this dictionary. A total of 10 million citations were collected as background for definition. The dictionary came out in 1961. The editors of this new edition have held to the three virtues of dictionary making: accuracy, clearness, and comprehensiveness. Wherever there is conflict, accuracy is put first. In striving to get clearness the editors have tried to make the definitions as readable as possible. The comprehensiveness of this dictionary is borne out by the addition of 100,000 new words or new definitions that were not included in the Second International.In content, size, shape, and design, this dictionary of 2,752 pages is the great library of the English language. It has over 460,000 entries, 200,000 usage example, over 3,000 pictorial illustrations, and more than 1,000 synonym articles. In a single volume it defines the English language as it is written and spoken today. This unabridged Merriam-Webster involved enormous work and money. It is the product of over 300 permanent staff of language experts who specialized in dictionary making, together with a hundred special outside consultants, 27 years and 3.5 million were spent on the preparation and making of this dictionary. A total of 10 million citations were collected as background for definition. The dictionary came out in 1961. The editors of this new edition have held to the three virtues of dictionary making: accuracy, clearness, and comprehensiveness. Wherever there is conflict, accuracy is put first. In striving to get cleverness the editors have tried to make the definitions as readable as possible. The comprehensiveness of this dictionary is borne out by the addition of 100,000 new words or new definitions that were not included in the Second International. Samuel Johnson and the First English Dictionaryw Poet, essayist, dramatist and lexicographer. Author of the Dictionary of the English Language and Lives of the Poets. Editor and commentator on Shakespeares Plays. One of Englands leading literary figures in the eighteenth century. w Samuel Johnson was born the son of Michael and Sarah Johnson in Lichfield, a small town in the midlands about 16 miles north of Birmingham on the 18th September (7th September Old Style) 1709. The family was never financially secure for any long period of time. By the time of his death in 1784, however, Johnson was acknowledged as a leading figure in English letters to such an extent that the years from approximately 1755 to 1784 are often referred to as the Age of Johnson. w Two volumes thick and 2,300 pages long, Samuel Johnsons Dictionary, published in 1755, marked a milestone in a language. The work of a great reader and writer, and an earnest compiler, it was the first English dictionary to devote so much space to everyday words; to be so resoundingly thorough in its definitions; and to illustrate usage by quoting from Shakespeare and other great writers. w For the next 150 years, the Dictionary would define the language until the arrival of the Oxford English Dictionary. Johnsons was the dictionary for Jane Austen and Charles Dickens, Wordsworth and Coleridge, the Brontes and the Brownings, Thomas Hardy and Oscar Wilde. Modern dictionaries owe much to Johnsons work. w Learned, passionate, and disciplined, he infused his work with a distinctive mix of scholarship, authority, and wit. For those who appreciate literature and love language, it is an encyclopedia of the age and a dictionary for the ages. II. Detailed Study of the Text1. abuse: n. & v. abusive, adj. a. unkind, cruel or rude words,l He burst into a storm of abuse.l He constantly addressed her in terms of abuse.l You are always abusing and offending people. b. wrong use, misuse, improper treatment, maltreatl Borrowing money is an abuse of friendship.l abuse of power, drug abuse,l to abuse ones power, authority, position, wealth, etc.2. stature a. Someones stature is their height and general size.l She was rather small in stature. b. The stature of a person or of their achievements is the importance and reputation that they have.l a musician of international staturecf:l statue: figure of a person, animal, etc., in wood, stone, bronze, etc. the Statue of Liberty / Venusl status: condition, position in relation to others ones class / political / social / marital status3. fury: violent or very strong anger There was fury in the Duchess grey eyes. Hearing this, t