A few weeks ago, when I heard that Peter Sokolowski, the Editor at Large at Merriam-Webster, was giving a special talk for my freshman liberal arts program, SLE, I was hesitant to attend. I had no interest in hearing someone discuss what I believed to be one of the world’s dullest books, the dictionary. In the end, however, Sokolowski’s talk was riveting, and I discovered what it really means to define meaning.
We each possess an abstract idea of what words mean, but we often encounter difficulties when asked to define words. Sokolowski used the example of the word “surreal.” After hearing a statement like, “It was so surreal to be back home with my family after being away,” most native English speakers would be able to receive and understand the speaker’s intended meaning. However, asking someone to define “surreal” in the context of this statement is a far more complex question. After Sokolowski raised this point, I thought about it, and the best definition I could come up with was “seeming strangely not real.” The Merriam-Webster definition is far more elegant: “marked by the intense irrational reality of a dream.” When Sokolowski showed this definition to the room, the excitement was tangible. Everyone was so relieved to see this abstract word so precisely defined. Furthermore, the audience seemed to accept and identify with the definition. It was as if rather than presenting us with a new definition for the word, Sokolowski had simply unlocked the definition already within us.
The gap between the definitions present in a person’s mental lexicon and those held in a dictionary is underscored by the following piece of data: the majority of the words people look up, Sokolowski asserted, are words they already know. According to the Merriam-Webster website at the time I am writing this post, the most-searched word of the past week is “culture.” Some of the other top twenty-five words include “feminism,” “empathy,” “racism,” and “bigot.” Most people who look up these words are not doing so because they don’t understand what they mean, but because they are looking for the seemingly concrete reliability of a dictionary definition.
These search peaks can reveal much about contemporary society. The word “surreal” often peaks in searches at the time of traumatic events, such as the Boston Marathon bombing or the Sandy Hook school shooting. When Michael Jackson died, one of the most searched words of that weeks was “emaciated,” most likely because people were puzzled why a word usually describing malnourished and impoverished people could describe a well-fed celebrity. It seems reasonable to conclude that this week’s surge in words relating to race and bigotry stems from the events in Ferguson, Missouri. When the media confronts people with complex and controversial issues, they turn to the dictionary to lessen ambiguity.
But where does Merriam-Webster’s infallibility originate? Why do we accept the dictionary’s definition of ambiguous words like “culture” as valid? Why do they get to decide which words possess enough “word-ness” to be placed in the dictionary? Sokolowski stated that these questions are the ones they grapple with every day—the ones that make his job interesting. This year, to much of the public’s dismay, Merriam-Webster defined “selfie” in the dictionary, effectively legitimizing it as a “real word.” Linguistics has taught me that languages change constantly, and that these changes should be embraced and understood rather than criticized. Words that begin as childish slang often become standard through time, and dictionaries both aid and commemorate this process.
First off, I want to say that it’s unfortunate that “selfie” has found its way into our dictionaries. But not all hope is lost because there is still a red squiggly line under it in Microsoft Word. Anyway, I think you bring up interesting points. Why aren’t we able to instantly define words that we know the meaning of? Maybe our brains have trouble translating ideas into precise words and phrases. Or maybe it’s the other way around and our languages are imperfect and therefore cannot completely describe what we can easily think of in our brains. Either way, dictionaries do a pretty good job of helping us out when we struggle to define an idea or word what we already know. I believe the legitimacy that we give to dictionary definitions is what actually makes them legitimate. By our automatic acceptance of dictionary definitions, we have a reliable reference when trying to find a precise way to describe a word.
ReplyDeleteWhat is interesting here is that we have an array of dictionaries to choose from--they come in different brands, sizes, and audiences they were catered for, all of which we might consider when defining a given dictionary's legitimacy. I have seen both the Merriam-Webster and the Oxford Dictionaries widely quoted in many respected works, but what makes them more respectable than, say, the American Heritage Dictionary, which I have hardly seen quoted? I wonder if we have attached a definitiveness to dictionaries because of the name that they carry and the highly intelligent philologists we believe work on their content (in any case, it is difficult to argue with a book that has "Oxford" on the cover).
ReplyDeleteI think the first question you pose at the end of you post is really interesting! Why do we accept something as a legitimate definition just because it is in a dictionary? Perhaps we don't just accept it because it is in a dictionary but rather because the definition in the dictionary coheres with our own sense of the word. The example you gave with the word surreal supports this point. Had the speaker presented an absurd or slightly off definition of surreal, the crowd would not have been pleased. What amazed people was that the definition that Merriam webster had was what they felt the sense of the word was. The real art of writing a dictionary seems to be in defining words in the way that people use them.
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