dictionary façadism

It has been the dream of dictionary publishers to ignore the existence of different varieties of English and create a one-size-fits-all dictionary with worldwide distribution. Encarta presented itself as just such a dictionary and it must have been galling to the publishers that they had to split it into a British and American version. Collins has been aiming at this for years. They produced one  version that even dropped the local introduction – probably on the basis that no one ever reads the introduction, which is perfectly true – and limited itself to identifying the variety of English on the jacket. So the dictionary sold in the Australian market was labelled “Australian Edition”. Interestingly the advertising line was ‘THE ONLY DICTIONARY TO SPEAK YOUR LANGUAGE’. Of course the Australian Edition was the same as the Canadian Edition or the Indian Edition. The actual book block was the same around the world so what this advertising line possibly meant was anyone’s guess. The publishers no doubt felt that the label was justified by the inclusion of some items of local English provided by a local editor.

These days the dictionary is on the computer, instantly available to solve any difficulty that arises. I think, however, that we lose the sense of the dictionary as a symbol of the language with this kind of one-off functional use. Every time you consulted the printed book you had a sense of the possibilities of your language, the way in which the word that you wanted on that day fitted in to a total picture, the intangible but realisable wholeness of the language that your community had created. You don't get this on the computer.

Only a fraction of the dictionary market glimpses the idea of the wholeness of the variety. At least fifty percent walk into the shop with no sense of the history or community of the language variety, no reason for choosing one dictionary over another except price, the brand associations of the publisher, and the prettiness of the cover. Possibly they succumb to the advertising. They believe that this dictionary in their hand is the only dictionary in the world that speaks their language. If the dictionary says it is the Australian edition then that must be okay. No one stops to reflect on what that might mean, or to make distinctions between levels of Australianness.

So what we are moving towards in publishing is dictionary facadism. And what we lose in that is the recognition of each variety functioning as a totality, making its decisions about pronunciation and lexicon and usage from within its own community of speakers.

What is threatened by current dictionary trends is the record of the particular variety of English. I fear that dictionaries will cease to function as the outward and visible sign of these Englishes. Instead we will have a tokenistic approach in which the odd differences are regarded as quaint and entertaining but of no real significance.