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The Politics of Johnson's Dictionary

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Robert DeMaria Jr
Robert DeMaria Jr*
Affiliation:
Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York
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Abstract

In definitions, occasional comments, and especially the selection of illustrative quotations, Johnson's Dictionary both conveys specific linguistic information and presents its readers with knowledge of the broadest kind. Like the abstract authority “the dictionary,” Johnson's Dictionary is an active instrument of the culture it reflects and helps to shape. As such, Johnson's book embodies a politics, while transmitting political views on every one of its quotation-filled pages. As a collection of quotations, the Dictionary tends to display an underlying political consensus founded on cultural assumptions winnowed from the arguments of combatants on a variety of different but, at a distance, analogous controversies. As a cultural act in its own right the Dictionary supports the growth of democracy and liberalism through its assistance to and dependence on the growing population of literate, book-buying, voting English citizens.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 104 , Issue 1 , January 1989 , pp. 64 - 74
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1989

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