Fwd--DSNA message from Sidney Landau on historical dictionaries

[Gerald Cohen]

At 10:07 AM -0400 6/18/03, Sidney Landau wrote (in a message to the
Dictionary Society of North America; I'm now forwarding it to ADS and
will pass along a few thoughts of my own later today):

>From: "Sidney Landau" <slandau1755 at worldnet.att.net>
>Delivered-To: mailing list DSNA at yahoogroups.com
>Date: Wed, 18 Jun 2003 10:07:56 -0400
>Subject: Re: [DSNA] FW: Antedating of "Doofus"
>
>
>I certainly do not agree that all slang is oral, and Frank contradicts
>himself in his own comment by alluding to bathroom graffiti and the like.
>But I don't think written slang is an oxymoron in any sense. Written slang
>is used usually deliberately to establish a connection with an in-group or
>to exclude people who are not in the in-group, and sure, much of it is
>spoken but much gets into reported dialogue also. Eventually some of the
>written slang will lose its power to include in-group members and exclude
>others, and so cease to be slang. I'm also not so sure HDAS is so very
>different from the OED. It seems to me to have much more in common with it
>than with synchronic commercial college dictionaries. I admit that Frank
>makes a good point, however, about the personal recollections of the editor;
>but if it was a recollection that was written down years ago, close to the
>actual event, it seems to me a defensible citation worth including.
>
>Sidney Landau
>
>
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Frank Abate" <abatefr at earthlink.net>
>To: "ADS-L" <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>; "DSNA list," <DSNA at yahoogroups.com>
>Sent: Tuesday, June 17, 2003 1:43 PM
>Subject: [DSNA] FW: Antedating of "Doofus"
>
>
>>  At the risk of upsetting people that I like and respect, let me comment on
>a
>>  point that Fred S raises below re (RH)HDAS . . .
>>
>>  The presence of "citations" such as that for _doofus_ in the Lighter dict
>>  ("remembered from Jonathan Lighter's childhood") gives me pause, and
>raises
>>  an issue that troubles me about slang dictionaries that rely on citational
>>  "evidence".  Clearly from this example, HDAS is not rigorously researched
>in
>>  some places, and given the essentially oral nature of the subject
>matter --
>>  slang -- in some ways it cannot ever be so.  In fact, Richard Spears (one
>of
>>  the top slang lexos in the US) wrote a quite critical review of the RHHDAS
>>  when its first volume came out, and made a similar point.  Others objected
>>  to what Spears had to say, out of respect, I think, for the monumental
>>  effort of Lighter.  However, Spears's point should not be overlooked, I
>>  think.
>>
>>  The trouble with a "historical dictionary" of slang is that it can never
>>  fulfill its stated purpose.  Examples of slang can lurk in the language
>for
>>  years, sometimes many years, without ever getting into print.  I cannot
>>  prove the following statement, but I strongly suspect that very many slang
>>  expressions have been born, lived, and died without EVER getting into
>print,
>>  and are lost forever once their speakers are dead.  Those that do get
>>  recorded are "lucky" to have been picked up by someone who happened to be
>>  writing something, whether a novel, a newspaper story, a dictionary, or
>>  whatever.  In many cases the slang expression may have been around for
>>  years, even decades, meaning that the dated citation, or a personal
>>  recollection, is really not "historical".  It is a kind of evidence, but
>not
>>  the OED kind.
>>
>>  I would further argue that by the very fact that a slang term is written
>>  down sort of kills it as slang.  It becomes a different thing after being
>>  recorded, it seems to me.  Slang is oral.  "Written-down slang" is nearly
>an
>>  oxymoron.  Yes, I DO mean that "slang dictionary" is an oxymoron of sorts,
>>  too.  But a "historical dictionary of slang" is a super-oxymoron.  I feel
>>  that one cannot compare works such as the OED (and similar) to the HDAS.
>>  They are quite different dictionaries, even if they employ a similar
>method.
>>  The difference lies in the nature of the language being treated.  OED and
>  > dicts of that ilk mean to deal with the written language, and rely almost
>  > exclusively on written citations for evidence.  But to do a dictionary of
>>  slang based on written citations seems to me an activity fraught with
>>  frustration and some futility.
>>
>>  In saying this I do not mean to detract from the work of Lighter, Spears,
>>  Chapman, Partridge, or any of a score of others who have, over the years,
>>  done useful and important dictionaries of slang.  I simply want to make a
>>  (largely philosophical) point that slang, being fundamentally oral, cannot
>>  be effectively treated using a historical method.  Of course, some slang
>is
>>  written, as that found on bathroom walls, or spray-painted onto urban
>>  buildings and such; examples go back at least as far as ancient Pompeii.
>>  But that is still of the folk, and unedited -- quite different from the
>sort
>>  of quotations that OED typically uses.
>>
>>  That said, I hope the HDAS and other such dicts carry on, but I hope, too,
>>  that they openly acknowledge the nature of the slang beast.  To me,
>>  citations of slang terms are like insect specimens in an entomologist's
>>  display case -- they show you something about individuals of a living
>>  species, but they are dead, and even their morphology is not necessarily
>>  typical, representative, or characteristic of what they are attempting to
>>  show.
>>
>>  Frank Abate
>>
>>  -----Original Message-----
>>  From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU]On Behalf
>>  Of Fred Shapiro
>>  Sent: Wednesday, June 04, 2003 11:23 AM
>>  To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>>  Subject: Antedating of "Doofus"
>>
>>
>>  Noodling around in the alt.usage.english archives, I found a significant
>>  antedating of "doofus" posted to that newsgroup by Ben Zimmer.  The
>>  Historical Dictionary of American Slang has 1966 as its first printed
>>  citation, 1960 as its first "remembered from Jonathan Lighter's childhood"
>>  citation.  But Zimmer found the following usage from searching ProQuest
>>  Historical Newspapers; he speculates that by 1955 "doofus" might have been
>>  a generic name for a dimwitted boxer, similar to "Joe Palooka":
>>
>>  1955 John Lardner in _N.Y. Times_ 25 Dec.
>>  "Doofus lost every round from the third, but they give him the duke!"
>>  "Gratz had him on the floor in the fifth!"
>>  "You shoulda seen it!"
>>  "What kind of officiating is that!"
>>  "Was you there? You was? Then let me tell you what happened!"
>>
>>
>>  Fred Shapiro
>>
>>
>>  --------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>  Fred R. Shapiro                             Editor
>>  Associate Librarian for Collections and     YALE DICTIONARY OF QUOTATIONS
>>    Access and Lecturer in Legal Research     Yale University Press,
>>  Yale Law School                             forthcoming
>>  e-mail: fred.shapiro at yale.edu               http://quotationdictionary.com
>>  --------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>