Lynda Mugglestone. 2015. Samuel Johnson and the Journey into Words

This eloquent and wide-ranging study1 begins with an examination of the metaphors involving voyaging by sea and traveling more generally that lexicographers use in discussing and describing their work. The ‘Journey into Words’ of the title invokes a voyage, even a pilgrimage, as well as a penetration and exploration of what turns out to be ‘a Sea of words’ (Johnson quoting from Warburton’s reflection on his 1747 Shakespeare, adapting the phrase, in turn, from John Florio’s 1598Worlde of Words). Past writers on language, Lynda Mugglestone makes clear, have habitually used these images and a variety of similar metaphors having to do with movement, boundaries, self, and other, as well as protection and incursion. Mugglestone’s tracing of Johnson’s metaphors opens up a variety of important insights into his lexicographical attitudes and practices. A key example is that of the citadel, a fortress or castle, where arms are kept, from which Johnson imagines carrying on ‘a war in which words—as both territory and ammunition—are paramount’ (p. 141). She outlines the images of warfare and travel, introducing an examination of eighteenth-century approaches to loanwords and foreign borrowings. These she places in a context of contemporary English concerns about invasion, identity, defense, and suppression, especially concerning France and the French. Johnson pays careful attention to Addison’s alarms concerning the threats of French to the English language: he quotes Addison’s cautions under adulterate, for example, defined as ‘To corrupt by some foreign admixture; to contaminate’ (p. 143). Lord Chesterfield’s letter to The World in November 1754, puffing Johnson’s immanent Dictionary, remarks, ‘The time for discrimination seems to be now come. Toleration, adoption and naturalization have run their lengths’. Mugglestone demonstrates the ways in which Johnson shares some of these historical and ideological positions in the Plan of a Dictionary (1747) and the ‘Preface to the Dictionary’ (1755). As we in today’s world well know, ‘Language and national anxieties,’ as she notes, ‘easily combine’ (p. 145). To Frenchify, Johnson defines as: ‘To infect with the manner of France; to make a coxcomb’. Johnson seems to agree with Chesterfield (in the ‘Preface’, at least) about the need to make attempts to protect the English language. He will endeavor to ‘recal’ English from invasions and importations: his work will be English, relying upon the authority of writers whose works provide ‘the wells of English undefiled’ (p. 146, quoting Johnson’s ‘Preface’)

Ancient history · Archaeology · Art · Context (archaeology · Linguistics · Literature · Pilgrimage · Variety (cybernetics · Computer Science · Gender Studies in Language · Linguistics, Language Diversity, and Identity · Swearing, Euphemism, Multilingualism · Classics · History · Philosophy

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