Book

The story of ain't : America, its language, and the most controversial dictionary ever published

Skinner, David, 1973- author

Overview

\"Created by the most respected American publisher of dictionaries and supervised by the editor Philip Gove, Webster's Third broke with tradition, adding thousands of new words and eliminating artificial notions of correctness, basing proper usage on how language was actually spoken. The dictionary's revolutionary style sparked what David Foster Wallace called the Fort Sumter of the Usage Wars. Editors and scholars howled for Gove's blood, calling him an enemy of clear thinking, a great relativist who was trying to sweep the English language into chaos. Critics bayed at the dictionary's permissive handling of ain't. Literary intellectuals such as Dwight Macdonald believed the dictionary's scientific approach to language and its abandonment of the old standard of usage represented nothing less than the unraveling of civilization. Entertaining and erudite, and a New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice, The Story of Ain't describes a great societal metamorphosis, tracing the fallout of the world wars, the rise of an educated middle class, and the emergence of America as the undisputed leader of the free world, and illuminating how those forces shaped our language. Never before or since has a dictionary so embodied the cultural transformation of the United States.\"--Publisher's description.

• Publisher: Harper Perennial
• Subject: Gove, Philip Babcock, 1902-1972. / Webster's third new international dictionary of the English language unabridged. / Encyclopedias and dictionaries History and criticism. / English language United States Lexicography. / English language Lexicography History 20th century. / English language Lexicography. / United States.
• ISBN: 9780062027498, 0062027492

Item info:

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Holdings :

Call Number	Copies	Material	Location
PE1617.W43 S58 2013	1	ENCYL	AUTOSTORE