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The Story of Ain't LP: America, Its Language, and the Most Controversial Dictionary Ever Published Paperback – Bargain Price, October 9, 2012
“It takes true brilliance to lift the arid tellings of lexicographic fussing into the readable realm of the thriller and the bodice-ripper….David Skinner has done precisely this, taking a fine story and honing it to popular perfection.”
—Simon Winchester, New York Times bestselling author of The Professor and the Madman
The Story of Ain’t by David Skinner is the captivating true chronicle of the creation of Merriam Webster’s Third New International Dictionary in 1961, the most controversial dictionary ever published. Skinner’s surprising and engaging, erudite and witty account will enthrall fans of Winchester’s The Professor and the Madman and The Meaning of Everything, and The Know-It-All by A.J. Jacobs, as it explores a culture in transition and the brilliant, colorful individuals behind it. The Story of Ain’t is a smart, often outrageous, and altogether remarkable tale of how egos, infighting, and controversy shaped one of America’s most authoritative language texts, sparking a furious language debate that the late, great author David Foster Wallace (Infinite Jest) once called “the Fort Sumter of the Usage Wars.”
- Print length496 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherHarperLuxe
- Publication dateOctober 9, 2012
- Dimensions6 x 0.99 x 9 inches
- ISBN-100062201506
- ISBN-13978-0062201508
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Editorial Reviews
Review
“An engrossing account of the continuing ruckus over Webster’s Third New International Dictionary.” (New York Times Book Review)
“Mr. Skinner does a fine job detailing the controversy that greeted Webster’s Third, but he is even stronger when describing the internal politics at Merriam and the mechanics of revising a dictionary.” (Wall Street Journal)
“…comprehensive and evenhanded, and written in a clear and jaunty style…What in less skilled hands might have been arid and parochial in David Skinner’s becomes a lively account of a subject of interest to anyone concerned about the English language in America.” (Weekly Standard)
“…spry cultural history” (Harper's)
“[Skinner] provides well-argued critiques of the orthodoxies that define language studies” (New York Times)
“A highly entertaining, thoughtful new book.” (Boston Globe)
“Skinner is good on the development of 20th-century linguistics and on the interplay between America’s language and its sense of itself.” (Financial Times)
“Mr. Skinner weaves a true tale fascinating not just to linguists and lexicographers, but to anyone interested in the evolution of our language during a critical period in America’s History.” (New York Journal of Books)
“Skinner has written an entertaining book about a controversy that still lingers and throws light on how emotional our ties to language are….a funny and informative account.” (Columbus Dispatch)
“...delightful new book on lexicography…Skinner leaves no doubt as to the importance of Webster’s Third as the game-changer in dictionary standards and the impetus for an American cultural metamorphosis.” (Shelf Awareness)
“The Story of Ain’t is a book about words, the national character, and the inevitability of change. And it’s so fun, you might not even realize that you’re joining the debate.” (Hillsdale Collegian)
“Skinner…offers a highly entertaining and intelligent re-creation of events surrounding the 1961 publication of Webster’s Third New International Dictionary by G. & C. Merriam…a rich and absorbing exploration of the changing standards in American language and culture.” (Publishers Weekly (starred review))
“A compelling reminder of the cultural significance of words and word-making.” (Booklist (starred review))
“A fascinating, highly entertaining cultural history that will enchant an audience beyond word nerds....Skinner nimbly, concisely--and without academic dryness--traces the everyday changes that shaped what came out of Americans’ mouths and into our dictionaries.” (BookPage)
“It takes true brilliance to lift the arid tellings of lexicographic fussing into the readable realm of the thriller and the bodice-ripper. With his riveting account…David Skinner has done precisely this, taking a fine story and honing it to popular perfection.” (Simon Winchester, New York Times bestselling author of The Professor and the Madman and Atlantic)
“The flap over Webster’s Third in 1961 was a never-to-be-repeated episode in American cultural history…. David Skinner tells it brilliantly…as he brings to life the odd cast of characters who played a role in the affair.” (Geoffrey Nunberg, University of California at Berkeley, emeritus chair of the American Heritage Dictionary usage panel, language commentator, "Fresh Air," NPR)
“A fascinating account of a major paradigm shift in the American language, when a group of bold lexicographers decided to tell it like it is and causing a huge cultural rumpus. This is more than just a story about a new edition of a dictionary.” (Christopher Buckley, New York Times bestselling author of They Eat Puppies, Don't They? and Thank You for Smoking)
“David Skinner tells the tale of a great battle in the 1960s War Between the Real and the Ideal. It was a conflict with realists laying claim to idealism and idealists asserting realism and vice versa. Skinner makes it all clear.” (P.J. O'Rourke, New York Times bestselling author of Holidays in Heck and Don't Vote--It Just Encourages)
“A cultural story as much as a linguistic one, teeming with colorful characters and big ideas, The Story of Ain’t is a must read for anybody who loves language.” (Toby Lester, author of Da Vinci's Ghost and The Fourth Part of the World)
From the Back Cover
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 the unraveling of civilization.
Entertaining and erudite, 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.
About the Author
David Skinner is a writer and editor living in Alexandria, Virginia. He writes about language, culture, and his life as a husband, father, and suburbanite. He has been a staff editor at the Weekly Standard, for which he still writes, and an editor of Doublethink magazine. He has written for the Wall Street Journal, the New Atlantis, Slate, the Washington Times, the American Spectator, and many other publications. Skinner is the editor of Humanities magazine, which is published by the National Endowment for the Humanities, and is on the usage panel for the American Heritage Dictionary.
Product details
- ASIN : B00DPO3ACI
- Publisher : HarperLuxe; Lgr edition (October 9, 2012)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 496 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0062201506
- ISBN-13 : 978-0062201508
- Item Weight : 1.2 pounds
- Dimensions : 6 x 0.99 x 9 inches
- Customer Reviews:
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David Skinner is a writer and editor living in Alexandria, Virginia. He writes about language, culture, and his life as a husband, father, and suburbanite. He has been a staff editor at the Weekly Standard, for which he still writes, and an editor of Doublethink magazine. He has written for the Wall Street Journal, the New Atlantis, Slate, the Washington Times, the American Spectator, and many other publications. Skinner is the editor of Humanities magazine, which is published by the National Endowment for the Humanities, and is on the usage panel for the American Heritage Dictionary.
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To help us understand the basis for this negative reaction to what became known as Webster's 3rd, Skinner takes us back a half century to the production of its predecessor, Webster's 2nd. The second edition of Webster's famous dictionary was published in 1934. Its editors produced this much-admired work without questioning a number of assumptions about what a dictionary should be: especially, without questioning the notion that a dictionary should be an authoritative source of information about the meaning and pronunciation of words. Later, this attitude would be described as prescriptive, ie, the dictionary should prescribe the correct use of words in the English language. It would be the final authority in any disputes about how to say or use in writing any word.
What happened between 1934 and 1961? In a word, change. Actually, of course, change had been taking place before 1934, but Webster's 2nd seemed to ignore that fact. The changes taking place in American society from the end of the Civil War and into the 20th Century and beyond were accelerating at a rapid pace. Changes in technology, in social mores, in politics, and daily life were affecting the American language. New words were being added, old ones became extinct, and more importantly the meanings of words and even their pronunciations were changing as Americans began using new media and as they became more mobile.
Something else, more subtle, was changing too: the way people thought. As democracy expanded and as science and technology increasingly affected daily life, the voices of authority were eroding, and people were beginning to ask for reasons to accept stated opinions, not only about words, but about everything. Inevitably the scientific frame of mind would change language and words. Linguistics, the scientific study of language was already in existence in 1934, but it would not begin to affect dictionary making until the old language experts, who were products of a Victorian culture, began to fade away. When it became clear to executives at Merriam-Webster somewhere in the late 1940s that the old standby was no longer adequate, they began to make plans for a new edition. They hired Philip B. Gove to shape the next Webster's to be published in 1961. Gove was a linguist, not a student of literature, and that made all the difference. His theory of what a dictionary should be was based on five concepts of linguistics: 1. Language changes constantly. 2. Change is normal. 3. Spoken language is the language. 4. Correctness rests upon usage. 5. All usage is relative.
These five concepts were not beliefs; they were facts. They had been verified by observation and evidence. It was not a matter of faith. In fact, Gove contrasted the scientific concepts of language change to religious belief in revelation. There is no outside source and sanction for language other than common usage. The notion of a "correct" manner of speaking and writing was irrelevant. A dictionary could no longer prescribe the correct usage of words; it could only describe the ways in which language is used in a society. The dictionary was no longer prescriptive of language; it was now descriptive of the way language is used by a people.
And this is what set off the firestorm. Those who had set themselves apart from the common herd by their manner of speech and writing suddenly felt their privileged position threatened by a dictionary, the very source of their authority. But, in spite of the relentless attacks, Webster's 3rd did have its defenders. Among these were the language scholar James Sledd and the author of a dictionary of usage, Bergen Evans. In defending the new dictionary, Evans cited that great 18th Century lexicographer and author of a model dictionary, Samuel Johnson. Johnson had said that lexicographers and grammarians "do not form, but register the language." And this is exactly what Gove and his linguistic lexicographers had done with the creation of Webster's 3rd.
This book is about as exciting as one could imagine for a story about the creation of a dictionary. What is missing? The book ends with the sense that Gove and Webster's 3rd won the battle in the end. But a whole half century has elapsed since the publication of that great book in 1961. What is missing is the denoument of this play. What effect did Webster's 3rd have on society, culture, literature, and, more specifically, the dictionary trade? Did subsequent publishers follow the lead of Webster's 3rd, or were they intimidated by the harsh criticism of that book? A brief glance at my Random House Unabridged, published in 1987, suggests that later dictionaries followed the lead of Webster's 3rd. Though there were some reactionaries who reprinted and attempted to breathe life into Webster's 2nd, it was clear that that book was a dinosaur, a product of an era that no longer existed. Webster's 2nd was a museum of words, pronunciations, and usage rules of a bygone era.
Fairly well written, but not as gripping a tale as when i heard an interview with the author.
