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Communication Dans Un Congrès Année : 2021

The role lexicographers can play in helping to vanquish insensitivity, brutality, othering, and wilful ignorance

Steven M Kaplan

Résumé

Similarly to the way that people learn to discriminate, denigrate, and other through language, they can learn to accept, affirm, and cherish through it as well. People trust what dictionaries have to say, so lexicographers have an enormous responsibility to their users. Regular general English dictionaries are not doing an adequate job of alerting users to biased expression, which essentially legitimises such usage. This paper will explore some of the ways in which lexicographers can meaningfully help eradicate insensitivity, brutality, othering, and wilful ignorance. These will include suggestions on ways to improve the paraphrases of meaning (the definitions,) enhanced usage labelling of lemmas (headwords,) and recommendations on how to make users better aware of insightful usage notes, such as alerts to them right in the paraphrase of meaning. Five examples will be explored: anthropocentrism, third world, nigger, bitch, and squaw. Each will illustrate how the incorporated othering and oppression can be much more fully identified and explained in dictionary articles (entries.) The regular general English dictionaries by and large continue to promote and defend traditions and beliefs which encourage and uphold sexism, racism, xenophobia, heterosexism, colonialism, and speciesism, among other forms of oppression and othering. This paper makes some suggestions on how to improve matters.
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Dates et versions

hal-03898094 , version 1 (14-12-2022)

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  • HAL Id : hal-03898094 , version 1

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Steven M Kaplan. The role lexicographers can play in helping to vanquish insensitivity, brutality, othering, and wilful ignorance. 25th International AFRILEX (African Association for Lexicography ) Conference, Jun 2021, Stellenbosch, South Africa. ⟨hal-03898094⟩
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