I have
her quote on my blog, I’m enjoying Wordnik since its creation (when it had the
colourful bricks falling down from the top of the home page), loved her TEDVideo and enjoying her articles and tweets! I Iike her enthusiasm and love for
words and her disruptive approach to lexicography.
I dare to
say that her answers represent a break from traditional lexicography by
destroying the two milestones of lexicography: the definition and the authority
of the dictionary.
The end of
definition: Erin says “I think a good
definition is like a good poem: beautiful and worthwhile in itself.” We don’t need definitions anymore, they can
even limit our understanding of the word: “when
you limit your knowledge of a word to just the definition, you limit your
understanding as well”. They were suitable for paper dictionaries, where
the available space was limited: “Definitions
are still helpful when space is limited”. Internet offers us
unlimited space and the possibility to provide a variety of media to better
convey the meaning of a word. And moreover, not all words need the
same treatment: “Not every subject gets a
poem, and not every word needs a definition”. For some of them we just need
a glimpse; for some other
words, we want to get more info: “For
some words, people really want a precise definition – say, scientific and
technical words. What exactly is a yottabyte? For some other words, people want
to know how the word fits into English: what’s the
relationship between “very,” “terribly”, “quite”, and “awfully”? But for some
words, it’s just enough to know it exists, such as “awesomepants”.
But who
decides how much info is needed? The user! Yes the user, the protagonist of
e-dictionaries! That’s the most important message: e-lexicography is made
mainly by the user: “What is useful is
different for different people”. It’s up to the user to decide if to trust or
not the source of a term, it’s up to the user to ask for more info, it’s up to
the user to create a list of favourite words based on his/her needs and
priorities: “if there is a well-reasoned,
well-written comment from a Wordnik user on a word, you can go and check out
that user’s profile page (if it’s public) and base your acceptance of that
comment on your assessment of that user’s trustworthiness”, and most important: “I
hope that we are encouraging people to develop their own critical thinking
skills, which are essential for being a successful digital native.”
The end of
authority of the dictionary: The dictionary doesn’t own the authority of a
word, it is the source and the usage of the word that
provide such an authority: “Wordnik has no authority other than the
authority it inherits from the data it shows: if a word has a wonderful example
from the Wall Street Journal, for instance, then the authority for the use of
that word isn’t Wordnik, instead it’s the WSJ itself”.
A new era for lexicography has just
begun, the e-lexicographers has just been freed by the
time-consuming (and tiring processes) of definitions and
validation. They should present data as “opinions
and not as incontrovertible facts”. The
e-lexicographers now can really love words in their natural environment and have
no more to tame them, or capture them for inclusion in some kind of lexical
zoo.
Enjoy the full interview!
Learn more on Wordnik
Enjoy the full interview!
Learn more on Wordnik
