Samuel Johnson and his Dictionary

I find it amazing that Johnson wrote a dictionary. I cannot even imagine trying to take on a task of this multitude. It came to my mind that Johnson could have written a dictionary pertaining to literary words only. Today we have all sorts of dictionaries that specify in certain fields, such as, medical, mechanic, art, literature, and the list goes on. Kernan writes that Johnson’s “frequently quoted authors were Locke, 1.674; Hooker, 1,212; Arbuthnot, 1,029; Boyle, 592; Watts, 509” (196). Not only are these astounding numbers but it shows who Johnson thought as reputable. In Johnson’s “Plan of an English Dictionary,” it felt as if he was trying to prove his expertise in the area. He was proving that he was the right candidate to undertake this monumental task. I am not fully convinced that it was completely addressed to Lord Chesterfield, Johnson seems to want to establish to his class why he was chosen for this monumental task. Johnson believes that people from the lower class unfamiliar with terms would be the essential ones that would use the dictionary, “The unlearned much oftener consult their dictionaries for the meaning of words, than for their structures or formations.” They do not care where the word came from or how it is constructed, they only care about the comprehension of a term. For this reason, the Plan is not directed at the lower class. The dictionary is not out yet, so if they were to read this would they be able to understand it? Johnson produces the feeling that his dictionary is like an instruction booklet to the English language versus the others that are in print.
Johnson has the role of a censor. He gets to decide which authors to quote and which works to use as examples of “marks of distinction” (Johnson 13). He is letting his audience know what his intentions are and his ‘plan’ of action in organizing the dictionary. It’s amazing to think about how much of the English language was omitted because Johnson felt that it was “barbarous, or impure” (Johnson 13). One of the major things that I enjoyed about Johnson is that he knew what a arduous job writing a dictionary would be and did it anyways. He expressed it best when he wrote, “…that I am frighted at its extent, and, like the soldiers of Caesar, look on Britain as a new world, which it is almost madness to invade” (Johnson 15).
One aspect that stood out to me was when Johnson signifies that there are “…the different classes of words…” (Johnson 4). I am ignorant on the dictionaries from this time period so this could be a misinterpretation on my part, but it seems that there is a societal influence in the perceptions of the population regarding language. In an anthropology course, I heard that it is human nature to want to classify things into categories, so this very well could just be a standard human component that shined through the work.
Kernan supports Johnson’s work of the dictionary by saying, “…it’s a central idea that the great writers and their books determine the language” (199). He included the battle of language within his article. Lord Chesterfield wanted to keep the Kings language and Johnson discovered that there is no absolute, official rules of language. Johnson accepted that language is subject to interpretation and that no class had the superiority over another in this sense(Kernan 201). It is interesting to think that a “linguistic revolution” (Kernan 201) was taking place around the time with debates about copyright.
http://librivox.org/plan-and-preface-to-a-dictionary-of-english-by-samuel-johnson/
http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Texts/plan.html
http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Texts/preface.html