Dictionaries and Conspiracy Theories
Sunday, December 22, 2024 - 10:51
If someone told you there was a sustained conspiracy to suppress lesbian history, would you believe it? Or would you consider the idea a bit paranoid? When you look at the history of how words for f/f sexuality were handled across the long history of dictionaries of the English language, it's hard to find a more accurate word than "conspiracy" to describe the systematic obscuring, suppression, and censorship involved.
Having read a lot of primary sources, I always found claims about the supposed recency of vocabulary for lesbianism to be dubious, but the first acknowledgement I found that the OED--supposedly the official record of usage and history--could not be relied on for this topic was in an online article that I blogged as LHMP #245. So when I saw announcement of Turton's book, I got very excited to see a longer exploration of this topic. And as a bonus, the book includes an extensive appendix of all the dictionary entries that do exist. (Which I will file away for future reference for my own chronology of terminology.) It took a while to get around to blogging this book, despite my intense interest, because other publications were prioritized to support podcast topics. But here we are at last.
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Full citation:
Turton, Stephen. 2024. Before the Word Was Queer: Sexuality and the English Dictionary 1600-1930. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. ISBN 978-1-316-51873-1
Publication summary:
A study of the handling of transgressive sexuality in English dictionaries over the centuries.
Introduction
How many times have you seen a claim along the lines of “people didn’t even have a word for lesbianism until the late 19th century” with a reference to the dated citations in the Oxford English Dictionary? This book shows why that impression is totally wrong-headed, due to deliberate and selective editing and suppression of words for female same-sex sexuality in the long history of dictionaries of English.
The book begins with an anecdote about the OED updating its entry for “marriage” when the (British) marriage equality act was passed, and how this was framed in the press as participating in a “change of definition”. This is followed by an anecdote from a slander case in 1942, which argued that “lesbian” could not be slanderous, as it was (incorrectly) asserted that the word didn’t exist in English when the relevant law was passed--an argument based on citations in the OED entry for “lesbian”, which was not included in the first edition published in 1908.
Does the OED reflect or prescribe usage? Or something else? Despite the lack of the sexual sense of “lesbian” in the first edition of the OED, the word was definitely in use in that sense. The relationship between language and its dictionaries is complex and falls somewhere in the middle ground between documentation and prescription. Dictionaries are not neutral entities, especially in contested fields, such as sexuality. This book will explore that relationship and its history in English.
The author uses the example of “queer” in a sexual sense to trace how words entered the dictionary and from what sources. The earliest current citations are one from 1894 in a letter by the Marquess of Queensbury, then after a gap of 20 years, two newspaper examples in California. But the 1894 example is ambiguous in meaning and only clearly intended as negative, while the 1914 examples are clearly in the context of homosexuality. The origin of new senses can be hard to pin down due to polysemous senses, and shifts in application.
There is a discussion of what falls under the author’s use of “dictionary” as opposed to other types of reference works, then a similar discussion of the scope of sexuality as discussed in this work. This is followed by a review of previous literature and a history of dictionaries as a publishing genre.
A review of queer historiography challenges the supposed clear dividing line at the “invention of homosexuality” in the late 19th century. Definitions in dictionaries, in addition to negotiating the balance between descriptive and prescriptive, also reflect societal judgments and norms (and tend to be inherently socially conservative). Thus, when the 1914 OED defines “tribade” as “a woman who practices unnatural vice with other women” it is not providing a value-neutral reflection of the word (or even an objective description of usage), but is telling the reader how to think about the subject. It is also obfuscating the specifics of meaning, contributing to silencing the topic. It is likely that many readers of the definition would have been unclear on the specifics of the denotation, while understanding the judgment. “Lexicographers favored disapproval over detail.”
An absence in the dictionary can reflect nonexistent words, or ignorance of their records, or a deliberate withholding of knowledge.
The remainder of this introductory chapter lays out the plan of the book’s methodology and structure. The first four chapters look at specific “cultural discourses” in an overlapping chronology.
1. Conceptual frameworks, in which sexuality was discussed and interpreted, focusing on the words “buggery” and “sodomy.”
2. Sexuality as driver of national imagery.
3. Dictionary as gatekeeper, by defining or excluding words and meanings.
4. The treatment of transgressive sexuality by medical texts, especially for female, same-sex topics.
This takes the chronology up to 1884 when the fascicles of the OED began to be published.
5. Looks at the OED specifically, including the 1933 supplement.
This is followed by a discussion of current lexicographic concerns and approaches.
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