Women and dictionary-making : gender, genre, and English language lexicography

By - Russell, Lindsay Rose

Floor - Floor 1

Published - Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom, 2018

ISBN 10 - 1107187702

ISBN 13 - 9781107187702

Book Status - 1 Qnty Available with us.

Subject - Sex role

Shelf No - 21

Call Number - 423.082 RUS Ref

Physical Description - xiii, 252 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Notes - include Reference and index

Book Information

Dictionaries are a powerful genre, perceived as authoritative and objective records of the language, impervious to personal bias. But who makes dictionaries shapes both how they are constructed and how they are used. Tracing the craft of dictionary making from the fifteenth century to the present day, this book explores the vital but little-known significance of women and gender in the creation of English language dictionaries. Women worked as dictionary patrons, collaborators, readers, compilers, and critics, while gender ideologies served, at turns, to prevent, secure, and veil women's involvements and innovations in dictionary making. Combining historical, rhetorical, and feminist methods, this is a monumental recovery of six centuries of women's participation in dictionary making and a robust investigation of how the social life of the genre is influenced by the social expectations of gender.

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