Taking slang seriously

Conference item

I have been writing slang dictionaries since my first appeared in 1984 (The Dictionary of Contemporary Slang), and the latest, and I hope the best, is scheduled to appear in a few months. It is called Green's Dictionary of Slang on Historical Principles. It runs to three volumes, and offers 125,000 headwords with nested derivations, compounds and phrases. All of which are backed up by citations and offer where possible etymologies. My intention is to illustrate the nuts and bolts of making such a dictionary. To do this I intend to take a page, or if I find that requires an excess of time, a column (half-page) of the book and show just how it was put together: the choice of headwords, their etymologies, the nesting (or lack of it), the etymology, the sense separation and definitions, and, perhaps most complex, the sourcing and selection of citations. I shall also show the way in which, unlike those of standard English, the slang lexicographer is required to be a detective-cum-translator, in pursuit of his or her material. Certain texts, expecially those encountered as one retreats chronologically, contain a language that is as recondite and elusive as any. One must decode as well as select, define and sort. Slang is about rule-breaking and defying authority, including that of those who attempt to codify it. Thus it is to be expected that slang lexicography of this type, must acknowledge that the language under review is keen to break the rules of dictionary-making. To an extent one is forced to shoe-horn it into an established and thus comprehensible framework so as to make the dictionary both authoritative - as far as that may be possible with so chimerical a lexis - and worth using.

Authors: Green, J

• Alternative title: Presented at Slang Lexicography session
• Publication status: Not published
• Peer review status: Reviewed (other)
• Edition: Author's Original
• Language: English
• Keywords: slang
• Subjects: Lexicography