The press release highlighted the third edition’s up-to-the-minute content. It quoted the dictionary’s editor-in-chief, Philip B. Gove, revealing that the new volume would reflect “the informality of current usage” with “pungent, lively remarks” from “contemporary notables.” Scores of illustrative examples from bygone literary figures like Dryden and Pope had been replaced by the likes of Ethel Merman, Willie Mays, novelist Mickey Spillane, and former madam turned bestselling author Polly Adler. As yet more evidence of the current linguistic informality, Merriam’s marketers featured a snippet of the new volume’s unusually broad-minded entry for ain’t.1
The publicity department’s attempt to shake up the stuffy image of the dictionary would turn out to be a mistake. Especially unfortunate was their decision to showcase ain’t. When newspapers reported on the forthcoming dictionary, they focused on the shock aspects of the new book.
One of the earliest mentions came in The New York Times. Under the lighthearted headline “Webster Soups Up Its Big Dictionary” Times writer McCandlish Phillips announces that the new Merriam-Webster dictionary will be “entirely renewed in content and radically altered in style.” He quotes Gove’s comments on the informality of American speech. Then at the end of his brief article, Phillips tosses in one last fun fact. “The use of ‘ain’t’,” he notes, “is defended as ‘used orally in most parts of the U. S. by cultivated speakers.’”2
This tidbit, an afterthought for Phillips, counted as big news for other journalists. A rash of facetious headlines broke out—“Saying Ain’t Ain’t Wrong” (Chicago Tribune), “It Ain’t Necessarily Uncouth” (Chicago Daily News), “It ‘Ain’t’ Good” (Washington Sunday Star), and “Say It ‘Ain’t’ So” (Science). After having fun with their headlines, the papers generally gave a matter-of-fact description of the dictionary’s main features, and for the most part, their reports are positive. The Daily News, for instance, takes issue with Webster’s justification of ain’t, snapping, “Cultivated, our foot,” but it applauds the inclusion of new words like A-bomb and beatnik. “In the main,” remarks the reviewer, “we believe it the function of an unabridged dictionary to deal realistically with a world that has, after all, buried John Dryden and Alexander Pope and elevated Mickey Spillane and Miss Adler to best-sellerdom.”3
The first truly negative notice came from the September 8 Toronto Globe and Mail. In the somberly titled article “The Death of Meaning,” the paper accuses Merriam-Webster of contributing to the degeneration of English by embracing the word ain’t. The new dictionary, cries the reviewer in dismay, “will comfort the ignorant, confer approval upon the mediocre, and subtly imply that proper English is the tool only of the snob; but it will not assist men to speak truly to other men.” The reviewer pictures a future in which civilization, helped along by the barbarities of Webster’s Third, will regress into a primitive state. Yet the dictionary itself may prepare Americans for their fate. “In the caves,” concludes the reviewer, “a grunt will do.”4 The Washington Sunday Star spoke up next. Opines the Star reviewer, “Perhaps the most shocking thing in the whole book is that it takes a rather respectful view of ‘ain’t.’” The reviewer prefers the dictionary’s 1934 edition, “which bluntly—and correctly in our view—brands ‘ain’t’ as a ‘dialectal’ and ‘illiterate’ expression.” (The superiority of the 1934 edition would become a common theme among the dictionary’s opponents, who would set up a cry of “Hang onto your Webster’s Second!”) The Star, like the Globe & Mail, sees the appearance of the new dictionary as the first step toward anarchy. It’s no wonder, frets the reviewer, that the English-speaking world, “when it thus tolerates the debasement of its language,” is having trouble with types like Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev.5
This apocalyptic language was typical of the negative reviews that would soon proliferate. Horrified commentators reached for words like shock, disaster, calamity, debased, and vulgarism. The New York Times referred to the new volume as “Webster’s Third (or Bolshevik) International.” The Richmond News Leader predicts a war that will be waged “wherever men who believe in excellence find themselves in conflict with men who prefer an easy mediocrity.” There is “madness in their method!” cries Garry Wills, writing for the National Review.6
In some ways, there’s nothing remarkable about this outpouring of anguish. The same themes reverberate through centuries of usage arguments. Over-the-top outrage, ridicule, and scandalized disgust have dogged linguistic radicals from Noah Webster to Fitzedward Hall. As Lounsbury and Whitney noted in their first College Courant article, arguments about language have more in common with religion than with scholarly inquiry. Champions of linguistic orthodoxy have routinely predicted societal collapse when the old ways are challenged.
Even so, the outcry over ain’t seems like an extravagant response to a word that, after all, had also appeared in Webster’s Second, as well as earlier versions of the dictionary. Webster’s 1828 dictionary includes an entry for ant (pronounced “ain’t,” according to the key), defined as “vulgar dialect, as in the phrases I ant, you ant, he ant, we ant, &c.” Although some had criticized Webster at the time for including “low” language in his dictionaries, recording colloquialisms and slang had long been standard practice among dictionary makers. It was not normally a matter for hand-wringing.
The problem with ain’t in the eyes of Webster’s Third critics was not so much that it was listed in the dictionary, but that it was treated with respect. As the Sunday Star reviewer points out, Webster’s Second makes the low status of ain’t clear by appending the labels “Dial. or Illit.” Webster’s Third takes a more neutral approach. After the definition, it comments, “Though disapproved by many and more common in less educated speech, used orally in most parts of the U. S. by many cultivated speakers, especially in the phrase ain’t I.” The word is only labeled substandard when it’s used to mean “have not” (as in I ain’t got it).
The controversy was hotter than it might have been because the Merriam press release presented the entry for ain’t in drastically edited form. It omitted both the phrase “disapproved by many” and the information that the “have not” meaning was considered substandard. Reviewers were left with the erroneous impression that Webster’s Third considered ain’t completely acceptable. Even when the dictionary entry is read in its entirety, however, the difference in slant from the second to the third editions is obvious.
Critics believed the rephrased definition of ain’t signaled a dangerous turn toward linguistic permissiveness. Ain’t was merely the most egregious example of what they saw as the disastrously mistaken approach to language use that permeated the whole dictionary. Reviewers objected to the inclusion of business-speak terms like irregardless, finalize, and the new coinages created by casually slapping on –wise, as in speechwise. They were also offended by popular slang terms like boo-boo and footsie, and beatnik lingo like cool cats. Besides questionable vocabulary, the dictionary gave examples of often heard, but nonstandard, grammatical formations like whoever in object position and different than, without necessarily condemning them as wrong.
Although the second edition had listed many words not normally considered part of standard English, it had conveyed subtle usage judgments with a variety of status labels—improper, jocular, colloquial, illiterate, dialectal, erroneous. Most of these labels were missing from the new edition. Slang, nonstandard, and substandard still appeared in Webster’s Third, but not often. Instead, example sentences demonstrated typical uses of the word. The editors’ idea was that readers would identify slang or informal speech from the context, but this subtlety escaped many dictionary users, who assumed that unlabeled words were being treated as totally acceptable.
The release of the dictionary on September 28 triggered a second round of hostile comments. The New York Times printed another, much colder, review in its editorial pages. It opens with a sentence concocted from words that the Times was disturbed to find in Webster’s—“A passel of double-dome
s at the G. & C. Merriam Company joint in Springfield, Mass. have been confabbing and yakking … and now they have finalized Webster’s Third New International Dictionary.” (Like the slogan “Hang onto your Webster’s Second!,” this ferociously jocular opening would soon become a reviewing cliché. Even though the reviewers disapproved of slang in the dictionary, they couldn’t resist indulging in a little themselves.)
The editorial then gets serious. The Times editors accuse the Merriam Company of surrendering to “the permissive school that has been busily extending its beachhead on English instruction in the schools.” They complain that “intentionally or unintentionally,” the new dictionary reinforces the notion that “good English is whatever is popular.”
Although the Times recognizes that a deluge of new words has entered the language since 1934, it believes that the dictionary, as the “peerless authority” on American English, should have been much more restrictive in its choices and much more critical of the nonstandard words that were included. The dictionary’s editors, in the Times editors’ opinion, have dismally failed in their responsibility to the public. The review ends with a plea to the dictionary’s editors not to throw out the printing plates for Webster’s Second just yet.7
The dictionary’s other innovations only added to reviewers’ annoyance. They grumbled that the new pronunciation symbols were confusing and the technique of writing definitions as a single phrase made entries hard to read. They thought that quoting movie stars rather than great British authors gave the dictionary an air of frivolity. Some were upset by Merriam’s decision to cut encyclopedia-type materials—the biographical and geographical appendixes, foreign quotations, proverbs, famous fictional characters, and similar items—to make room for the new entries. The main target of their fury, however, remained the status granted to bad grammar and incorrect usage.
“Webster’s, joining the say-as-you-go school of permissive English, has now all but abandoned any effort to distinguish between good and bad usage,” laments a Life magazine reviewer. The reviewer accepts ain’t as a “justifiable” contraction, but scolds the dictionary’s editors for including “monstrous non-words” like irregardless and finalize. The magazine Science, although generally approving of the dictionary, especially its handling of scientific terms, hopes that “the next edition will distinguish more sharply … between illiterate and literate usage.”8
Atlantic writer Wilson Follett published an influential review that could have been inspired by the shade of Richard Grant White. Follett identifies the book’s main improvement as the plethora of new technical and scientific words. The merits of these, he says, can only be judged by specialists. On the other hand, the book’s shortcomings are immediately evident to everyone. They are in the area of “standard, staple, traditional language.” We can all make judgments about this area of language, declares Follett, because we all use it. Like White, Follett felt confident matching his native good taste against the expertise of specialists.
In Follett’s view, the new dictionary was a catastrophe. “Webster III,” he thunders, is out to destroy “every obstinate vestige of linguistic punctilio, every surviving influence that makes for the upholding of standards, every criterion for distinguishing between better usages and worse.”
Follett provides a long list of nonstandard expressions—wise up, ants in one’s pants, hepcat—that have entered the dictionary with no qualifying label to mark their problematic status. He feels that this failure to pronounce on what’s correct amounts to “a large-scale abrogation” of the dictionary maker’s responsibility. Dictionaries are meant to provide guidance, a ruling on what constitutes good speech. Unwary users of Webster’s Third may get the impression that all words and phrases are equally acceptable.
Even more objectionable is the inclusion of questionable example sentences. Due to is used with the meaning because of in “abominations” such as The event was canceled due to inclement weather. Different than appears in several examples, such as different than any other piece we’ve done lately (from no less respectable a source than Harper’s). Like is shown introducing embedded clauses, as in looks like they can raise better tobacco. The dictionary also gives examples of plural pronouns with everybody—Everybody has made up their minds—and whomever in subject position—I go out to talk to whomever it is.
Follett is appalled that Webster’s has decided to “exert its leverage” in favor of these ungrammatical uses. The fact that people say these things does not necessarily make them worthy of inclusion in an authoritative dictionary. By confining itself to neutrally recording current English, Webster’s Third has failed in its duty as a gatekeeper. (The dictionary actually does note in several of these instances that the usages are “disapproved by some grammarians.” Either Follett didn’t notice these comments or didn’t consider them a forcible enough condemnation.)9
Chicago Daily News columnist Sydney Harris gets to the heart of what troubled Follett and others. Harris starts out with the usual jovial opening—“Lemme recommend a swell new book”—followed by a slang-filled paragraph or two. He closes the review, however, in a more serious vein. Harris tells readers, “Our attitude toward language merely reflects our attitude toward more basic matters.” Sloppy word use is not terribly important in itself, but it indicates a general decay in values. “If everything is a matter of taste and preference and usage,” he insists, “then we are robbing ourselves of all righteous indignation against evil.”10 The real fault of Webster’s Third, in the view of Harris and other critics, is that it turns a blind eye toward America’s linguistic sins.
To Harris, and to many like-minded people before and since, correct usage was a sign of high principles and moral virtue. By not sufficiently condemning words like irregardless—and the people who say them—Webster’s seemed to be condoning immoral behavior. It was as though they were claiming that people who use words and grammar correctly are no more virtuous than people who say ain’t.
* * *
In 1961 many formerly solid traditions were teetering on the edge of collapse. A new political era seemed to be dawning when John F. Kennedy, the youngest president ever to be elected, beat the older and more established Richard Nixon by a razor-thin margin. Dramatic social changes were also in the offing. Activist college students were striking the first blows against segregation with sit-ins and Freedom Rides throughout the South. On the cultural front, the group of writers and poets known as the Beats were challenging the pieties of mainstream American life, while the new rock ’n’ roll music seemed to be tempting young people toward a looser, riskier lifestyle.
Old standards of language use appeared to be crumbling as well. Part of the reason was that modern theories about language were infiltrating the schools and universities. E. B. White may have scorned the Happiness Boys—more typically called structural linguists—but others took them more seriously. Their influence had become a nagging pain to usage conservatives.
Structural linguists were the modern descendants of the philologists. Like their nineteenth-century counterparts, they studied languages methodically. In recent decades, however, the focus had shifted from tracking the historical development of a language to describing and analyzing its current structure.
Descriptive linguists (as they were also called) studied languages with the aim of describing them as accurately and completely as possible. The acceptability or otherwise of a word or usage was merely one more fact about it, largely irrelevant to what linguists were interested in. They wanted to understand how language works. Labels like substandard and slang are not intrinsic features of language—they’re about the social status of the speakers. To descriptive linguists’ minds, anything that people were currently saying must be “good” or “grammatical” language in some context, even if it was rejected in others. They believed with Thomas Lounsbury that “whatever is in usage is right.”
Those who defined grammar as a set of prescribed rules interpreted this neutral view of language use as permis
sive, or “anything goes.” E. B. White and others with his outlook saw linguists as approving, or even encouraging, violations of traditional grammar. Linguists might have pointed out—as many defenders of Webster’s Third later did—that neither they nor grammar critics can hold back language change. People who use ain’t in normal conversation or habitually say Who did you speak to? were almost certain to continue saying those things, whether linguists gave them permission or not.
The descriptive approach to language was beginning to influence the way some English teachers thought about grammar. A 1952 curriculum review by the National Council of Teachers of English includes a chapter on “The Modern View of Grammar and Linguistics” that outlines the authors’ interpretation of modern linguistic principles—language constantly changes; correctness can only be based on current usage; and all usage is relative.
“The contemporary linguist does not employ the terms ‘good English’ and ‘bad English’ except in a purely relative sense,” explain the authors, “Good English is … the form of speech which is most clear, effective, and appropriate on any given linguistic occasion.” Bad English is the opposite, “no matter how traditional, ‘correct,’ or elegant the words or phrases employed.” Later, they suggest what this idea might mean in practical terms. They propose, “The teaching of correctness must shift in emphasis.… Instead of teaching rules for the avoidance of error, pupils must be taught to observe and understand the way in which their language operates.”11
The possibility that schools would start teaching children to draw their own conclusions about usage was bound to upset anyone raised on old-fashioned grammar books. It invited linguistic anarchy. Even more disturbing, it opened the door to social leveling. This idea was no more appealing to usage arbiters in 1961 than it had been in the 1870s when Richard Grant White was laying down the laws of usage in his Galaxy column. While linguists still agreed with Lounsbury, defenders of the traditional standard continued to believe with White that “there is a misuse of words which can be justified by no authority, however great, by no usage, however general.”
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