And after that, and also for each word, there should be sentences that show the twists and turns of meanings—the way almost every word slips in its silvery, fishlike way, weaving this way and that, adding subtleties of nuance to itself, and then perhaps shedding them as public mood dictates.
This shows an important philosophical approach to lexicography, namely a fundamentally inductive way of looking at definition. Rather than focus on etymology, or other a priori or prescriptive methods, this shows definitions to be rooted in usage. Thus the approach is descriptive and rather than seeing language as static, shows that language is constantly evolving and that words can be polysemous and change over time.
In the sixteenth century in England, dictionaries such as we would recognize today simply did not exist. If the language that so inspired Shakespeare had limits, if its words had definable origins, spellings, pronunciations, meanings—then no single book existed that established them, defined them, and set them down.
This again argues for a populist approach to lexicography in which common usage and the primacy of oral tradition rather than written rules are definitive. It should be noted that this is somewhat a case of special pleading and should be taken as polemical, showing the author's biases. In Elizabethan England, the main literary language had been Latin, with the vernacular just beginning to gain traction. Many Latin dictionaries were available and the movement named Ciceronianism was devoted to precisely the sort of prescriptivism that the author claims did not exist.
All of a sudden his books, which had hitherto been merely a fond decoration and a means of letting his mind free itself from the grim routines of Broadmoor life, had become his most precious possession.
This quotation is important to readers' understanding of the central character of Dr. William C. Minor, the madman of the title, who though suffering delusions and paranoia, at the same time was a brilliant lexicographer and a major contributor to the dictionary.
Any grand new dictionary ought itself to be a democratic product, a book that demonstrated the primacy of individual freedoms, of the notion that one could use words freely, as one liked, without hard and fast rules of lexical conduct.
Professor James Murray and the obsessive lexicon researcher Dr. W. C. Minor both believed that language is a natural part of the human species; that it is an integral part of society. Therefore, the dictionary—which is akin to the Bible when it comes to dictating the rules and vocabulary of a language—should reflect the various members of that society. The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) and dictionaries in general should be democratic in order to represent the different ways in which people speak.
In modern times, this can be seen with how people—who speak the same language, such as English—from different cultural and economic backgrounds speak in particular ways. With the creation of the internet, pop culture, and other cultural artifacts, language is shared easily. This can be seen with the usage of African American ebonics, which is almost ubiquitous in various settings, especially on the internet. The English language evolved from its Germanic origins, to Old English, Middle English, and finally to contemporary American and British English. If it weren't for a democratic approach to teaching and adopting language innovations, the English of today would not be the same—or rather, it would have taken longer for it to evolve.
His books, and his work on the words he found in them, were about to become the defining feature of his newly chosen life.
It was evident that Dr. W. C. Minor, the "madman," was obsessed with his work, but it is later revealed—though in a more subtle and gradual way—that the professor himself is very passionate about the compilation of the OED. The difference is that Minor suffered from a severe form of psychosis, which is linked, perhaps as a form of obsessive compulsion, to his work on the dictionary at the mental institution. On the other hand, Professor Murray's story deals with his tedious climb to the top of academia.
The language should be accorded just the same dignity and respect as those other standards that science was then also defining.
Linguistics and lexicography are proposed as "serious" sciences such as physics, chemistry, and biology. During the time of Professor Murray and Mr. Minor, linguistics was still seen as a "soft" science, such as sociology and psychology. Even to this day, it is still considered a soft science, but it is taken more seriously in academia than a century prior. Language or any form of communication is a common trait among all humans and animals; therefore, the book argues, based on the opinion of the main characters, linguistics should be taken seriously.
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