Speakers
Description
To create ‘a dictionary for all Canadians’ is one of the stated goals of the new Canadian English Dictionary (CED). But who are ‘all’ Canadians, and how can a single resource meet their varied needs? To help answer these questions and develop lexicographical principles and protocols, the team behind the CED is exploring the concept of an ‘inclusive standard’. In this talk, we discuss our ongoing exploration of inclusivity and consider specific issues that arise in the drafting of entries.
Canada has been without an updated English dictionary for over twenty years (since Canadian Oxford Dictionary, 2nd ed., Barber, 2004). To address this gap, in 2022 a team of academics and editors launched the Society for Canadian English, a non-profit working group committed to creating a new resource. One goal is to produce an updated dictionary with changes to the language over the past twenty years; another important goal is to interrogate the ‘standard’ on which dictionaries are typically based and create a resource for ‘all’ that reflects the linguistic and cultural diversity of the country.
In Canada, the ‘standard’ variety of English typically characterizes the speech of urban, formally-educated people in the Central-West region from families with multiple generations in the country (Chambers, 1998). This conception of the standard comprises only 36% of the population (Dollinger, 2010) and excludes communities in the East and North, rural areas, those with less formal education, speakers of Indigenous Englishes, Anglophones in Québec, people in heritage language communities, and recent immigrants. A dictionary for ‘all’ must do better.
Our inclusivity goals are also necessarily decolonial. Dictionaries have historically been profoundly colonial in their construction and implementation, and projects like the CED must begin the work of practicing decolonial lexicographical methodologies. As well, an inclusive dictionary must consider sensitives around lexical items relating to specific social groups, including people with disabilities, racialized individuals and the LGBTQ+ community.
Representing the full range of Canadian English varieties and accents across different linguistic and social groups might achieve maximum inclusivity, but it could come at the cost of producing a resource with clear guidelines on how English is used in Canada, for those who seek such clarity. Dictionaries already struggle with a tension between descriptive and prescriptive aims and are used differently by editors, linguists, students and learners. An inclusivity goal makes balancing the needs and goals of diverse users even more challenging.
Given these issues, how do we define an ‘inclusive standard’, and how do we put our ideas into action in the dictionary-making process? After presenting a brief overview of the CED’s history, methodological procedures and corpus research, we focus our discussion on inclusivity, providing examples in the realms of defining, pronunciations and etymology.
In the area of defining, one issue of consideration is our practice for the inclusion and presentation-order of variant spellings. In the case of kayak, for example, do we include the spelling qajaq, which reflects the word’s Inuktitut roots, and if so, should it appear as the headword or variant? Another issue is the treatment of ‘offensive’ terms. This includes our use of labels to clarify offensive historical terms (e.g., half blood, paraplegic) as well as our implementation of usage notes for terms that are historically (and in some contexts still) offensive, but that have been reclaimed as neutral or positive (e.g., queer, Indian).
Regarding pronunciations, the diversity of accents in Canada means that inclusivity considerations affect all aspects of the transcriptions. One issue is the choice of transcription system. We explain our decision to use the IPA — a divergence from North American tradition — to increase accessibility, especially for learners. Another issue is on whose speech we base the main pronunciation and, relatedly, how much variation we include. We discuss the challenges of choosing a ‘model speaker’ who is broadly representative of Canadian English as well as how to accommodate alternative pronunciations without embracing a level of detail better left to a dialect dictionary.
With etymologies, we have the opportunity to ground our inclusive standard in the decolonial practice of acknowledgment, similar to acknowledgments of unceded Indigenous land that settler-colonial peoples occupy. Many Canadian English words have an origin in an Indigenous language that may not be readily understood to the average speaker, for example, kayak/qajaq, woodchuck, and squash (vegetable). This etymological work highlights the debt of Canadian English to Indigenous languages of North America. It also acknowledges the view amongst Indigenous scholars such as Emma LaRocque (Cree and Métis) that “English is the new Native language” and that “it is English that is now serving to de-colonize and to unite” Indigenous Peoples (1990, 57).
In an inclusive dictionary, every Canadian should be able to open the resource and see their variety of English represented and treated with respect. We hope that our development of an inclusive standard will benefit not only the CED but serve as a model for future lexicographical projects.