The linguist, lexicographer, writer, and technologist Sarah Ogilvie, a professor at Oxford University, discusses her new book The Dictionary People: The Unsung Heroes Who Created the Oxford English University (Knopf, 2023), with Joseph Planta.

The Dictionary People: The Unsung Heroes Who Created the Oxford English Dictionary by Sarah Ogilvie (Knopf, 2023). Click to buy this book from Amazon.ca: The Dictionary People

Text of introduction by Joseph Planta:

I am Planta: On the Line, in Vancouver, British Columbia, at TheCommentary.ca.

One of the more fascinating and delightful books of the season is The Dictionary People: The Unsung Heroes Who Created the Oxford English Dictionary. The book tells the origin story of the OED, and that of its editor James Murray. We see what motivates Murray, an autodidact, to oversee this project, and to solicit submissions from members of the public. These crowdsourced definitions for the dictionary provide for a more lively and accurate document of the English language, as each of these slips that are submitted by post, provide an example of usage. Some three thousand contributors from around the world, with varying backgrounds, provide Murray and his subeditors with words and examples of usage. They’re from all over the world, and of varying stations in life. Sarah Ogilvie once discovered an old address book of Murray’s in the basement of Oxford University Press, and this sets off for her a journey to get to know the fates of these contributors, what they contributed, and what their motivation was. This book tells some of their stories and it’s nothing less than captivating. For example, the top five contributors each had connections to mental asylums. Sarah Ogilvie is a linguist, lexicographer, writer, and technologist. Raised in Australia, she has lived and worked in the United States, teaching at Stanford. She currently teaches at Oxford University, where she is Senior Research Fellow in the Faculty of Linguistics, Philology, and Phonetics (and of Campion Hall). This new book is published by Knopf. We spoke two weeks ago, with Sarah joining me from Oxford. Please welcome to the Planta: On the Line program, Sarah Ogilvie; Dr. Ogilvie, good morning.

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