Revenge and Release in High School Lexicography :: Education Teaching Lexicography Essays

Revenge and Release in High School Lexicography Eighteenth Century British literature can be a hard sell for high school students: excepting Gulliver’s Travels, it seems they would rather chew through the ossified gum underneath their desks than the period’s personal essays and heroic couplets. Given their general reaction to the century, studying Dr. Johnson’s lexicography would not seem a sure-fire plan for pedagogical fireworks. Nevertheless, it was; I had underestimated the emotional potential of high school lexicography. Simply reading portions of Johnson’s A Dictionary of the English Language did not ignite my students’ interest, but reading his entries with the prospect of writing their own caused a few mental sparks. It was, however, the process of defining and sharing these words--their words and their world--that brought literary ignition amidst a seemingly inflammable century. Why? There are peripheral reasons which I will discuss, but the central fuel was the emotional element of lexi cography, the potential for revenge and release. Our crucial first step was acquaintance with "the Great Lexicographer" (Dixon 220). We needed the invigoration of knowing the man, and his friend Boswell introduced us. In our text’s excerpt from his The Life of Samuel Johnson, the passage which ingratiated Johnson with students was his initial joke at the biographer’s expense: for with that quickness of wit for which he was so remarkable, he seized the expression "come from Scotland," which I used in the sense of being of that country: and, as if I had said that I had come away from it, or left, retorted, "That, Sir, I find, is what a very great many of your countrymen cannot help." (578) Perhaps Johnson’s cockiness or Boswell’s reaction--"This stroke stunned me a good deal; and when we had sat down, I felt myself not a little embarrassed, and apprehensive of what might come next" (578)--resonated with the students’ experience. Either way, reading and discussing this passage coalesced the 18th C. parlor and the 20th C. locker room, instilling some respect and preconditioning recognition of Johnson’s witty agenda. Analysis of Johnson’s preface to A Dictionary of the English Language deepened their relationship with the lexicographer. We appreciated his sarcasm in contrasting his labor with that of other scholars and artists: Among these unhappy mortals is the writer of dictionaries . . . doomed only to remove rubbish and clear obstructions from the paths through which learning and genius press forward to conquest and glory, without bestowing a smile on the humble drudge that facilitates their progress.