Abstract

This article discusses two nineteenth-century rhetors who engaged in cultural persuasion through their respective lexicons. It argues that lexicography served an epideictic function in nineteenth-century culture, entering educational values and pervading print culture. Nineteenth-century lexicography functioned epideictically as a storehouse of cultural values and influenced the discourse of nineteenth-century rhetorics, evidenced in their concern with clarity, usage, and the disambiguation of language. But there is an acceptance and awareness of the inherent ambiguity of language in nineteenth-century rhetoric, which is also reflected in other satirical lexicons. The two poles of lexicography in theory and practice illustrate how dictionaries became a site of cultural dialogue and dissent.

Journal
Rhetoric Review
Published
2013-01-01
DOI
10.1080/07350198.2013.739494
CompPile
Search in CompPile ↗
Open Access
Closed
Topics
Export

Citation Context

Cited by in this index (1)

  1. Rhetoric Review

References (33) · 2 in this index

  1. How to Write Clearly: Rules and Exercises in English Composition
  2. On Rhetoric
  3. Writing Instruction in Nineteenth-Century American Colleges
  4. A Sole Survivor: Bits of Autobiography
  5. The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary
Show all 33 →
  1. Write it Right: A Little Blacklist of Literary Faults
  2. Democratic Eloquence: The Fight Over Popular Speech in Nineteenth-Century America
  3. 10.1080/01463378509369608
  4. The First New Intergalactic Wickedary of the English Language
  5. Philosophy and Rhetoric
  6. The Old Schoolhouse: The Magazine for Homeschool Familes.
  7. Satire
  8. Representative Words: Politics, Literature and the American Language
  9. Rhetoric Society Quarterly
  10. Reprinted in Twenty Years of School and College English
  11. The Principles of Rhetoric and Their Application
  12. The Art of Persuasion in Greece
  13. The Invention of Athens
  14. A History of Education in Antiquity
  15. Noah Webster and the American Dictionary
  16. The Nietzsche Reader, Volume 10
  17. Philosophy and Rhetoric
  18. The New Rhetoric. Trans
  19. Rhetorica
  20. The Long Journey of Noah Webster
  21. 10.2307/2712538
    American Quarterly  
  22. 10.2307/378414
  23. Defining Noah Webster: Mind and Morals in the Early Republic
  24. Rhetoric Society Quarterly
  25. American Dictionary of the English Language
  26. An oration, pronounced before the Knox and Warren branches of the Washington Benevolent S…
  27. Letters of Noah Webster
  28. Observations on Language and on the Errors of Class-Books Addressed to the Members of the…