This research takes the form of an informative essay on the subject of the distinction between prescriptive and descriptive language use. The topic of research was chosen based on Winchester's account of how the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) came into being, in particular the section that describes a view held by many mid-nineteenth-century English lexicographers that all of the dictionaries that had been compiled to that time were products of prescription. Even the great Dr. Johnson, who in the mid-eighteenth century had produced his Dictionary of the English, had not been completely comprehensive. As Winchester puts it, Johnson and others were "guilty" of "selecting words for inclusion on the basis of whether they were good or bad" (104). Indeed, Boswell's biography of Johnson says as much. Boswell describes Johnson's method of writing etymology, definition, and "various significations" of each word, and documenting his source materials. But Johnson can also be said to have "edited" words out of his dictionary:
It is remarkable, that he was so attentive in the choice of the passages in which words were authorised that one may read page after page of his Dictionary with improvement and pleasure; an it should not pass unobserved, that he has quoted no authour whose writings had a tendency to hurt sound religion and morality (Boswell 61).
What is striking about this passage is that Boswell is not being critical but laudatory when he describes Johnson's method of selective inclusion. The view of those who conceived the OED was that it should be "'an inventory of the language' and decidedly not a guide to proper usage" (Winchester 104). In other words, those who shaped the OED project were determined to create first of all a comprehensive collection of English words and definitions, including "the history of the life span of each and every word" (Winchester 104). The question of how the words ought to be used the OED lexicographer...