Samuel Johnson: The Standardization Of The English Language

English language is one of the most important and official languages in many countries. English language has many purposes and can be used in many different ways. It can be used in person communication; people use it as a language to understand and communicate between each other. Business communication; business men and workers use English language to expand their work, get more opportunities, build and improve international relationships, help their company to succeed, communicate to trust the colleagues and clients. Entertainment communication; a huge number of famous people usually communicate by using the English language. A huge number of top movies, music and books and published and produced in English. People use dictionaries to understand

The codification of English was as primary component in the process of standardization, it is known that the history of English illustrates the inevitability of linguistic change. “In the seventeenth and eighteenth century, the lexicographers in England had published some developed dictionaries, but the lexicons in both England and America were set to standards by Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary of the English Language.” (Seargeant and Swann, 2012, p. 92) “Samuel Johnson was born in 1709 in Lichfield, Staffordshire. The son of a bookseller, he rose to become one of the greatest literary figures of the eighteenth century, most famously compiling A Dictionary of the English Language.” (Dr. Johnson’s House, Samuel Johnson, 2012).

Before getting into more details about Dr. Johnson’s dictionary in the seventh and eighteenth century, let’s mention that the English language grew more though years to become a national language. Before it became a national language, English was not even original in England. The Language was a mixture between the Celtic, French and Latin languages. “As Milroy and Milroy specify, written English has been valued in education,

Johnson shared a disquiet with grammarians that the English language would change beyond confession. When the English language had been fixed by the grammarians, eighteenth century lexicographers like Johnson who concentrated to slow the changes in language so that it would be easier for future generations to able to read and understand English. Johnson’s dictionary helped the future generation by settling the language and making it more understandable. “In all, there are over 114,000 quotations in the dictionary. Johnson was the first English lexicographer to use citations in this way, a method that greatly influenced the style of future dictionaries. He had scoured books stretching back to the 1500s, often quoting from those thought to be 'great works ' such as Milton or Shakespeare.” (The British Library, Literary quotations). In the eighteenth century, the language changed due to the time of the empire. Because of the people who came from foreign countries to England for commercial trading purposes, the language was affected from both foreign countries and England. “Johnson argued that as a country grows, so does the language.” (Seargeant and Swann, 2012, p.