Date: Tue, 28 Oct 1997 13:47:04 -0800

From: Gail Stygall stygall[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]U.WASHINGTON.EDU

Subject: Re: PC Dictionaries?



Jesse:

You miss my point. There is nothing -- other than some very human

decisions made by people like you -- that demands that a

dictionary define by what you call what it "means." I don't think I or

many other people would have any trouble figuring out what it "means" by

starting with epithet. The Harper Collins CoBuild, for example, begins

the definition of "nigger" with "a word . . ." Semantics remains the most

slippery of the linguistic levels and yet you make it sound as if what it

"means" is utterly transparent.

Gail



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Gail Stygall stygall[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]u.washington.edu (206) 543-2190

Director, Expository Writing Program

Editor, _CCCC Bibliography of Composition and Rhetoric_

English, Box 354330, University of Washington, Seattle WA 98195-4330

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