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

______________________________________________________________________________
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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