ABSTRACT
By the mid-eighteenth century, the monolingual dictionary had evolved into a structure within which the English language could be represented as a centreperiphery structure. The technique of pseudo-bilingual definition had developed from the bilingual definition and branding and labelling had appeared as mechanisms of partial exclusion from the wordlist. The principle that the dictionary should attempt to cover ‘all the words of the language’ had been established in conjunction with the principle that some categories of words should nevertheless be excluded. Regional dialect had already been identified as one of the categories to be excluded, partially excluded or relegated to the realm of specialist lexicography. Commentators had also begun to recognise the potential of the dictionary to influence the direction of the language. But until the publication of Johnson’s Dictionary of the English Language in 1755, no existing dictionary had seemed adequate to the task.
