ABSTRACT
Although Johnson begins his Plan with a self-deprecating evaluation of the role of the lexicographer, it is not a declaration which can be taken too seriously. For like Swift, Johnson links the concern with language to matters of state; or at least he claims that his patron, the Earl of Chesterfield, has made this connection by sharing his attention to language 'with treaties and wars'. It is a trope which indicates the importance attached to language as it became the focus for a number of important political and cultural anxieties, the ground upon which all sorts of social values and differences are debated. Johnson himself posits the relation between the linguistic and political realms in the Preface to the Dictionary when he asserts: 'tongues, like governments, have a natural tendency to degeneration, we have long preserved our constitution, let us make some struggles for our language'.
