Talk:Tom McArthur (linguist)

Worlds of Reference
In my opinion, Tom McArthur's most important book for Wikipedia lovers, editors, and thought-leaders is his 1986 "Worlds of Reference" published by Cambridge University Press. [isbn's: 978-0-521=30637-9 and 978-0-521-31403-9]. It is a fabulous history of reference books of all kinds including dictionaries, encyclopedias, etc.

It covers so many things relevant to the history and future of encyclopedia writing and organization. Things like multiple learning styles introduce in the 1600's, and atomized entries in the 1700's (which foiled the censors).

During the years that I helped lead Credo Reference, McArthur's "Worlds of Reference" was one of three books which every new employee was encouraged to read.

I hope someone can work some of this book of McArthur's into the Wikipedia entry on him.

-john dove JGDove99 (talk) 20:33, 18 April 2020 (UTC)


 * Roshan added it today in this edit. I'll try to flesh out the reference markup. Silas S. Brown (email, talk) 21:05, 20 April 2020 (UTC)

More information about Tom McArthur
Tom McArthur (1938-2020) was a world-renowned scholar in the field of English language studies, most noted for his editorship of The Oxford Companion to the English Language (Oxford University Press, 1992), an encyclopedic survey totaling over 1,200 pages and drawing upon the work of 95 contributors and 70 consultants. It was described by John Ezard of The Guardian as “a new leviathan of accessible scholarship”, chosen as a main selection for the Book-of-the-Month Club in the US, and listed as a bestseller in The Sunday Times. For nearly a quarter of a century, he also edited the journal English Today: The International Review of the English Language for Cambridge University Press. Launched in 1985, it covered many aspects of the study of English around the world, featured a wide range of well-known writers, and was celebrated for encouraging contributions by up-and-coming scholars. In the mid-Sixties, he taught English at Cathedral School in Bombay, and in the early Seventies, he was lecturer at Edinburgh University, where he completed his PhD in the Department of Linguistics. In 1979, he accepted a position as associate professor of English at the Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières in Canada. Throughout the Seventies and Eighties, he worked extensively with the publishers Collins and Longman on a number of EFL publications, most notably The Longman Lexicon of Contemporary English (1981), a groundbreaking thematic dictionary that remained in print for 22 years. In 1983, he returned to the UK to edit English Today, published numerous books including a history of dictionaries and encyclopedias entitled Worlds of Reference (1986). He also worked for many years at the Dictionary Research Centre at the University of Exeter. In 2001, he moved part-time to Hong Kong, working at Chinese University of Hong Kong and Lignan University, as well as Xiamen University in Fujian, China [PRC]. In 2002, he published The Oxford Guide to World English. In 2018, Oxford University Press published The Oxford Companion to the English Language (2nd edition, with Jacqueline Lam McArthur and Lise Fontaine). RoshanMcArthur (talk) 16:55, 20 April 2020 (UTC)


 * Much sympathy for your loss at this time. Hope you won't mind me asking: has the above paragraph been published anywhere else?  if so, maybe we can cite that place as a source. Silas S. Brown (email, talk) 21:11, 20 April 2020 (UTC)

Re:Dictionary Research Centre
"While at Exeter, Hartmann established the Dictionary Research Centre in 1984, supervising over 45 M.A. and 30 Ph.D. dissertations,[10] specialising on such aspects as dictionary criticism (evaluating their many different features), dictionary history (tracing their varying traditions), dictionary typology (classifying their different genres), dictionary use (observing the reference skills needed to access information), contrastive linguistics, translation, and bilingual lexicography." is in the article Reinhard Hartmann; but that article is not supported by detailed citations.--Johnsoniensis (talk) 03:23, 31 August 2020 (UTC)


 * Yes. What we are seeing is, unfortunately, a fundamental limitation of the way Wikipedia has to work.  Traditional encyclopaedias like Britannica can pay a known expert to write a good article.  Wikipedia on the other hand has no way to verify the identity of its editors.  I have no reason to doubt that the Wikipedia account called Roshan McArthur really is operated by Roshan McArthur, but we're not allowed to rely on that.  That's why I asked Roshan if he'd published his paragraph anywhere else: although we can't say "family member Roshan says" (or, if we did, somebody would want to delete it, and that way lies edit wars etc), we are allowed to cite a newspaper or something as a source of his words.  So I was really hoping he'd be able to reply with "yes, I also sent it to the local paper and they printed it" so we can cite that.  We are losing valuable information because of the source requirement, which is sad but there's not much we can do about it other than try to get more sources.  The Reinhard Hartmann article is currently tagged as having a problem and unfortunately I expect it's only a matter of time before somebody comes along and removes material, which is a pity because it's probably accurate.  At least this policy also has the good effect of making it harder for someone to add wrong information to an article, but it also makes things difficult when we have good information from people who should know but can't easily find a published source. Silas S. Brown (email, talk) 07:50, 2 September 2020 (UTC)