Johnson Vs Noah Webster

2 Wang

Comparisons of Noah Webster and Samuel Johnson?s Lives and Styles

Both as dictionary lexicographers, Noah Webster and Samuel Johnson are often compared in terms of their lives and their writing styles. They both serve as significant marks of the English Language in their period. Although both compiled descriptive dictionaries to improve the English Language, Samuel Johnson and Noah Webster held different points of view on how to approach their goals in their distinctive writing styles due to their different family impacts, childhood experiences, educational background, and most importantly, their personality.

Different growing-up experience of Noah Webster and Samuel

After dropping out from college, Johnson returned to his hometown and opened a private school to teach students. He was devoted to become a qualified principal and teacher, which was ruined by his scrofula illness since he was not welcomed by students.[endnoteRef:13] Similarly, though Webster had the law major in college education, he found a career as a teacher in preliminary and middle school and also intended to found small-scale schools on his own, which all ended in failures.[endnoteRef:14] Though both of them ended in failures in their experience of being teachers, they found out a common issue, namely lack of common language and unified textbook for schooling.[endnoteRef:15] Webster developed the notion that the American students should have learned American-style textbooks, which helped American people to construct their own criterion for spelling and pronouncing. [endnoteRef:16]Webster was more devoted to make differences to American?s education system and to strengthen nationalism by compiling America-style textbooks and dictionary. As for Johnson, he figured out the shortage of a complicated English dictionary since current one simply included difficult or deserted words or new words.[endnoteRef:17] [13: Christopher Hibbert, The Personal History of Samuel Johnson (New York: Harper

The volume of Webster?s dictionary is greater than that of Johnson?s. But Johnson?s dictionary has been most commonly used and imitated for the 150 years between its first publication and the accomplishment of Oxford English Dictionary. [endnoteRef:26] His dictionary is practical and applicable for common people in their daily life, which makes it easier to be accepted by the public. On contrast, Webster?s dictionary contained twelve thousand words that had never appeared in other published dictionaries before.[endnoteRef:27] [26: Adams 233.] [27: Bynack