Using dictionaries doesn't help in cases like these. (Gaming)

by Funkmon , Thursday, June 02, 2016, 17:55 (2912 days ago) @ cheapLEY

In much the same way, distinguishing press release regurgitation from journalism, we're talking about a particular definition of journalism, and throwing a dictionary, unsourced and merely showing all definitions encountered by the editors, out there isn't helpful.

Isn't that sort of the point of a dictionary?

No.

Most of this thread breaks down into an argument about what journalism is. I did about five minutes worth of googling (not a lot, in the grand scheme of things, I know), but nowhere could I find a definition of journalism that lines up with Cody's. Just because doesn't Kotaku doesn't live up to some imaginary, lofty standard that some people place on the word journalism, the things Kotaku posts are technically and literally journalism by the definitions I could find. That's was my point. If we start just ignoring the actual definitions of words (or assigning our own, imaginary definitions) then what's the point of defining them in the first place?

The purpose of a modern dictionary is to document the usage of words, not to say what is and isn't a correct definition. The first dictionaries were made for loanwords and difficult words an educated person might come across in writing.

The idea is that if you're reading a book and you see a character who is a boatswain, but you don't know what that means, you simply go to your Funk and Wagnalls and figure it out. You find out boat is just boat, and swain is a Norse word for boy. You find the exact position he holds on the ship, and learn it's traditionally pronounced bosun.

They're defined for the people who don't know the word. They are NOT there to show people in edge cases that they don't understand a word.

The reason you can't find a definition of that kind of journalism is the same reason I can't find the definition of "skeptic" to mean someone who doubts things unless supported by the scientific method. It doesn't mean that when I say James Randi is a skeptic I'm misusing the word. It means I'm using a particular type of that word with which many of us are familiar. It could be called scientific skepticism.

In journalism, there's hard news, there's punditry, there's investigative journalism, etc. Narc would know more about this than I do, that's for damn sure, but there are different types, and they won't make it into the dictionary.

Cody Miller had a specific type of journalism in mind, similar to the way I did when I said they actually practice it, that is leak journalism and investigative journalism. A dictionary has nothing to say on this.

Dictionaries cannot show a usage to be incorrect. All they can do is document at some level what usages occur. They lag behind language use, and they're not completely comprehensive.

So, to reiterate, the point of dictionaries is to try to tell you what a word means, and cannot, by design, tell you what a word doesn't mean. The only way to determine if a word doesn't mean something is a figurative trial by fire. Have some weirdo on a forum (Cody) say his completely wrong definition of journalism (which he did), and everybody tells him he's wrong (which we have). Dictionaries are a reference tool. They are not an arbiter of usage. People are.