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Robert Burchfield |
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 Dr
Robert Burchfield was a world-renowned scholar. Hailed by the Chicago
Tribune as "the greatest living lexicographer", he played a
crucial role in the study of the sources and development of the English
language.
Born in Wanganui, New Zealand, in 1923, he was educated at Victoria University College, Wellington and then at Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar. At Magdalen College, Oxford, he studied under C.S Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. Burchfield was entralled: "There I was … talking
to world famous people. And I had the privilege of just talking to them,
hearing their reaction to what I was saying. I knew I had arrived in some
sort of paradise." |
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Lord of the Words Through shared interests in medieval literature and philology he developed a close relationship with Tolkien. In an article "My Hero" (the Independent, 4 March 1989), Burchfield describes John Ronald Reuel Tolkien as "the puckering fisherman who drew me into his philological net". As an aside it is pleasing to draw a happy Kiwi symmetry between three lovers of language: Tolkien, as a language weaver, a writer of some of literature’s best loved works, mentor to Burchfield, an esoteric lover of words who would become editor of languages’ most respected catalogue. Tolkien will have his great work, The Lord of the Rings, realised on film by New Zealand director Peter Jackson. Burchfield became a lecturer in English Language and Literature immediately after graduation, and was encouraged by C.T. Onions, a former editor of the Oxford English Dictionary, to become involved in lexicography. In 1957 Burchfield was appointed editor of the definitive 16,750 page, 46 kilogram Supplement to the Oxford English Dictionary, which was published in four volumes between 1972 and 1986. He was chief editor of the Oxford English Dictionary between 1971 and 1984. The Dictionary’s authority is so widley acknowledged that it needs no validation here. that, "on every day, including Sunday, six people buy an Oxford Dictionary every minute." The Concise Oxford Dictionary, is regularly number one on best-selling lists in Britain. As Burchfield said to the Evening Post in the 1980’s, "it’s ahead of all the books on dieting, and all the books about Diana. We have no idea who’s buying them. We just know they are popular."
Despite a temptation to push the Kiwi linguistic edge, Burchfield knew he must not to be biased towards New Zealand English. However he admitted an affection for Pohutakawa and Pavlova, and reflected that "every one [New Zealand word] that I have put in has received the kind of affection one would give to wife and children." Burchfield edited the New Zealand Pocket Oxford Dictionary, published in 1983.
Robert Burchfield died at the age of
81 on 5 July 2004. His funeral was held at St. Peter's College Chapel
at Oxford. |
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References:
Web links: The Oxford English Dictionary
official website: Short bio of Burchfield at
biography.com Entry on Burchfield in the ‘illustrious
graduates’ section of the Victoria University website: Burchfield’s essay on his
relationship with J.R.R. Tolkien (from the Independent Magazine,
4 March 1989) Burchfield at Amazon.com On the American influence on the
continuing evolution of the English language: Jessie Sheidlower, "Elegant
Variation and All That", a review of The New Fowler’s Modern
English Usage, in The Atlantic Monthly, Dec 1986, downloaded on
13th Feb 2000 from, "The Story of English",
PBS programme with Burchfield, Alistair Cooke and William Saphire "Computer-users soon learn
that the miraculous powers of personal computers are based on avoidance of
error". |
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Amongst
several works on the English Language, Burchfield edited an acclaimed revision of
Fowler’s Modern English Usage (applauded as ‘sensible and
modern’). He wrote ‘an illuminating collection of essays' entitled Unlocking
the English Language, and was co-author of a report (1979) on
"The Quality of Spoken English on BBC Radio". He also co-authored a ‘learned,
charming and readable' biography of James A.H. Murray, the first editor
of the Oxford Dictionary, Caught in the Web of Words : James A. H.
Murray and the Oxford English Dictionary. Dr Burchfield contributed to
the Cambridge History of the English Language, and
published numerous scholarly essays including, "Four-Letter Words and
the O. E. D." He once observed that "a language
without euphemisms would be a defective instrument of communication." 
Often
the decision on whether to allow or disallow a word to enter the
dictionary can be a risky business. In 1974 Burchfield had to decide
whether to include "monetarism" – a word that was not all that
common at the time. "I’m glad that I decided to put it in. Since
then Margaret Thatcher and ‘monetarism’ have become inseparable."
He also recalled that "social" had been a particularly difficult word to
define, taking the equivalent of what he described as a one-person-year. "A man-year is
terribly chauvinistic, it was actually a woman who did most of the work
[on the definition]."