| 词组 | diction |
| 释义 | diction Harper 1975, 1985, Copperud 1980, and Bernstein 1971 all agree that diction in the sense of "enunciation" is established and acceptable in spite of earlier criticism: • But he is generally recognized to be a good orator, with crystal-clear diction —Current Biography, April 1966 The concern over the propriety of this sense appears to have started at the beginning of this century. It continued long enough for Follett 1966 to object to the use. At least part of the blame for spurring the debate on can be laid to the editor who failed to include the sense in Webster 1909, even though it was entered in the OED with citations from Dr. Johnson, Macaulay, and Ruskin. Our earliest evidence for discussion of the issue dates from 1901. A reviewer of Alfred Ayres's Some Ill-Used Words in The Critic, May 1901, dismissed Ayres's contention that the sense "delivery" or "utterance" should be accompanied by an explanatory footnote as "pure pedantry." From Ayres's book the dispute moved into American newspapers, evidently fueled by frequent use of the sense in reviews of plays and operas. A 1913 newspaper objects to a critic's use of diction in reference to an opera singer. We also have a 1928 newspaper clipping questioning the application of diction to both a speaker and a singer, as well as a 1931 clipping belaboring the drama critic of the New York Herald Tribune on this issue. All three of these mention the nonexistence of the sense in large American dictionaries. The editors of Webster's Second (1934) included senses for both speaking and singing, and the controversy subsequently began to wane. Still, some remembered it: • Yet a certain indistinctness of what is miscalled diction interfered with no part so much as his —Eric Bentley, New Republic, 18 Oct. 1954 A reviewer of Harper 1975 in the Saturday Review speaks of the matter as a lost battle. From the start it was a typical purist's battle, begun after the disputed use had been current for a century and a half in the works of several standard authors. |
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