MED Magazine – MED Profile

MED Magazine - Issue 56 - January 2010

MED Profile

Macmillan Dictionaries’ Publisher Gwyneth Fox retired at the end of 2009, after more than 40 years working with students of the English language. Not only has she taught at schools and universities both in the UK and abroad, but in the 1980s she was also heavily involved in the project which led to the first corpus-based dictionary for advanced learners.

In the past few years, Gwyneth has travelled the world, bringing the Macmillan English Dictionary to students and teachers alike.

How did you get your start in the world of dictionaries?
Gwyneth Fox: It was 1981 and a new language research project was starting at the University of Birmingham, under Professor John Sinclair; I was offered a part-time job on it. I had been an English as a Foreign Language teacher, and then a senior lecturer in Applied Linguistics, but was taking a year off to look after my three children. The project sounded so interesting, though, that I decided to take the job. The aim was to find out as much as we could about how English was being used in the 1980s, making the first serious use of a corpus, and then to publish our findings in reference books for learners – the first being the Cobuild English Language Dictionary in 1987. I worked on the project until 1997, running it as Publishing Director from 1992. I decided to leave when the publishers restructured the Cobuild team. I then taught Modern English Language and Applied Linguistics to undergraduates and postgraduates in the English department of the University, something I had been doing there on a smaller scale since 1987.

When did you join Macmillan and why?
Gwyneth Fox: I joined in 1999. For a couple of years before the restructuring, Cobuild had been marketed by Heinemann, and I had worked closely with them, giving talks and attending conferences around the world. When Macmillan bought Heinemann in 1998, they decided they wanted to produce a learners' dictionary; Bloomsbury Publishing was contracted to write it, under Michael Rundell, and I joined Macmillan as Dictionaries Publisher, working two or three days a week, whilst still carrying on with my University commitments.

What Macmillan Dictionary projects have you worked on since then? Do you have a favourite, and if so, why?
Gwyneth Fox: I've worked on all the Dictionaries in the Macmillan list, reading the copy at least once, making editing suggestions and checking the final text to ensure it's good enough to publish. I've also been very involved in making sure that the Dictionaries meet the changing needs of users, for example ensuring that any new features are genuinely useful for learners.

I suppose my favourite project has to have been to be the First Edition of the Macmillan English Dictionary. It's always exciting to start something from scratch – you spend more time looking at the corpus, crafting definitions, choosing examples, and so on.

You've travelled a lot doing presentations on Macmillan Dictionaries – what's been your favourite place and why?
Gwyneth Fox: I’ve been lucky to go to a lot of different places, all memorable in different ways. My first talk in Kenya was pretty nerve-racking, being confronted by a sea of eager faces, knowing that many had taken hours to get there, all waiting to hear what I had to say! Doing whole-day seminars in Ethiopia and marvelling at the knowledge and enthusiasm of the teachers was quite humbling too.

Certainly one of the highlights has to be Uzbekistan, where we went to Samarkand – it was as magical as I had hoped, with the colours of turquoise and deep, deep blue in the tiles of the buildings; just magnificent. Then there was Russia, standing for the first time ever in Red Square in Moscow, a place I had never expected to be able to visit. And, of course, Italy – Rome has to be my favourite place in the world!

How many presentations have you done on Macmillan Dictionaries over the years? How many people do you think that's involved?
Gwyneth Fox: I have no idea how many presentations I've done, but it certainly runs into the hundreds! There have been lots of different kinds – three-day courses, whole-day seminars and workshops, three-hour workshops, one-hour talks, the list goes on. Plus actually teaching a few classes, sometimes expectedly, but more often unexpectedly! I must have presented to literally thousands of people, ranging from groups of more than 900 to as few as one.

What was the funniest / strangest thing that happened to you one of your trips?
Gwyneth Fox: There were quite a number of talks where the equipment we’d requested was unavailable – whether it was an overhead projector, computer, or even just a blackboard! I really had to learn to think on my feet, never to take things for granted. One time was in my very early days of travelling, I’d built the talk I was giving entirely around slides for the overhead projector, but when I tried to turn the projector on, not only did it not work, but it seemed to blow the power in the whole of the hotel, so all the lights went out!

Another time, I was in Moscow; I had my talk on my USB stick and I kept asking to put it on the computer – no problem, I was told. But the students filed in, and still the computer hadn’t been switched on. I’d been told to wait for someone to sort it out, but I couldn’t wait any longer, so I went to do it – and discovered there was no electricity in the room! I had to quickly decide whether to move everyone to another room and waste half the time, or carry on where I was. So I improvised, and used the most useful aid I ever had – the dictionary blads [sample sections]. But I still don't understand why no-one told me about the situation earlier!

What is the strangest place / audience you've done a talk on dictionaries and why?
Gwyneth Fox: I suppose a Girl Guide hut in Botswana would have to be one of the strangest places, though I was talking to teachers not Guides. I’ve done thousands of talks in big halls and schools where the acoustics were often quite poor, which could be a real challenge.

Have you met any particularly interesting or unusual people in your travels? Is there any one nationality that you would say is particularly engaged in the topic of language-learning, or does it just depend on the individual?
Gwyneth Fox: There were some wonderful teachers in Ethiopia. One really sticks in my mind – a blind man who taught at secondary level, and had the most superb English. He was wonderful, he asked me probably the most taxing questions at any talk I've ever given, including ones to academic linguists. It’s fantastic when you get people like that in a group, asking lots of really interesting questions. It was a marvellous day. A lot of the people in Russia were superb too, wonderful to talk to, and I’ve become quite friendly with some of them over the years.

I’d say out of everyone, the Russians are probably the most engaged when it comes to dictionaries and language, I think because, if they’re studying languages, they tend to be very interested in every aspect of the process. They ask lots of very good questions.

Is there one question you’ve been asked about dictionaries, more than any other?
Gwyneth Fox: I suppose it would be ones to do with how we get the data. People were always asking about how we collect spoken English – that came up probably in about a third of the talks I ever gave. The answer is that you take out a tape recorder and record all of your encounters. And then people would ask how words get into the dictionary – how do you decide if it goes in or not. The answer is that it depends what type of dictionary it is – if it's a monolingual dictionary aimed at native speakers, then as long as there are citations, it will go in. If it's a learner's dictionary, though, you need to know that the word is appearing in a variety of different media – spoken, written (formal, informal, academic) and so on. Learners can’t possibly pick up every word in the English language, so you need to be sure a word is important and widely-used enough to be useful to them.

What's your favourite English word?
Gwyneth Fox: I actually don’t have a favourite word, but only because I find I become fascinated with whichever word I'm looking at data for at the time; there’s always something that you didn't know or hadn't realised! One of the most interesting words I've ever worked on, though, is the verb ‘(to) give’. If I was going to do a PhD now, I would do it on that.

And finally, what are you going to do, now that you've got all the time in the world?
Gwyneth Fox: Well, I seem to be heading back to the classroom, but as a student, rather than a teacher. My very first job after leaving university was in Rome, and I used to speak fairly good Italian, but of course over the years I’ve forgotten most of it, so I’m now doing Italian classes, which I really enjoy. I also did an Open University Latin course last year, and I want to do more, because I’ve become absolutely fascinated with Latin in a way that I just never was at school. (And it annoys me that I can no longer translate things that I used to be able to!) I did think about doing a Latin degree, but my children said I would be the worst student ever, and they're probably right – I would be very critical, because I’ve spent so many years of my life teaching people how to teach, and as a teacher myself. The other thing I'm going to do, of course, is catch up with old friends and spend more time with my family, especially my little grand-daughter Isabel.