Gates' Encarta isn't my definition of what makes a good dictionary

It is 250 years since Samuel Johnson published his monumental Dictionary of the English Language, a publication that was both a national event and an act of Empire. The new Bloomsbury/Microsoft Encarta World English Dictionary (Bloomsbury, #30.00) is as eventful - except this time its reach is global and its ambitions even more imperial. Bill Gates rules the world's computers. Now he wants to rule the English language.

The Encarta dictionary's statistics are astonishing. English is spoken by 20% of the world's population, it is the first language of 68% of web users and the language of more than 80% of data in the world's computers. Around 90% of the world's web pages are in English.

Over 320 etymologists, lexicographers and phoneticians have contributed to this mighty tome, including a Canadian poet, the manager of a meditation centre in rural Maryland, and a telecommuting mother of twins from the Orkney Islands. It's the twins I feel sorry for.

The electronic version may be Microsoft, but the pulp and ink version is one mean, macro, hard mother of a text. Bristling with more than 100,000 entries, it comes in at a cool three and a half million words spread over 2000 pages. Whether you read it or not, it makes an ideal footstool as you browse.

It was once said that "a language is a dialect with army and a navy". The phrase should have "and a dictionary" added to it. In the arsenal of linguistic imperialism, a dictionary is a powerful weapon. In 1500, half of the British Isles was Celtic speaking. By 1650, this was down to a tenth.

The imposition of English was a story of violence, conquest and the prohibition of other languages, but it was also a tale of the advent of the printing press and the spread of propaganda. The print revolution of the 16th and 17th centuries centralised control of language in a few hands.

Encarta's publisher tells us that ''when the world wants to communicate, especially if it wants to do business beyond its own borders, English tends to be the chosen means of communication." What's choice got to do with it? Both "the decision by air traffic controllers in the 1950s to adopt English as their world language" and the global appeal of Hollywood are cited as reasons for English enjoying the supreme position it occupies.

So where is Encarta coming from, ideologically speaking? "Language is a powerful tool", admits editor-in-chief Kathy Rooney, "one that can hurt and offend." She and her 300 little helpers "have been at pains to write definitions that convey the meaning of the word in an appropriately clear, but sensitive way".

This sensitivity forces them to handle with kid gloves and kid glosses "some terms that a few users may find offensive or even highly offensive". Encarta describes itself as an "adult dictionary", but its editorial policy proves that a little bit of nannying never goes amiss. Thus the editors "have tried to avoid sexist, ethnic, ethnocentric, ethnophobic, ageist, racist, or physiologically stereotypical language in the definitions, examples, and other elements of the text".

Now, isn't it a bit rich to foist on the world an English dictionary and then claim to be avoiding ethnocentrism? Pulleeze!

Behind the advertised inclusiveness of Encarta lurks the spectre of the language police, led by PC Plod.

Take the C-word. Arguably, in one of its uses in contemporary Scottish fiction, it has a non-sexist, gender-free connotation, at least as used by James Kelman and Irvine Welsh. The American edition of Trainspotting has a glossary appended to it in which our four- lettered friend is described as an "all-purpose term for someone else, either friendly or unfriendly". In Encarta, by contrast, all four definitions of this word - yes, four! - are labelled "offensive".

Perhaps language should be left to speakers and authors. Making new words is an act of creation, which is why writers are our most productive wordsmiths. Poetry can serve the survival of speech forms better than any dictionary. But the domain of language has always been both the province of the poet and the jurisdiction of the Empire. When Virgil wrote, Latin was the universal language of learning and Rome ruled the roost. Now, it's the West versus the rest.

"It is interesting to note", says the publisher, "that in the current edition of a leading English dictionary, the term 'imperial' is defined as 'of or relating to an empire: Britain's imperial era'. The Encarta World English Dictionary defines the same term as 'concerning or involving an empire or its ruler'. The point is that a dictionary of the world's lingua franca in the third millennium should reflect a broad cultural perspective rather than the history of nations that once held power over others".

Yeah, sure. Encarta will effectively ensure a transatlantic hegemony over the English language. Ironically, 'Encarta' itself is not included, and nor is 'Microsoft'. Predictably enough, Bill Gates has an entry. And a very flattering one it is too.

Willy Maley is Professor of English Literature at the University of Glasgow

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