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I would rather have trusted the refinement of our language … to the judgment of women, than of illiterate court fops, half-witted poets and University boys.
In the last week of February 2012, state administrators across France received a memo from Prime Minister François Fillon informing them that it was no longer acceptable to use the word “mademoiselle” in any official form or registry. Fillon's order came after an advocacy campaign of many months on the part of French feminist organizations, who argued that use of the word reflects distinctions reserved only for women, and that official forms include no word for unmarried men or “young male virgins.” With a stroke of the pen a familiar word that entered the French lexicon in the late seventeenth century and began its pubic career in the civil code of Napoleon I was banished from official use (Sayare 2012). The fact is, word use is a political matter.
In June 2004 the American Psychoanalytic Association asked us to assume the positions of co-editors-in-chief of a revised version of Psychoanalytic Terms and Concepts, the organization's lexicon/dictionary/encyclopedia (Auchincloss and Samberg 2012). The moment we accepted this assignment, we became involved not only in a lexicographical undertaking, but a political undertaking, too. In this essay we will discuss not only how the book was constructed, but also some of the challenges we have encountered in the politics of psychoanalytic lexicography.
We began our discussion of the subject with an example of “word politics” from France. Closer to home, on this side of the Atlantic, arguments at the interface between politics and lexicography also abound. If you don't believe that words have political significance, try going into a