Fictitious lexicon article

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A fictitious lexicon article , also called nihil article (from Latin nihil 'nothing' ) or submarine , is a fictitious entry in a lexicon about people or things that do not exist outside the lexicon or only exist as fiction . It should not be recognized as such by the reader if possible. Fictitious details in otherwise applicable articles can also be referred to as submarines in this sense.

This creates a paradoxical communication situation: To look up something in the lexicon, you usually need a reference from other contexts that have their origin outside the lexicon. Such references cannot exist in an invented lemma . In the ideal case, the article will only be found randomly ( serendipity ). There are, however, fake articles that are easier to find and that arise when a different entry is made for a plausible lemma. A special case of such articles is the adoption or rededication of fictional terms or names from fictional literature in the (non-fictional) lexicon, e.g. B. Morgenstern known nasobem or Steinlaus of Loriot , which in 1983 in the 255th edition of the medical dictionary Pschyrembel received an article which extended several times in various editions and has been added. This in turn led to further articles and statements in various scientific and popular scientific publications and statements.

Type and nature of bogus articles

It is not always easy to identify a bogus article as such. This is especially true if the article appears in several dictionaries or is continued. In such a case, the entry in several lexicons can support the authenticity of the entry and pretend that the object described actually exists.

Uncovering bogus articles is often part of the journalistic game of lexicon editors and publishers. In individual cases, this game can also be continued in other publications - including lexicons - as a scientific parody or satire.

One can only speculate about undiscovered fictitious articles - especially in older works. "Insiders suspect that every dictionary contains wrong keywords."

The (stylistic) range of the texts, which are inconsistent in their appearance, ranges between parody and the imitative pastiche , which may not be seen through at all. The proportion of recognizable elements of parodic writing can be very different. This also results in a different amount of difference to the usual, serious lexicon entries. In the case of a fictitious article, the scheme of the text type lexicon entry usually remains untouched.

In lexicon entries, biographical articles are most similar to literary texts. This may also be the reason why biographical articles are particularly common among the well-known fictitious articles, for example in Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography .

Since the bogus articles are copied along with the illegal copying of entire encyclopedias which are then published under a different title and in a different language, these can also serve as plagiarism traps to prove copyright infringements (" errors are copyright ").

Classification in literary text genres

Umberto Eco's lecture For a Semiological Guerrilla (New York 1967) can be used as a starting point for a more extensive classification of bogus articles . A connection to the Luther-Blissett forgeries could be established.

The definition of such forgeries is also characteristic of fake articles. However, the intentions in bogus articles hardly go beyond the level of (insider) jokes (e.g. in the lexicon editors and some of the readers):

“A good fake owes its effect to the interaction of imitation, invention, alienation and exaggeration of prevailing forms of language. It imitates the voice of power as perfectly as possible in order to speak undetected in its name and with its authority for a limited period of time [...]. The aim is to [...] trigger a communication process in which - often precisely through the (intended) exposure of the forgery - the structure of the faked communication situation itself becomes an issue. "

- Communication guerrilla manual

Related text types

In contrast to bogus articles that are false information in a lexicon of use, there are also literary lexicon fictions, similar to the entry " Uqbar " in The Anglo-American Cyclopaedia (New York, 1917), which is both present and absent, and the articles in A First Encyclopaedia of Tlön, Vol. XI, Hlaer to Jangr , which represent something far more precious and difficult for the narrator than "the comprehensive description of a false country" which he "in a volume of a certain pirated encyclopedia" "Discovered".

Fictitious articles differ from their form as dictionary or lexicon articles with satirical spelling compared to other media rather through their character as contraband. However, encyclopedias, lexicons or dictionaries can also serve as satirical large forms. An example of this is Ambrose Bierce , whose wicked lexicon and dictionary definitions have appeared in the satirical weekly The Wasp (San Francisco) since 1881 . Later also in other newspapers and finally collected as The Cynic's Word Book (1906) and The Devil's Dictionary (1911). With Bierce, the authors of dictionaries and lexicons do not get off well: “Lexicographer, subst.masc. A pest, [...] "

An interesting variant of the bogus articles contains a collection of prefaces to future, as yet unwritten books written by the Polish science fiction author Stanisław Lem . Written as early as 1973, the volume Imaginäre Größe describes books that are said to have appeared between 2009 and 2029 (at the time of going to press, ie 38–58 years earlier). Most notable is the foreword to Vestrands Extelopädie in 44 magnetic volumes from 2011. Conceived long before the PC and the public Internet, today's online lexicons with regular updates, worldwide distribution and constant improvements are aptly anticipated, and a text sample is also aptly anticipated on pages 871–880 with keywords from “ Proffertine ” to “ Prolepsy ” to “prove” the seriousness, including some graphics.

In 2012, the philosopher Andreas Urs Sommer made use of the principle of bogus lexicon articles by inventing a large series of philosophical books for his lexicon of imaginary philosophical works that should have been written but never been written, and corresponding lexicon articles about she wrote. But the book also contains articles about real philosophical works, which in turn are passed off as fictitious.

References

Fictitious lexicon articles on objects that do not exist or on existing but unrelated topics in real reference works:

  • In: Music in the past and present . General encyclopedia of music founded by Friedrich Blume ed. by Ludwig Finscher. Person part 1st 2nd edition Kassel etc. 1999, col. 1551 ff.
  • In: Otto Forster: Analysis 1 . Vieweg-Verlag, Braunschweig 1992, p. 204.
  • In: Lexicon of Ancient Christian Literature (LACL). 3rd expanded edition. Freiburg / Basel / Vienna 2002, p. 183.
  • With reference to the LACL there is also an entry Dadophoros von Salamis in the Metzler Lexikon Antike, 2nd edition, 2006, p. 126. (not yet in the 1st edition of 2000).
  • In: Lexicon of Psychology by Thomas Städtler, Kröner, special edition 2003
  • In: dtv-Lexikon , 1997 edition
  • In: Hartmut O. Häcker, Kurt-H. Stapf (Ed.): Dorsch. Psychological dictionary . 14th edition, Bern 2004, p. 238.
  • In: Buchta et al. (Ed.): The second STEX: Basic knowledge of clinical medicine for exams and practice . 1st + 2nd edition. Springer, Heidelberg / Berlin 2002/2004, ISBN 3-540-41847-4 , pp. 683/684.
  • In: Pschyrembel dictionary of naturopathy and alternative healing methods . Edited by the publisher's dictionary editor under the direction of Helmut Hildebrandt. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 1996, p. 167.
  • In: Werner Fuchs-Heinritz et al. : Lexicon of Sociology [from EA 1973]. 4th edition VS-Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, Wiesbaden 2007, p. 397
  • In: Klaus Schubert , Martina Klein: Das Politiklexikon . Concepts, facts, connections. Bonn 2011. p. 215 f.
  • In: Historical dictionary of rhetoric . Volume 7. Tübingen 2005 [based on a Greek vase picture it is claimed that antiquity already had electronic laptops]
  • In: Lexicon on the past and present of the Herzog August Library Wolfenbüttel . Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz 1992, p. 90 f.
  • In: Pschyrembel . Clinical dictionary with clinical syndromes and nouns anatomica . Edited by the dictionary editor of the Walter de Gruyter publishing house. 256th edition Berlin / New York 1990, p. 1583. [First in the 255th edition of 1986, then expanded, not in the 257th edition, again changed and expanded in the 258th, 259th, 260. and 261st ed.]
  • In many other articles and statements in various scientific and popular scientific publications and statements, see: Steinlaus-Dokumentationen
  • Dissatisfaction rate
  • In: Jürgen Mittelstraß (Hrsg.): Encyclopedia Philosophy and Philosophy of Science . JB Metzler, 2004.
  • Oversleep
  • [lat. abbreviated morb. lex. , Epidemic of decline in late cultures, especially widespread in the western west. Was considered incurable; overcome today through the use of the time recording device.]
  • In: dtv-Lexikon in 20 volumes . Munich 1999, Volume 19, p. 159. [First 1966. Vol. 19, p. 197. No longer included in the editions after 1982, but resumed in a modified version.]
  • Ticks, Ixodida / Gemeine Steuer-Z.
  • In: Brockhaus - The encyclopedia in 24 volumes . 20th edition. Leipzig / Mannheim 1999, vol. 24, p. 481.
  • Zittath, Öppe [name constructed as an alleged dissolution of the abbreviation ' op. Cit. ']
  • In: Encyclopedia of Fairy Tales. Concise dictionary for historical and comparative narrative research , Vol. 14. Berlin / Boston: Walter de Gruyter 2013, Sp. 1382–1384.
  • Zündapp, Marie-Thérèse
  • In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland . The article, which is also available in French and Italian, was selected as the competition winner in 2008 by a jury. No longer available online since website restructuring in 2019.

In the New Grove's Dictionary of Music (1980) there were (as far as known) two fictitious entries, among a total of over 20,000 biographies: Dag Henrik Esrum-Hellerup, allegedly a Danish composer and flautist, smuggled in by Scandinavian music specialist Robert Layton and named after one Suburb of Copenhagen (Hellerup). The other entry, Guglielmo Baldini, Italian composer, was able to trace his line of tradition back to Hugo Riemann (he was given the “Archive for Freiburg Diocesan History” in Grove's, which is resistant to exams). In the new editions, both were removed, but there was an article about fictional biographies of David Fallows. Baldini found himself after Riemann, who assigned him a madrigal book and made him live in Ferrara around 1540, in several music lexicons. According to Prof. Budde, the only surviving copy of his madrigals unfortunately burned in Mainz during the Second World War .

Scientific literature on bogus articles

The literature on literary forgery and on parody , travesty and pastiche seems to ignore the phenomenon or only to touch it. One reason for this may be that it does not include lexicon articles as useful texts. The following is a list of publications on the subject:

  • 1907: JA Farrer: Literary forgeries . With an introduction by Andr. Long. Translated from the English by Fr. J. Kleemeier. Leipzig 1907.
  • 1958: Elisabeth Frenzel : forgeries, literary . In: Reallexikon der deutschen Literaturgeschichte . 2nd Edition. Berlin 1958. Vol. 1, pp. 444-450.
  • 1977: Alfred Liede: Parody . In: Reallexikon der deutschen Literaturgeschichte . 2nd Edition. Berlin / New York 1977, Volume 3, pp. 12-72.
  • 1977: Wolfgang Karrer: Parody, travesty, pastiche . Fink , Munich 1977, ISBN 3-7705-1373-8 (= UTB 581).
  • 1979: Theodor Verweyen , Gunther Witting: The parody in modern German literature. A systematic introduction . Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft WBG, Darmstadt 1979, ISBN 3-534-07075-5 .
  • 1981: Winfried Freund : The literary parody . Metzler , Stuttgart 1981, ISBN 3-476-10200-9 (= Metzler Collection Volume M 200, Dept. E: Poetics).
  • 1988: Karl Corino (Ed.): Forged! Fraud in politics, literature, science, art and music . Noerdlingen 1988.
  • 1993: Beate Müller: Komische Intertextualität: the literary parody , WVT Wissenschaftlicher Verlag, Trier 1994, ISBN 3-88476-073-4 (= Horizonte , Volume 16, also dissertation Ruhr University Bochum 1993).
  • 1994: Diagonal. Journal of the University of Siegen. On the subject: forgeries. 1994, issue 2.
  • 1998: Michael Ringel : 15 "U-Boats" in reference works . In: The Cunning Book of Truth. Worthless knowledge to the power of 10 . S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1998, pp. 202-213.
  • 1999: Werner Fuld : The lexicon of forgeries. Falsifications, lies and conspiracies from art, history, science and literature . Eichborn, Frankfurt 1999.
  • 2005: Alan Sokal, Jean Bricmont: Elegant nonsense . 1st edition. CH Beck, Munich 1999, ISBN 978-3-406-45274-1 .
  • 2005: Michael Ringel : 28 nihil articles in reference works . In: Ringel's marginal notes . S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2005, pp. 196-224.
  • 2010: Georg Ruppelt : Duck good, all good. In: Zeitschrift für Bibliothekswesen und Bibliographie , Volume 57 (2010), Issue 3/4, pp. 203-206. ( Digitized version )

On the other hand, glosses on individual key words can occasionally be found in the features section, but also summarizing presentations and collections of examples.

See also

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Katharina Hein: The orthodidact . In: Berliner Morgenpost . July 16, 2000.
  2. ↑ Umberto Eco : For a semiological guerrilla . In: About God and the World. Essays and glosses . Munich / Vienna 1985.
  3. ↑ Handbook of the communication guerrilla . Verlag Libertäre Association , Hamburg o. J. [1997]
  4. ↑ Handbook of the communication guerrilla . Verlag Libertäre Assoziation , Hamburg o. J. [1997], p. 65
  5. Jump up ↑ Jorge Luis Borges : Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius [1941]. In: Jorge Luis Borges: Fictions (Ficciones). Stories 1939–1944. Translated by Karl August Horst, Wolfgang Luchting and Gisbert Haefs. Frankfurt 1992. Works in 20 volumes, Vol. 5 = Fischer Taschenbuch 10581
  6. ↑ Ambrose Bierce: From the Devil's Dictionary . Selection, translation and epilogue by Dieter E. Zimmer . Frankfurt 1966 (= Insel-Bücherei No. 890).
  7. ↑ Andreas Urs Sommer : Lexicon of imaginary philosophical works . Berlin 2012 (= the other library ). See the reviews at Perlentaucher .
  8. ↑ a b c d joke entries in lexica: Von Steinläusen and Kurschatten. In: Spiegel Online . March 7, 2010, accessed July 15, 2015 .
  9. ↑ Thomas Jüngling: Naked avatars and other strange Easter eggs. In: welt.de . April 4, 2010, accessed July 15, 2015 .
  10. ↑ Mark Buchta: The second StEx. Springer-Verlag, 2013, ISBN 978-3-642-18569-4 , p. 684 ( limited preview in Google book search).
  11. ↑ derbund.ch
  12. ↑ Zündapp, Marie-Thérèse. January 11, 2018, archived from the original ; accessed on June 5, 2019 .
  13. ^ Article Zündapp, Marie-Thérèse , Bieler Tagblatt
  14. ↑ James R. Oestreich: Words on Music, 25 Million of Them. In: nytimes.com. January 21, 2001, accessed July 15, 2015 .
  15. ↑ Zankl: Insane in Science
  16. ↑ For example Michael Ringel : Source of error . In: SZ-Magazin . No. 41 , 1998.