The Bloomsbury Companion To Lexicography

Howard Jackson, Howard Jackson

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781441144140
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Langues et linguistique
• Subtopic: Sémantique linguistique

The Bloomsbury Companion to Lexicography offers the definitive guide to a key area of linguistic study. Each companion is a comprehensive reference resource featuring an overview of key topics, research areas, new directions and a manageable guide to beginning or developing research in the field. Lexicography, as the practice of compiling dictionaries, has a long tradition that has been, for much of the time, largely independent of linguistics. The direct influence of linguistics on lexicography goes back around 50 years, though longer in the case of learners' dictionaries. The present volume aims to reflect on the research that has been and is being done in lexicography and to point the way forward. It also tackles the critique of dictionaries in the electronic medium, the future of historical lexicography in the electronic mode with special reference to the online Oxford English Dictionary, and on e-lexicography in general.

1

Introduction

Howard Jackson

Chapter Overview

What is Lexicography?

Aims and Organization of the Companion

This introductory chapter has two purposes: to characterize the field of lexicography; to outline the aims and scope of the book.

1 What is Lexicography?

The term ‘lexicography’ is used in two distinct senses: first, it refers to the compilation of dictionaries; and second, it refers to the study of dictionaries. It is the first sense that is usually represented in dictionary definitions, such as that in Collins English Dictionary (online): ‘the process or profession of writing or compiling dictionaries’. The terms ‘practical lexicography’ or ‘lexicography practice’ are used for the first sense, and ‘lexicography theory’ or ‘dictionary research’ for the second. We will return to the question of theory a little later. For the second sense, the term ‘metalexicography’ has also been coined, and those who engage in the study or research of dictionaries are called metalexicographers. It is to this audience, and especially to those who are becoming metalexicographers, that this volume is primarily addressed.

Dictionary research covers a wide range of activities, and metalexicographers may become experts in one or more aspects, many of which are represented in the contributions to this volume. Some concentrate on the history of dictionary making, others on historical dictionaries. Some investigate the typology of dictionaries, distinguishing monolingual from bilingual, historical from synchronic, general from specialized, alphabetical (semasiological) from thematic or topical (onomasiological). Others investigate the compilation process, including the use of corpora, or the design and structure of dictionaries. Still others engage in dictionary criticism, evaluating the structure and content of dictionaries, both in general terms (the macrostructure) and in terms of the information contained in individual entries (the microstructure). Some concentrate their interest on pedagogical lexicography, the provision of dictionaries for language learners, and how these can contribute to the learning process, or on dictionaries for sign languages, as pedagogical aids to deaf communities. Others research the users and uses of dictionaries more generally, seeking to discover how different groups use dictionaries, and whether the design, structure and content of dictionaries match users’ expectations and reference skills. And still others have turned their attention to elexicography, which is almost certainly the future of lexicography – at least one publisher has already ceased print publication and is offering its dictionary only on the internet (Macmillan Dictionary Blog, 5 November 2012).

Where, we may ask, does lexicography sit in the panoply of academic and scholarly disciplines? Is it a branch of linguistics? Or does it belong somewhere else? Or is it an independent discipline? There is no single answer to these questions from those engaged in metalexicography, as you will observe from the contributions to this volume. In 1996, Reinhard Hartmann wrote a chapter (in Hartmann (ed.) 1996) entitled ‘Lexicography as an Applied Linguistic Discipline’. Hartmann’s criteria for an applied linguistic discipline, as expressed in Hartmann (2001: 33), were that it should be ‘linguistic in orientation, interdisciplinary in outlook and problem-solving in spirit’, which he claims (ibid.) applies to pedagogical lexicography and perhaps to computational lexicography, though not to other aspects of (meta)lexicography. Indeed, the introduction to the Dictionary of Lexicography (Hartmann and James 1998: vi) proclaims:

Lexicography, often misconceived as a branch of linguistics, is sui generis, a field whose endeavours are informed by the theories and practices of information science, literature, publishing, philosophy, and historical, comparative and applied linguistics.

McArthur (1998: 219) places lexicography within a newly minted discipline of ‘reference science’, along with ‘encyclopedics’ and ‘tabulations’, ‘directories’ and ‘catalogues’ (see also McArthur 1986). Addressing the question ‘Who is a lexicographer?’, Bergenholtz and Gouws (2012) are adamant that lexicography is not a subdiscipline of linguistics; it is ‘an independent discipline’, part of information science; there is a range of people who can be called lexicographers, and they do not necessarily have a background in linguistics. Indeed, lexicographers include both ‘those people writing dictionaries but equally those people writing about dictionaries’ (Bergenholtz and Gouws 2012: 76).

The practice of lexicography was for centuries independent of linguistics. It was Philip Gove, the editor-in-chief of Webster’s Third New International Dictionary (1961), who was the first practising lexicographer to acknowledge explicitly the influence of modern linguistics on the compilation of the dictionary of which he was editor. Since then, linguistics has informed lexicographic practice, especially in respect of the genre of learners’ dictionaries, and to an extent that of native-speaker dictionaries as well. Lexicographic practice has, though, always drawn on a range of other disciplines and crafts, relevant to reference works generally. For this reason, many lexicographers consider it to be either a discipline in its own right (sui generis) or a branch of reference science or information science.

One of the debates within lexicography addresses the issue of whether there is such a thing as lexicographic theory. Some would respond to this question with a resounding ‘No’ (e.g. Béjoint 2010). Others give a cautious ‘No’, for example Rundell (2012: 83), ‘it is not clear that there is a role for “lexicographic theory” as such’. Hartmann (1996) makes a distinction between ‘practical’ lexicography (dictionary compilation) and ‘theoretical’ lexicography (dictionary study). Not all see lexicographic theory in this way. You will find that some contributors to this volume, notably Piotrowski (in 4.10), respond to the question, understanding it in a more scientific sense, with an unequivocal ‘Yes’ and present arguments why this should be so. We are engaged in a fascinating discipline. Long may the discussions continue!

2 Aims and Organization of the Companion

This Companion to Lexicography is aimed primarily at students of lexicography who are proposing to undertake research in one of the areas covered by ‘lexicography’. While it cannot possibly be comprehensive in its coverage – think of the three-, soon to be four-volume encyclopedia of lexicography (Hausmann et al. 1989–91, Gouws et al. 2013) – the Companion aims to give a broad overview of the discipline, dealing with the main trends and issues in the contemporary study of lexicography; and the contributions have been selected with this purpose in mind. They are all written by experts in their field who are at the cutting edge of lexicographic research.

The Companion contains some 20 contributions in 8 chapters, including this introduction. Chapter 2 is free-standing, as a review of research in lexicography over the last six or so decades. Chapters 3 to 5 each contain a number of contributions and comprise the main body of the volume. Chapter 3 has three contributions under the title ‘Research Methods and Problems’; Chapter 4 contains ten contributions on current research and issues in lexicography; and Chapter 5 looks forward, with three contributions on directions in which the study of lexicography appears to be travelling. The final three chapters contain reference material considered to be useful to a lexicography researcher: Chapter 6 indicates the resources that are available for a researcher to tap into; Chapter 7 contains a glossary of key terms in lexicography; and Chapter 8 comprises an annotated bibliography of recent significant work in lexicography research, as well as pointers to where further bibliographical information may be found.

Rather than have a single list of references at the end of the book, it has been decided to retain the reference list supplied by each author at the end of their contribution. While the disadvantage may be that some general works will be referenced more than once, this will not be the case with the majority of the references, as each chapter concentrates on one specific area of lexicography research and references the works pertinent to that area. The advantage is that the reader will more readily be able to ascertain the references that pertain to each individual contribution and area of research.

To orientate the reader to the scope of the Companion, a summary of each contribution will now be given.

Chapter 2

In Chapter 2, the late Paul Bogaards, editor of the International Journal of Lexicography, reviews the development of research in lexicography, which he dates from the mid-twentieth century in France and then the United States. It was then given a significant boost in the 1980s with the formation of EURALEX. Bogaards shows how the development can be traced through the publication of journals, first the Cahiers de lexicologie, then Dictionaries, followed by IJL and Lexikos, as well as the publication of the three-volume encyclopedia (Hausmann et al. 1989–91). The 1990s saw lexicography established as an academic discipline in the universities of a number of countries. After this review of the development of lexicographic research, Bogaards gives an overview of the dominant research trends in the study of the main areas of lexicography: dictionary history, with its investigation of tradition and innovation; dictionary criticism, encompassing reviews, analyses and most recently forensic dictionary analysis; dictionary typology, which operates with a variety of oppositions, such as monolingual versus bilingual, general versus specific, foreign learner versus native speaker; dictionary structure, usually proceeding from the distinction between macrostructure and microstructure, though, as Bogaards points out, the distinction is by no means always clear-cut; dictionary use, beginning with questionnaires and proceeding to more experimental techniques, and investigating dictionary use for reading tasks, writing tasks and vocabulary learning; and finally dictionary content, in which Bogaards underlines developments in corpus linguistics that have influenced dictionary content, from the KWIC concordance to Sketch Engine. Bogaards concludes that lexicographic research constitutes a ‘patchwork’, applied to a number of separate domains, each with their own approaches and methodologies.

Chapter 3

In 3.1, Lars Trap-Jensen discusses research into lexicographic practice, beginning with the observation that the electronic revolution has had a profound impact on dictionary making. He follows this through with a look at the various phases of dictionary making. Probably the one least affected by developments in computing is the initial, and most important, planning phase, though he notes that decisions about the database that will underlie the possible range of dictionary types will be crucial; and he observes that the production of data is now clearly separated from its presentation to the user. This leads on to the next phase, that of designing the database (or group of interconnected databases), choosing the format, deciding what should be included in the light of the anticipated user groups, even perhaps including data that will not be used in any dictionary product. Dealing with the phase of describing linguistic data, Trap-Jensen notes that description has replaced a previous prescriptive or normative approach, though some norms may still apply, for example in spelling. In terms of lemma selection, Trap-Jensen reflects on the fact that frequency in a corpus is not a reliable guide to what is useful to a dictionary user, and decisions have to be made about technical terms, dialect, slang, jargon and loanwords. Indeed there may be local language policies that determine how loanwords, for example, are treated. He concludes this section by observing that an elegant definition is still a man-made object. One influence of IT for good is the advent of digital writing systems, which can check that lexicographers have been consistent, both in data entry and in cross-referencing. The digital revolution also presents a number of challenges: with the availability of different platforms (print, computers, smartphones); how data is presented and accessed requires adaptation; and lexicographers are presented with the challenges of ‘crowdsourcing’ and collaborative lexicography. Looking to the future, Trap-Jensen wonders how current digital reality will change dictionaries; and he anticipates that they are likely to become more ‘embedded’, as currently in e-readers.

In 3.2, Kaoru Akasu addresses the issue of dictionary criticism and the methods employed to undertake it. Dictionary criticism, as well as providing a critical evaluation for potential users of a dictionary, has as its primary aim the continual improvement of dictionaries. Akasu notes that there are no agreed criteria nor a systematic framework for evaluating dictionaries. He reviews the few (some seven) attempts to provide such criteria and observes that each of these is devoted to a particular type of dictionary: college dictionary, bilingual dictionary, learner’s dictionary. He concludes that there is no ‘common yardstick’ that could be applied across the board to dictionary criticism and reviewing; criteria will vary according to dictionary type and the purpose of the review (e.g. journalistic vs academic). Akasu then goes on to outline a method that he has used, which he calls ‘dictionary analysis’. It is particularly associated with the Iwasaki Linguistic Circle in Tokyo, of which he is a member. More than 40 such dictionary analyses have been published since 1968, predominantly in the ILC’s publication Lexicon. The method involves using a team of reviewers, and Akasu believes that they should all have had experience of practical dictionary compiling. Various aspects of the dictionary, determined by the team leader, are allocated for investigation, which may involve random sampling of entries, comparisons with other dictionaries and a close attention to detail; both quantitative and qualitative analyses are performed. Akasu does not claim that dictionary analysis is the only right way to do dictionary criticism, and he believes that it needs to develop and improve. More recently, user studies have begun to be incorporated, and comparison of digitized dictionaries undertaken, in order to develop the method.

In 3.3 Hilary Nesi tackles the subject of research into dictionary use. She notes an upsurge of studies from the 1980s onwards, with much of the most recent research on electronic dictionaries. The aim of such research is to increase the success of dictionary consultation, identify users’ needs and skill deficits and match types of dictionary to user and use. Nesi reviews methods that have been used in user studies and notes their advantages and disadvantages: questionnaires (too dependent on users’ recall), interviews and observations (small numbers of subjects and not particularly natural), lab-based methods (small numbers and artificial setting), natural dictionary consultation via portfolios and self-reports (subjects need training in think-aloud techniques), log files (cannot record the success or otherwise of the lookup). She notes that there is little that can be said by way of generalization; most studies focus on particular types of user in a particular context. Indeed, because of their availability to researchers based in universities, most users studied have been university students. Dictionary use is divided into ‘receptive’ and ‘productive’ and has been largely associated with the written medium, until the advent of handheld electronic dictionaries. Research into the types of dictionary preferred has been hampered by users’ ignorance of dictionary types and their suitability for different activities; Nesi notes the increasing use of internet dictionaries, but observes that little research has been undertaken into the use of this type as yet. Indeed, such dictionaries are difficult to investigate, because their content changes and is poorly described. Nesi wonders whether dictionary use research has had much effect on improving dictionary design. It has probably had even less effect on e-dictionaries, though she notes, encouragingly, the many university-based experiments in specialized e-dictionaries undertaken by informed academics being reported at recent conferences.

Chapter 4

In 4.1, Adam Kilgarriff, based on his vast experience in the field, discusses how corpora can be used as data sources in the compiling of dictionaries. He argues that a corpus can support many aspects of dictionary creation, from developing headword lists to identifying salient features of lexical units to providing examples. He then proceeds to examine in detail, using his own experience, how corpora can be used for some of these purposes. Kilgarriff begins with headword selection, pointing out that a lexicographer cannot simply use the most frequent so-many words in a corpus, because every corpus shows ‘noise’ and bias. Additional issues that require creative strategies include: identifying multiword units, lemmatization and identifying neologisms. The second area Kilgarriff examines is collocation and word sketches, using the Sketch Engine software tool, which he was involved in developing. He shows how one-page word sketches, first used for the Macmillan dictionary, are a distinct advance over multiple pages of concordance lines, and they are also able to provide a guide to sense differentiation; the lexicographer’s methodology has consequently changed. Sketch Engine has been further developed to produce thesauruses, as well as synonym and antonym comparisons. Kilgarriff goes on to show how corpora can be used to suggest labels that indicate a word’s restrictive distribution, including grammatical labels (e.g. ‘usually passive’), register labels (‘formal’ and ‘informal’), domain labels, and regional labels. Finally, Kilgarriff demonstrates how the selection of appropriate examples from a corpus can be automated, and how translation equivalents can be suggested from parallel corpora. He concludes with the claim that ‘corpora can make dictionary-making more accurate, efficient, complete and consistent’.

In 4.2, Verónica Pastor and Amparo Alcina discuss their research on the search techniques used in electronic dictionaries. Reviewing previous user studies, they establish that there are two problems with dictionary use: dictionaries are not user-friendly, and users don’t know how to consult a dictionary. They also note that dictionaries don’t always exploit the full potential of the electronic medium, especially those that have simply been transferred from the paper format. They also note from their review that no studies have been undertaken to propose a universal classification of search techniques: this chapter aims to remedy that lack, in order to provide a guide to search types and query options. In various reflections in the literature on electronic dictionaries and their search capabilities, Pastor and Alcina highlight the many suggestions made for enhancing and developing search techniques to satisfy particular user needs. In their research, Pastor and Alcina examined 32 electronic dictionaries and analysed their search options. They conclude that every search has three elements: the query, the resource and the result. All search types can be classified under these three headings. The ‘query’ is the expression introduced by the user, which may be, for example, an exact word, an approximate expression or a combination. The query may also have filters applied, for example restricting the search to a particular part of speech. Pastor and Alcina show how queries are operationalized in electronic dictionaries they examined. The ‘resource’ is the field or section of a dictionary to be searched, which could be the headword list, the co...