Lexicography is the study of

lexicon A lexicon is the vocabulary of a language or branch of knowledge (such as nautical or medical). In linguistics, a lexicon is a language's inventory of lexemes. The word ''lexicon'' derives from Koine Greek language, Greek word (), neuter of () ...

s, and is divided into two separate

academic discipline An academy ( Attic Greek: Ἀκαδήμεια; Koine Greek Ἀκαδημία) is an institution of secondary or tertiary higher learning (and generally also research or honorary membership). The name traces back to Plato's school of philosophy ...

s. It is the art of compiling dictionaries. * Practical lexicography is the art or

craft A craft or trade is a pastime or an occupation that requires particular skills and knowledge of skilled work. In a historical sense, particularly the Middle Ages and earlier, the term is usually applied to people occupied in small scale prod ...

of compiling, writing and editing

dictionaries A dictionary is a listing of lexemes from the lexicon of one or more specific languages, often arranged alphabetically (or by radical and stroke for ideographic languages), which may include information on definitions, usage, etymologies, p ...

. * Theoretical lexicography is the

scholarly The scholarly method or scholarship is the body of principles and practices used by scholars and academics to make their claims about the subject as valid and trustworthy as possible, and to make them known to the scholarly public. It is the met ...

study of

semantic Semantics (from grc, σημαντικός ''sēmantikós'', "significant") is the study of reference, meaning, or truth. The term can be used to refer to subfields of several distinct disciplines, including philosophy, linguistics and comput ...

, orthographic,

syntagmatic In linguistics, a syntagma is an elementary constituent segment within a text. Such a segment can be a phoneme, a word, a grammatical phrase, a sentence, or an event within a larger narrative structure, depending on the level of analysis. Syntagma ...

and

paradigm In science and philosophy, a paradigm () is a distinct set of concepts or thought patterns, including theories, research methods, postulates, and standards for what constitute legitimate contributions to a field. Etymology ''Paradigm'' comes f ...

atic features of

lexeme A lexeme () is a unit of lexical meaning that underlies a set of words that are related through inflection. It is a basic abstract unit of meaning, a unit of morphological analysis in linguistics that roughly corresponds to a set of forms taken ...

s of the

(

vocabulary A vocabulary is a set of familiar words within a person's language. A vocabulary, usually developed with age, serves as a useful and fundamental tool for communication and acquiring knowledge. Acquiring an extensive vocabulary is one of the la ...

) of a

language Language is a structured system of communication. The structure of a language is its grammar and the free components are its vocabulary. Languages are the primary means by which humans communicate, and may be conveyed through a variety of met ...

, developing theories of dictionary components and structures linking the data in dictionaries, the needs for information by users in specific types of situations, and how users may best access the data incorporated in printed and electronic dictionaries. This is sometimes referred to as 'metalexicography'. There is some disagreement on the definition of

lexicology Lexicology is the branch of linguistics that analyzes the lexicon of a specific language. A word is the smallest meaningful unit of a language that can stand on its own, and is made up of small components called morphemes and even smaller element ...

, as distinct from lexicography. Some use "lexicology" as a synonym for theoretical lexicography; others use it to mean a branch of

linguistics Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Linguis ...

pertaining to the inventory of words in a particular language. A person devoted to lexicography is called a lexicographer.

Focus

General lexicography focuses on the design, compilation, use and evaluation of general dictionaries, i.e. dictionaries that provide a description of the language in general use. Such a dictionary is usually called a general dictionary or LGP dictionary (Language for General Purpose). Specialized lexicography focuses on the design, compilation, use and evaluation of specialized dictionaries, i.e. dictionaries that are devoted to a (relatively restricted) set of linguistic and factual elements of one or more specialist subject fields, e.g.

legal lexicography Legal lexicography is the complex of activities concerned with the development of theories and principles for the design, compilation, use, and evaluation of dictionaries within the field of law, see e.g. Nielsen 1994. Overview As a branch of ...

. Such a dictionary is usually called a

specialized dictionary A specialized dictionary is a dictionary that covers a relatively restricted set of phenomena. The definitive book on the subject (Cowie 2009) includes chapters on some of the dictionaries included below: *synonyms *pronunciations *names (place na ...

Language for specific purposes dictionary A language-for-specific-purposes dictionary (LSP dictionary) is a reference work which defines the specialised vocabulary used by experts within a particular field, for example, architecture. The discipline that deals with these dictionaries is ...

and following Nielsen 1994, specialized dictionaries are either multi-field, single-field or sub-field dictionaries. It is now widely accepted that lexicography is a scholarly discipline in its own right and not a sub-branch of

applied linguistics Applied linguistics is an interdisciplinary field which identifies, investigates, and offers solutions to language-related real-life problems. Some of the academic fields related to applied linguistics are education, psychology, communication rese ...

, as the chief object of study in lexicography is the dictionary (see e.g. Bergenholtz/Nielsen/Tarp 2009). Lexicography is the practice of creating books, computer programs, or databases that reflect lexicographical work and are intended for

public In public relations and communication science, publics are groups of individual people, and the public (a.k.a. the general public) is the totality of such groupings. This is a different concept to the sociological concept of the ''Öffentlichkei ...

use. These include dictionaries and

thesauri A thesaurus (plural ''thesauri'' or ''thesauruses'') or synonym dictionary is a reference work for finding synonyms and sometimes antonyms of words. They are often used by writers to help find the best word to express an idea: Synonym dictionar ...

which are widely accessible resources that present various aspects of lexicology, such as spelling, pronunciation, and meaning. Lexicographers are tasked with defining simple words as well as figuring out how compound or complex words or words with many meanings can be clearly explained. They also make decisions regarding which words should be kept, added, or removed from a dictionary. They are responsible for arranging lexical material (usually

alphabetically Alphabetical order is a system whereby character strings are placed in order based on the position of the characters in the conventional ordering of an alphabet. It is one of the methods of collation. In mathematics, a lexicographical order is t ...

) to facilitate understanding and navigation.

Etymology

Coined in English 1680, the word "lexicography" derives from the

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

λεξικογράφος (''lexikographos''), "lexicographer", from λεξικόν (''lexicon''), neut. of λεξικός ''lexikos'', "of or for words", from λέξις (''lexis''), "speech", "word" (in turn from λέγω (''lego''), "to say", "to speak") and γράφω (''grapho''), "to scratch, to inscribe, to write".γράφω
Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, ''A Greek–English Lexicon'', on Perseus Digital Library

Aspects

Practical lexicographic work involves several activities, and the compilation of well-crafted dictionaries requires careful consideration of all or some of the following aspects: * profiling the intended users (i.e. linguistic and non-linguistic competences) and identifying their needs * defining the communicative and cognitive functions of the dictionary * selecting and organizing the components of the dictionary * choosing the appropriate structures for presenting the data in the dictionary (i.e. frame structure, distribution structure, macro-structure, micro-structure and

cross-reference The term cross-reference (abbreviation: xref) can refer to either: * An instance within a document which refers to related information elsewhere in the same document. In both printed and online dictionaries cross-references are important because ...

structure) * selecting words and affixes for systematization as entries * selecting

collocation In corpus linguistics, a collocation is a series of words or terms that co-occur more often than would be expected by chance. In phraseology, a collocation is a type of compositional phraseme, meaning that it can be understood from the words th ...

s, phrases and examples * choosing lemma forms for each word or part of word to be lemmatized * defining words * organizing definitions * specifying pronunciations of words * labeling definitions and pronunciations for

register Register or registration may refer to: Arts entertainment, and media Music * Register (music), the relative "height" or range of a note, melody, part, instrument, etc. * ''Register'', a 2017 album by Travis Miller * Registration (organ), th ...

and dialect, where appropriate * selecting equivalents in bi- and multi-lingual dictionaries * translating collocations, phrases and examples in bi- and multilingual dictionaries * designing the best way in which users can access the data in printed and electronic dictionaries One important goal of lexicography is to keep the

lexicographic information cost Lexicographic information cost is a concept within the field of lexicography. The term refers to the difficulties and inconveniences that the user of a dictionary believes or feels are associated with consulting a particular dictionary or dictionar ...

s incurred by dictionary users as low as possible. Nielsen (2008) suggests relevant aspects for lexicographers to consider when making dictionaries as they all affect the users' impression and actual use of specific dictionaries. Theoretical lexicography concerns the same aspects as lexicography, but aims to develop principles that can improve the quality of future dictionaries, for instance in terms of access to data and lexicographic information costs. Several perspectives or branches of such academic dictionary research have been distinguished: 'dictionary criticism' (or evaluating the quality of one or more dictionaries, e.g. by means of reviews (see Nielsen 1999), 'dictionary history' (or tracing the traditions of a type of dictionary or of lexicography in a particular country or language), 'dictionary typology' (or classifying the various genres of reference works, such as dictionary versus encyclopedia, monolingual versus bilingual dictionary, general versus technical or pedagogical dictionary), 'dictionary structure' (or formatting the various ways in which the information is presented in a dictionary), 'dictionary use' (or observing the reference acts and skills of dictionary users), and 'dictionary IT' (or applying computer aids to the process of dictionary compilation). One important consideration is the status of 'bilingual lexicography', or the compilation and use of the

bilingual dictionary A bilingual dictionary or translation dictionary is a specialized dictionary used to translate words or phrases from one language to another. Bilingual dictionaries can be ''unidirectional'', meaning that they list the meanings of words of one lan ...

in all its aspects (see e.g. Nielsen 1894). In spite of a relatively long history of this type of dictionary, it is often said to be less developed in a number of respects than its unilingual counterpart, especially in cases where one of the languages involved is not a major language. Not all genres of reference works are available in interlingual versions, e.g. LSP, learners' and encyclopedic types, although sometimes these challenges produce new subtypes, e.g. 'semi-bilingual' or 'bilingualised' dictionaries such as Hornby's ''(Oxford) Advanced Learner's Dictionary English-Chinese'', which have been developed by translating existing monolingual dictionaries (see Marello 1998).

References

External links

''International Journal of Lexicography''

''Lexicographica. International Annual for Lexicography - Revue Internationale de Lexicographie - Internationales Jahrbuch für Lexikographie''

Societies

Centre for LexicographyEN version

Dictionary Society of North America

Euralex – European Association for Lexicography

Afrilex – African Association for Lexicography

Australex – Australasian Association for Lexicography

Asialex – Asian Association for Lexicography
{{Authority control Lexicology Applied linguistics +