2 - Lexicography

Summary

Investigating lexicographic issues

Lexicography is concerned with the meaning and use of words. Traditionally, lexicographic research investigated the meanings of words and synonyms. In more recent times, such investigations have been extended using corpus-based techniques to study the ways that words are used, considering issues such as:

1. – How common are different words?

2. – How common are the different senses for a given word?

3. – Do words have systematic associations with other words?

4. – Do words have systematic associations with particular registers or dialects?

This area of study is, of course, central to dictionary making. However, lexicographic research is also central to descriptive and applied linguistics. Many linguists argue that adequate grammatical analyses must incorporate lexicographic information about individual words. Further, as Chapter 4 shows, grammatical and lexicographic patterns interact in systematic ways. For applied linguists, lexicographic studies provide an important source of information for language students and teachers. For instance, where traditional approaches might identify a group of synonymous words, corpus-based lexicographic research attempts to show how related words are used in different ways and are appropriate in different contexts.

Unlike much of linguistics, the field of dictionary making has long been influenced by empirical and corpus-based methods. As early as 1755, for example, Johnson used a corpus of texts to gather authentic uses of words, which he then included as examples in his dictionary of English.