An Introduction to Applied Linguistics

6 LEXICOGRAPHY
‘Neither is a dictionary a bad book to read.
There is no cant in it, no excess of
Explanation, and it is full of suggestion.
The raw material of possible poems
And histories.’
(Ralph Waldo Emerson, ‘Dictionary Poem’)
As always, preparation for an activity provides an insight into the nature of that
activity. So what sort of training does a lexicographer need? Alain Rey suggests that
the lexicographer needs theoretical knowledge that includes (but is more than)
linguistics:
Applied linguistics and language use 107
02 pages 001-202:Layout 1 31/5/07 09:31 Page 107

---

For would-be lexicographers, learning linguistics boils down to choices. Each
topic in linguistics has more or less importance according to the types of
dictionaries involved, the intention of the authors, and above all the target:
learners, native or non-native speakers, children or grown-ups etc. Lexicography
has often been called a branch of applied linguistics, which I take to be an
oversimplified view, since much knowledge other than linguistics is involved.
What is really needed is ‘applied linguistics for lexicography’. It has to be defined
and promoted as a didactic domain, along with applied rhetorics, applied
ethnology, applied literary studies, etc. … for the benefit of lexicography. Such a
domain would centre on semantics (not only lexical) and morphology, but it
would not leave out syntax, phonetics and/or phonemics. It would be close to
sociolinguistics and anthropology, and would include part of terminology, LSP
and documentary content analysis.
(Rey 1984: 95)
What is interesting to us is, first, that identification with (followed by rejection
from) applied linguistics and then, second, the appeal to a quite narrow view of
linguistics. What emerges is that Rey’s view of applied linguistics for would-be
lexicographers is in the tradition of the application of linguistics: learn up on
semantics, syntax morphology, phonetics and phonemics (or phonology).
We shall be looking at the training of applied linguists in Chapter 6. As I explain
there, it is my view that there is a common core of knowledge and skill that all
applied linguists need and thereafter they may specialise in one or more areas of
interest. That seems to me what Rey is basically saying, that there is a central aspect
of lexicography which is applied linguistics, a normative intervention on language in
use. As such it is not primarily of interest to theoretical linguistics, which is not, as
we have seen, concerned with language in use. The problem with Rey’s formulation
is that he emphasises a linguistic content without recognising that that content must
be shaped for the needs of the applied linguist, who in this case is the lexicographer
in embryo. His ‘applied linguistics for lexicography’ therefore becomes applied
linguistics which lexicographers need. As do language testers, language teachers,
language planners, speech therapists and so on. They will all need the further
specialist input peculiar to their own vocation, just as lexicographers do.
Rey does have an insight into the importance of a carefully designed applied
linguistics which is not linguistics applied:
In my own experience of more than twenty-five years of dictionary editing, many
good or excellent theoreticians and scholars in linguistics proved unable to cope
with such specific tasks as:
• analysing the sub-classes of occurrences of a word or lexical unit in a given
corpus that would provide a lexicographically satisfactory structure;
1. writing good definitions
2. choosing the right examples from a corpus
I was often puzzled by such problems and discovered slowly that good linguists
may well ignore everything relevant to producing a text about words, idioms and
108
An Introduction to Applied Linguistics
02 pages 001-202:Layout 1 31/5/07 09:31 Page 108

---

phrases that was supposed to be used by, and useful to, somebody besides their
fellow linguists.
(ibid: 95)
Rey continues with the necessary professional skills and these need not delay us here.
What is relevant is his insistence on the need of the lexicographer for an expanded
conception of linguistics, involving ‘epistemology … technology, anthropology, the
history of culture, the theory of literature (etc.) as the occasion might require’ (ibid:
97).
Such an expanded view of the linguistics necessary to the lexicographer matches
our own view of applied linguistics, whether we call it an expanded linguistics or not.
Our argument here is that after a course at the graduate level in applied linguistics
the successful student has covered all the applied linguistics needed for the profession
of lexicography. Of course the personal skills and the professional skills that Rey
refers to are extra.
Lexicographers compile dictionaries. But what is a dictionary? The word is used
so widely that it may seem that the only agreed definition that encompasses all uses
of the term is that it refers to a set of presentations about words. There are many
definitions; one that has achieved some respect is that of C. C. Berg: ‘a dictionary is
a systematically arranged list of socialized linguistic forms compiled from the speech
habits of a given speech-community and commented on by the author in such a
way that the qualified reader understands the meaning of each separate form, and
is informed of the relevant facts concerning the functions of that form in its com -
munity’ (Berg quoted in Green 1996: 22).
Further definitions examine the characteristics which make a reference book a
dictionary. J. Rey-Debove offers the following criteria:
• a list of separate graphic statements
• a book designed for consultation
• a book with two structures (word-list and contents)
• a book in which items are classed by form or content
• a repository of information that is linguistic in nature
• a repository of information that is explicitly didactic
• a source of information about signs
• a place where the word-list corresponds to a pre-determined set and is struc -
tured if not exhaustive
Such technical definitions make clear just how complex is the task of the lexi -
cographer and what sorts of knowledge and skills are necessary. But such a complex
list necessarily has many holes, in that many collections that not only are labelled
dictionaries but are referred to by that apellation do not conform in all character -
istics. And what the list does not include is the crucial problem of selection. As we
have seen, this is the necessary challenge to the curriculum designer and mutatis
mutandi to the language tester (Davies et al. 1999). It is always the case that in any
intervention on language which aims to capture its characteristics for whatever
Applied linguistics and language use 109
02 pages 001-202:Layout 1 31/5/07 09:31 Page 109

---

purpose (teaching, testing, listing its vocabulary) a selection must be made since the
whole of the language can never be captured. (Indeed what does ‘the whole of the
language’ mean? Given the dynamic of change there is never at any point in time
when the whole of the language is available to be captured, except in the case of a
language that is long dead.)
Selection of items for a dictionary brings into sharp focus the problem and
eventually the impossibility of distinguishing the descriptive and the prescriptive. As
we have just seen, all description inevitably involves some measure of prescription.
No English dictionary claims to do more than sample the 4 million words of English:
the second edition of the