Applied linguistics and language use
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:
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 center 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).
As I explain, it is my view that there is a common core of knowledge and skill that all applied linguists need and thereafter they may specialize 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 emphasizes a linguistic content without recognizing 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:
• analyzing 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 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 community’ (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 structured if not exhaustive
Such technical definitions make clear just how complex is the task of the lexicographer 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 characteristics. 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 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 Oxford English Dictionary and Webster’s third edition each contains less than 500,000 words. ‘For the most part what to leave out will not be in contention. There are, for example, more than 6 million registered chemical compounds: the great majority of these will not be selected.
Their targets may change over time (thus the conservative outrage at the changes in the third edition of Webster have been replaced by current ultra-liberal demands, notably of the politically correct variety in relation to terms of racist and gender abuse, insisting that that terms such as ‘nigger’ and ‘Jew’ should be excluded. For the applied linguist there is need to balance the reality of actual language use and at the same time to be sensitive to the attitudes towards that use since attitudes are part of that context of use. As Green writes:
[T]he lexicographer is in an invidious position. Damned if he (or she) does and damned if he (or she) doesn’t. The role of the dictionary-maker is to reflect the language, which in turn is a reflection of the culture in which it exists. If the culture in part is racist, sexist and in other ways politically incorrect, then so too in part must the dictionaries be. The best they can offer is some parenthetical declaration that a given word or phrase, in a given definition or usage, is so. Otherwise, if they start censoring out such material, of what real worth can they be considered.
(1996: 379–80)
Selection in a different sense can be an indication of the extent of separation of a language variety from its origins. Thus the first dictionary of American English appeared in 1828 (Noah Webster) and the first of Australian English in 1981. There are dictionaries of New Zealand, Canadian, South-African English, Caribbean English, Singaporean English, Indian English but not of German English, Mexican English and so on. At least if there are, then they are essentially lists of local terms. It appears that a dictionary is a symbol of separation. Which explains why there is no German or Mexican since their separation is otherwise declared.
