Events

Both dictionary makers and dictionary users have two distinct and sometimes conflicting perspectives on what a dictionary is or should be. On one hand, dictionaries are conceived of as safeguards of the language, setting out the proper use of words. On the other, dictionaries are descriptions of actual usage, recording the state of the language.
Traditionally, the descriptive perspective has had a higher scientific status. It is this perspective that led Samuel Johnson to use citations in his dictionary and James Murray to organize the extensive reading programme for the OED. Dictionary prefaces often emphasize this aspect of their lexicographic methodology. At the same time, general dictionaries tend to include more or less explicit usage notes. The Collins English Dictionary gives information about the ‘proper’ meaning of while and the ‘proper’ number agreement of data. Usage notes like these reflect normative judgements rather than actual usage. Inclusion of words in a dictionary is also taken as a sign of ‘official’ approval. When Philip Gove included non-standard words in actual use in Webster’s Third, this caused widespread revolt.
At first sight, it may seem that any linguistically informed approach to dictionaries should necessarily favour descriptivism. As I will show, however, the linguistic motivation for a purely descriptive approach to lexicography is remarkably thin. The main problem is to determine what kind of entity is described in a dictionary, i.e. what is a word. Language exists both in the speaker’s minds and in the speech community. However, the former is rejected as too subjective in lexicography, whereas the latter is considered an epiphenomenon in linguistics.
A more coherent interpretation of a dictionary from a linguistic viewpoint is as a tool for solving a certain class of problems. This is not commonly formulated explicitly in lexicography, but corresponds very well to lexicographic practice. I will show that it applies equally to learners’ dictionaries, general dictionaries for native speakers, and historical dictionaries such as the OED. This approach integrates normative tendencies in a coherent view of the linguistic nature of dictionaries.