A Survey of the Teaching of Lexicography: 1979-1995

A Survey of the Teaching of Lexicography: 1979-1995 Edward Gates This survey is a sequel. In the first issue of Dictionaries, published in 1979, I surveyed formal instruction in dictionary making, history, and use between 1925 and 1979 (Gates 1979). During that period, in a number of universities, teachers with experience in dictionary making shared their knowledge to prepare would-be dictionary makers or to instruct dictionary users. In this study I survey the 16 years from 1979 through 1995, making use of newsletters and information obtained by interviews, letters, and a questionnaire (see Appendix ) sent to university teachers whom I knew to be interested in lexicography. I will report formal teaching about lexicography in dictionary offices; workshops, short-term courses, and summer schools given by institutions and organizations; academic courses not part of a total program in lexicography; teaching about dictionaries which forms a significant part of academic courses in other subjects; and diploma or degree programs in lexicography. I will also reflect on four questions: What is the state of teaching about dictionaries, particularly in universities, today? Does teaching about dictionaries have a useful place in colleges and universities? Is academic training for dictionary makingdesirable and practical? What role can organizations like DSNA and EURALEX have in fostering teaching about dictionaries and reference science? Formal teaching in a publishing house A step away from the traditional apprenticeship method of training lexicographers is the provision by the publisher of in-house formal instruction in the principles and practice of dictionary making. _________A Survey of the Teaching of Lexicography, 1979-1995_______67 The administration of the Dictionary of the Afrikaans Language in Stellenbosch , South Africa, has for some time been offering their new editors an in-service training course that lasts seven and a half months and combines study with supervised practice (DJ. Van Schalkwyk, letter to Louis Milic, 14 April 1994). In England, occasional courses have been given for several years in the dictionary offices of Oxford University Press by B.T.S. Atkins, a veteran lexicographer and Advisor to OUP Lexicography. Held either in a block of several days or weekly over a number of weeks, these courses consider the principles and practices of lexicography and analyze a variety of dictionaries. Experienced and novice, full-time and part-time, casual and freelance editors attend. Elizabeth Knowles, a staff editor, reports: Participants have been enthusiastic about the courses they attended , and it does seem to have been a most effective way of introducing editors involved in one specific project or type of dictionary to the wider world of lexicography, without at the same time disrupting necessary concentration on the work in hand. I think that it was generally felt that the circumstances enabled a happy balance to be struck between the theoretical and the practical. (Letter to die author, 12 September 1995) Workshops, short-term courses, and summer schools Lexicography is also taught in workshops, short-term courses, and summer schools offered by professional organizations and universities , both to train would-be or practicing lexicographers and to educate teachers and the public on the role, structure, and content of dictionaries . The number of these offered in North America seems to be about the same in the two periods (1925-1979 and 1979-1995) , but to have increased elsewhere. Prior to 1979, several workshops were conducted as part of the Summer Institute of the Linguistic Society of America, but I have not heard ofany since then. The Summer Institute of Linguistics, an organization of missionary linguists also known as the Wycliffe Bible Translators, holds workshops for its members about once a year. Like the publishers' training courses, these workshops prepare the members for their work, in this case making dictionaries of previously unwritten languages in the process of translating the Bible into them (DSNA Newsletter [DSNAN], Fall 1982, 2). In 1981 Ladislav Zgusta led a round-table workshop on bilingual dictionaries at the University of Illinois (DSNAN, Spring 1981, 6). More recently, Kenneth Hill, of the Bureau ofApplied Research in An- 68Edward Gates thropology, University of Arizona, taught a two-week course on dictionary making to 20 students in the linguistics program at the University of Sonora. In this he...