What Are the Uses of Theoretical Lexicography?

What Are the Uses of Theoretical Lexicography? Anna Wierzbicka 1. Introduction For years, I have argued in various publications that semantics as a scholarly discipline must prove itself in lexicography. In the introduction to my own dictionary of English speech act verbs I wrote: The primary purpose of semantics is to discover how meaning is conveyed in language. But meaning is crucial in all people's lives. Homo sapiens is, essentially, homo loquens, a speaking being, "speaking" not in the sense in which parrots speak but in the sense of using sounds to convey meaning. This means that homo sapiens is really homo signißcans, a being who lives on expression and communication ofmeaning. Meaning is ofcrucial importance, and crucial interest, to human beings in all walks of life. Semanticists should be prepared to come down from their theoretical heights and to make their theoretical pursuits relevant to "ordinary people's" linguistic needs and concerns. People are interested in the meaning of words. Generally speaking, it is lexicographers, not linguists, who try to meet this need, and they do it. as best they can. Lexicographers themselves tend to be unassuming and unflamboyant contributors to scholarship (compare Samuel Johnson's well-known definition: "lexicographer—a harmless drudge"). Linguists, by contrast, tend to see themselves as an elite. Often they speak disparagingly about lexicographers' efforts, but they usually do litde or nothing to help. If modern linguistics were to be judged by the contribution it made to lexicography, it would be hard to understand why linguistics is said to have made dramatic advances in recent decades. It is not my intention to question these advances. It must be pointed out, however, that the extraordinary growth of nearly all aspects of linguistic science has been accompanied by a virtually complete lack of at- What Are the Uses of Theoretical Lexicography?45 tention (at least on the part of the mainstream linguistics) to that aspect of language that is the most obvious, and in a sense the most important, to the ordinary language users—to the lexicon. This remarkable state of affairs reflects the wide gap which despite many linguists' declarations and actual efforts continues to separate academic linguistics from "real life" as manifested in the needs and concerns of ordinary language users . It reflects also the failure of linguistic science to develop adequate methodological tools for dealing with the lexicon— and a widespread lack of faith in the possibility ofa purposeful, methodical, and revealing scientific study of this aspect of language . This is a truly paradoxical state of affairs: the most obvious , and it would seem the most accessible aspect oflanguage has proved to be the most impenetrable, the most resistant to scholarly conquest.1 There are some signs that this unsatisfactory state ofaffairs is going to change. The twenty-first century may become in linguistics the era of the dictionary—and of an integrated approach to linguistic description. From being an assiduous study of the grammatical skeleton of language and of its sounds linguistic analysis may at last become a holistic study of the entire organism, including, if one may say so, its lexical flesh. Lexicography needs linguistics, and linguistics needs lexicography. As Zgusta (1971, 111) points out, for the treatment of meaning in dictionaries to be radically improved, preparatory work has to be done by linguists. (Wierzbicka 1987, 1-2) I believe that during the two decades that have elapsed since Zgusta made this comment much of this preparatory work has in fact been accomplished. In this paper, I will try to show that as a result of this work the treatment ofmeaning in dictionaries can indeed be radically improved. 2. Scope vs. adequacy and truth Dictionaries are books about words. Unlike, however, various more or less selective "studies in words" (see e.g., Lewis 1990), dictionaries are meant to be relatively complete, at least with respect to one thematic domain or one aspect oflanguage. Since they are also meant to be practically useful and commercially viable, one of the first dilemmas for a dictionary-maker is how to combine completeness with a reasonable size. 46Anna Wierzbicka It is at this point, I believe, that a practical lexicographer often becomes impatient...