1)L-A and A-LWe have distinguished between two traditions, that of applied linguistics andthat of

applications of linguistics. Widdowson presents the question in termsof linguistics applied and applied
linguistics:The differences between these modes of intervention is that in the case oflinguistics
applied the assumption is that the problem can be reformulated by thedirect and unilateral application of
concepts and terms deriving from linguisticenquiry itself. That is to say, language problems are
amenable to linguisticssolutions. In the case of applied linguistics, intervention is crucially a matterof
mediation. . . applied linguistics. . . has to relate and reconcile different rep-resentations of reality, including
that of linguistics without excluding others.(Widdowson, 2000, p. 5)The “linguistics applied” view seems to
derive from the coming together oftwo traditions:1 the European philological tradition which was exported
to the USA throughscholars such as Roman Jakobson,2 the North American tradition of linguistic-
anthropological field-work whichrequired the intensive use of non-literate informants and the
linguisticdescription of indigenous languages for the purposes of cultural analysis.The social value of
applications of linguistics was widely canvassed.Bloomfield (1933, p. 509) hoped that “The methods and
results of linguistics.. .[and] the study of language may help us toward the understanding andcontrol of
human affairs.” In the 1970s R. H. Robins, representing theEuropeantradition, was eager to encourage the
use of linguistic ideas and methods:“The teacher who understands and can make use of the methods of
scientific

10Alan Davies and Catherine Elderlinguistics will find the task of presenting a language to his pupils very
muchlightened and facilitated” (1971/1980, p. 308). Fifty years after Bloomfield,Douglas Brown (1987) was
still making a similar claim: “Applied linguisticshas been considered a subset of linguistics for several
decades, and it has beeninterpreted to mean the applications of linguistics principles to certain more orless
practical matters” (p. 147).This tradition represents the “expert” view of knowledge and scholarship. Ittakes
for granted that the methods and findings of linguistics are of value toothers to solve their problems. But
the applications must be carried out eitherby linguists themselves or by those who have understood and
can make useof the methods of scientific linguistics. There is no place here for Corder’sapplied linguist as a
consumer of theories, in which linguistics is one among anumber of different source disciplines, let alone
for the extreme proposal madeby Widdowson that linguistics is itself part of applied linguistics.
Critiquesand counter-critiques in the journals suggest that the opposing traditions havebecome more
entrenched. Gregg (1990) argues the case for a unitary positionon second language acquisition research,
while Ellis (1990) and Tarone (1990)declare themselves in favor of the variationist position. Ellis contrasts
twomodels of research, the research-then-theory position, which is essentiallyinductive, as against
theory-then-research, the mainstream classic tradition,which is essentially deductive. We may surmise that
the theory-then-researchapproach is that of linguistics while the research-then-theory is that of
appliedlinguistics. For Gregg, the research-then-theory approach is not seriousbecause it is not based
on theory.So much for the linguistics-applied tradition. What of the applied-linguisticstradition? The two
traditions overlap in the work of Henry Sweet. Howattclaims that “Sweet’s work established an applied
tradition in language teach-ing which has continued uninterruptedly to the present day” (Howatt, 1984,p.
189). Howatt also refers to the influence of J. R. Firth, holder of the firstChair of General Linguistics in the
UK, who had first-hand experience oflanguage learning and teaching in India, and who with the
anthropologistBronislaw Malinowski and their pupil Michael Halliday promoted the notionof the context of
situation. No doubt because of Firth’s lead, the identity ofthe context of situation school is still that of
linguistics-applied in spite of itsstrong social orientation. John Trim records his view of the origin of the
BritishAssociation of Applied Linguistics in an address which represents the viewof the linguist looking at
society’s problems: “Members of Departments ofLinguistics were present (at the inaugural meeting)
because of their wish tosee the findings of their science brought to bear on the social problems of theday”
(1988, p. 9).The real push to a coherent conception of the activity, an applied linguisticsview, came from
Corder who, while insisting on the centrality of linguistics,accepted the need for other inputs. It came
even more strongly fromPeter Strevens who was unashamedly eclectic in what he saw as a
growingdiscipline. His account of the founding of the British Association for Applied

General Introduction11Linguistics emphasizes the sociological and institutional reasons for forming anew
professional group.The fundamental question. . . facing applied linguists in Britain in 1965 waswhether
they were sufficiently like linguists (i.e. theoretical linguists) to remainwithin the linguists’ organization, or
whether they were sufficiently like teachersof foreign languages, including English, to remain within their
organizations, orwhether they were sufficiently different from both to merit an organization oftheir own.
(Strevens, 1980, p. 31)What made those inaugural members interested in founding the new
BAALAssociation was that they had first-hand experience of the social problemsthat linguistic applications
were addressing. What they looked to “appliedlinguistics” for was a framework for conceptualizing and
contemplating thoseproblems.

2) What Is Lexicography?It is difficult to arrive at a succinct and satisfying working definition

oflexicography. Even a cursory glance in dictionaries and other reference worksand in the secondary
literature reveals many variations on a theme, reflectinga variety of standpoints. In a narrow sense
lexicography may be describedas the art and craft of writing a dictionary. Certainly, a lexicographer
isessentially someone who writes or contributes to a dictionary or dictionaries,be it as an individual or a
member of a team, as a freelancer or an in-houseemployee, as a full-time professional or part-time
alongside other activitiessuch as university lecturing. Lexicographer is also used more generally to referto
writers of other reference works, including encyclopedias. Like other defini-tions, however, and indeed like
much dictionary writing itself, this definitionof lexicography is derivative (Landau, 2001), and it is a
compromise for thesake of brevity. It raises many questions: why dictionary, why not e.g.,thesaurus,
lexicon, or encyclopedia and other reference works? Why write,why not, for example, plan, edit,
publish or make, produce, compile, letalone study, review, or use? Why art and craft, why not, for
example, activity,process, technique, science, job, profession or practice, let alone history, study,use, or
theory?
56Alan KirknessThere are justifiable answers to such questions. The dictionary is widelyregarded as
the prototypical work of lexical reference, but this claim requiresmuch further explication (see Section 2.3).
Writing is the essential lexicographicactivity, especially writing and rewriting semantic, pragmatic, or
etymologicaldescriptions; planning and data collection precede and accompany thewriting, editing and
publishing follow it. Good lexicography is more thancompilation. Extracting meanings and uses from
authentic texts and explain-ing them clearly and fully in a minimum of words is an art, as is the selectionof
appropriate illustrative examples. Writing with dictionary users uppermostin mind in an attempt to meet their
needs is a practical and useful activity,a craft. Defining lexicography in this narrow sense as the art and craft
of writ-ing a dictionary is meant to locate it explicitly at the center of the appliedlinguistic endeavor
and to emphasize the high degree of human knowledge,insight, judgment and skill required to produce the
text of a successful refer-ence work designed to be of practical use and benefit in real-life
situations.Certainly, a dictionary that does not prove useful is unlikely to prove successful.Commercial
constraints – the triple nightmare of space, time, and money(Murray, 1977) – have traditionally
dictated the relationship between lexico-graphers and their publishers.The advent of electronic corpora and
media can make the lexicographers’work better, but not necessarily easier. Computers can store and process
quan-tities of textual data quite unmanageable by humans. Where several millionmanually and painstakingly
excerpted citation slips were once considered asufficient basis for a multi-volume scholarly dictionary, now
even one-volumetrade dictionaries rest on hundreds of millions of rapidly and automaticallyentered running
words. The differences are not only in quantity, but moreimportantly in quality. Lexicographers now
have at their disposal vastlysuperior language data. Neutral frequency counts of masses of words can actas
a counterbalance to intuition, memory and possible bias in many of thedecisions they must make in
accordance with the specifications of the particu-lar dictionary project. They help determine which usages
are central and whichare peripheral, which new items should be included and which items shouldbe excluded
as obsolescent or archaic, which combining forms and multi-worditems warrant status as main lemmas or
headwords rather than as run-onsand sub-lemmas, or how homographs and senses can be ordered, to
mentionbut a few possibilities. Lexicographers have been at the forefront in utilizinglanguage corpora and
applying the findings of corpus linguistics (see Stubbsin this volume) to good effect in their analysis and
description of lexis andhence to the benefit of their users. The corpus revolution is very
real;computerphoria would be misplaced, however. There may be huge savings instorage space and
processing time, but it is humans who continue to choosethe texts and analyze the vastly increased data,
which can now in fact requiremore time, experience, and skill to process than before. Humans
discernand describe sense distinctions in polysemous words and between sets ofsynonyms, antonyms,
and hyponyms. They select appropriate illustrative
Lexicography57examples or establish usage and usage restrictions in tune with changingsociocultural
conventions. And specialist material from a directed readingprogram still has a place alongside the mass
data entered by means of opticalscanners, magnetic tapes, and the like.Similarly, electronic media open up
quite new possibilities for the presenta-tion and use of lexicographical material. They can, for instance, help
overcomethe constraints of space that have long plagued lexicographers and theireditors and limited
the coverage, description, and illustration of lexical itemseven in comprehensive or unabridged dictionaries.
The size of the computerscreen and of the “search word” box remain limitations, however, and favordirected
searches for specific items over the incidental consulting of neighboringentries and the general, even random
browsing so dear to word and diction-ary buffs brought up on printed books. They can help overcome the
tyranny ofthe printed alphabet that has severely limited accessibility and fostered themodern
dominance of the alphabetic mode of presentation over the olderthematic or systematic mode. Access
through the alphabet has become a prac-tical necessity for most users, however, and modern thesauruses
are eitherarranged alphabetically or have an alphabetical index. Online e-dictionariesand e-cyclopedias
available free or by subscription on the Internet andCD-ROM are already vying with and in some cases
supplanting conventionalprinted books. Large and expensive multi-volume reference works seem to
beleading the paradigm shift from book to bank and byte. Academic researchersworking on and with
scholarly historical dictionaries are among the majorbeneficiaries. At the click of a mouse they can
conveniently search from theirdesks the full resources of the Oxford English Dictionary Online in ways
simplynot possible on visits to the library to consult the 20 large and alphabeticallyordered volumes of the
Second Edition. It is a boon to have The Century Diction-ary Online in DjVu format available for
headword browsing and lookup aswell as full text searches rather than have to use the thick and heavy
tomesin the library, however much one might delight in them as a bibliophile.Now that wordbanks
and wordnets, such as the British National Corpus or theBank of English, thePrinceton WordNet, and the
multilingual EuroWordNet, canbe accessed in full or in part on the Internet, users can effectively become
theirown lexicographers. The future of lexicography is undoubtedly electronic.Nonetheless, however
much the computer can aid lexicographers as dictionarywriters, it will not replace them.The questions raised
above also point to a need to understand lexicographyin a wider sense as used in the rapidly increasing
number of university courses,conferences and workshops, books, journals and articles on the subject.
Theseconcern not only lexicography as practice, namely the planning, writing,editing, and publishing
of dictionaries and other lexicographical referenceworks, but also lexicography as theory, notably the
study of dictionary his-tory, criticism, typology, structure, and use (Wiegand, 1998). Some
scholarsdistinguish theory, also known as metalexicography or dictionary research,from practice as
lexicography proper. Others include all aspects of both
58Alan Kirknesstheory and practice in their definition of lexicography. Be that as it may,many
different sub-branches of lexicography can be distinguished, rangingfrom computational to
pedagogical and terminographical. Postgraduatedegree or diploma courses on lexicography aim to provide
academic qualifica-tions and professional training for future dictionary writers. However,
mostlexicographers still train as before in-house or on the job. The literature onlexicography involves
university and other scholars as well as lexicographersand ex-lexicographers. The former mediate the
findings of research in(theoretical) linguistics and other academic disciplines, which most
practicinglexicographers cannot possibly keep abreast of. They also describe and re-editor reprint historical
dictionaries, and make suggestions for the improvementof all aspects of lexicographical description. The
latter write from first-handpractical experience and offer an invaluable insider perspective,
whichsometimes informs an extended introduction in the front matter especiallyof historical and
scholarly dictionaries. All too often, however, it is onlyhalf-glimpsed in dictionary prefaces and
introductions. The glimpses aretantalizing, and the occasional publication of such material indicates
that itcan have a general linguistic significance reaching beyond the particular dic-tionary project or indeed
lexicography (e.g., Gove, 1966, 1968). In line with thelexicographers’ constant emphasis on utility, the
literature on lexicographynow devotes much attention to dictionary uses in academic
research,educational practice, and leisure activity. It focuses particularly on dictionaryusers and seeks to
ascertain who uses which dictionary when and where,for what purpose and with what result. This
focus on the user perspect-ive (Hartmann, 2001, pp. 80–95, pp. 115–20) and the need for
empiricalstudies of what dictionary users do in real look-up situations (Atkins, 1998;Nesi, 2000; Tono, 2001)
are important concerns of applied linguistics. Amongthe scientific commissions of the International
Association of Applied Lin-guistics (AILA) is one devoted to Lexicology and Lexicography as
researchareas which can contribute to a better understanding and facilitation of lan-guage learning and
language use and are studied from several perspectives.However, important as it is, the user’s perspective is
not the only one: lexico-graphers as dictionary writers, scholars as dictionary researchers, (language)teachers
as mediators also offer essential perspectives on the complexand multi-faceted activity that is
lexicography, quite apart from publishers,consultants, and others. At the center of this activity is the
dictionary itself astext (Hartmann, 2001, pp. 24–5), and the dictionary is thus the focus of thediscussion that
follows.Lexicography is in essence an art and a craft. It is also a profession anda hobby, a scholarly
and commercial enterprise, and an academic discipline.It is, further, a longstanding cultural practice and
an integral part of theintellectual tradition in literate societies. Some idea of this wider sense
inwhich lexicography must be understood can be gained from Hartmann& James (1998) and
Hausmann, Reichmann, Wiegand, & Zgusta (1989–91).
3)