The Rise of Dictionary Societies and Dictionary Journals

Abstract

The 1970s have seen, along with the most productive decade of dictionary making and publishing in world history, the organisation of many congresses, collections, societies and journals concerned with (the practicalities of) lexicography - notably since the first Congress on Historical European Lexicography in Florence in 1971. At the Second (at Leiden) in 1977 there were formulated certain new 'definitions' for this subject area, viz.: (1) the 'lexicographer ... is a person whose learning is boundless and whose dictionary does not know the limits of time and space'; and (2) the 'dictionarist ... a person who produces a tangible, finished reference work'; and (3) the new comings together of the two as encounters where the visionaries (i.e. lexicographers) and practical editors (i.e. dictionarists) present proposals for new dictionaries and for refinements of old ones? In particular the lexicographer was seen as someone functioning 'between linguistics and society'.