The Oxford Guide to Practical Lexicography

B. T. Sue Atkins and Michael Rundell

Practical, accessible, readable
A textbook for use in publishing houses and universities
Comprehensive, step-by-step coverage
Authors have an unrivalled international experience of lexicography and how to teach it
Practical exercises at every stage
Gives guidance and practice in the latest software
Relevant for printed, on-line, and computer-based dictionaries
Companion volume Practical Lexicography: A Reader edited by Thierry Fontenelle (OUP 2007) provides essential reading

The Oxford Guide to Practical Lexicography

B. T. Sue Atkins and Michael Rundell

Description

This is a down-to-earth, 'how to do it' textbook on the making of dictionaries. Written by professional lexicographers with over seventy years' experience between them, the book presents a step-by-step course for the training of lexicographers in all settings, including publishing houses, colleges, and universities world-wide, and for the teaching of lexicography as an academic discipline. It takes readers through the processes of designing, collecting, and annotating a corpus of texts; shows how to analyse the data in order to extract the relevant information; and demonstrates how these findings are drawn together in the semantic, grammatical, and pedagogic components that make up an entry. The authors explain the relevance and application of recent linguistic theories, such as prototype theory and frame semantics, and describe the role of software in the manipulation of data and the compilation of entries. They provide practical exercises at every stage.

The Oxford Guide to Practical Lexicography draws on materials developed by the authors over more than twenty years of teaching courses for publishing houses and universities in the US, Japan, Hong Kong and China, South Africa, Australia, the UK, and Europe. It will be welcomed everywhere by lexicographers, teachers of lexicography, and their students. It is also fascinating reading for all those interested in discovering how dictionaries are made.

The Oxford Guide to Practical Lexicography

B. T. Sue Atkins and Michael Rundell

1:Introduction
Part I Pre-Lexicography
1:Introduction to Part I: Pre-lexicography
2:Dictionary Types and Dictionary Users
3:The Evidence
4:Methods and Resourcecs
5:Linguistic Theory Meets Lexicography
6:Planning the Dictionary
7:Planning the Entry
Part II Lexicography
8:Introduction to Part II: Lexicography
9:From Corpus to Database: 1. The Lemma
10:From Corpus to Database: 2. The Moment of Truth
11:Compiling the Entry: The Moment of Truth
12:Building the Monolingual Entry
13:The Translation Stage
14:Building the Bilingual Entry

The Oxford Guide to Practical Lexicography

B. T. Sue Atkins and Michael Rundell

Author Information

B. T. Sue Atkins, Lexicography MasterClass Ltd, and Michael Rundell, Lexicography MasterClass Ltd

Sue Atkins has worked as a lexicographer since 1966. She was General Editor of the first Collins-Robert English-French Dictionary series, co-designer of the Cobuild project and Lexicographic Adviser to Oxford University Press. She is currently Adviser to the FrameNet Project at the International Computer Science Institute, Berkeley, California.

Michael Rundell has worked as a lexicographer since 1980. As Managing Editor at Longman Dictionaries for over ten years, he was responsible for running major projects. He is currently Editor-in-Chief of the Macmillan family of learners' dictionaries. His books include the Wisden Dictionary of Cricket.

Sue Atkins and Michael Rundell are two of the most experienced and respected teachers in their field. With their colleague Adam Kilgarriff, they make up the Lexicography MasterClass (www.lexmasterclass.com), providing consultancy services and running training workshops in lexicography and lexical computing.

The Oxford Guide to Practical Lexicography

B. T. Sue Atkins and Michael Rundell

Reviews and Awards

"The authors deserve the highest praise for producing a unique account of best practice in modern dictionary-making, based on their extensive and highly successful experience. Their explication of the relevant theoretical notions is highly engaging, admirably clear (with only the rare exception), and at times even entertaining." - Robert Lew, ELT Journal

"OGPL will no doubt make one of the standard reference books on corpus-based lexicography in the years ahead." - Kazou Dohi, Lexicon

"...eminently practical, but never avoids theoretical issues...a highly readable volume" - Geoffrey Williams, International Journal of Corpus Linguistics

"...the most in-depth and up-to-date vademecum for how general dictionaries are compiled. Good job!" - Reinhard Hartmann International Journal of Lexicography

"The Oxford Guide to Practical Lexicography is a most powerful lexicographic book-length achievement...Rare are cases where science and art meet. Here is a instance!" - Gilles-Maurice de Schryver LEXIKOS 18