/ 22 April 2005

Making sense of serendipity

What does a lexicographer do?

I write dictionaries. I’ve been doing this for the past 20 years or so and written six or seven of them.

What does this involve?

There are two approaches. The one is to take work that’s already been written and work it into a new dictionary.

But what we do is to start from scratch. This approach was begun at the University of Birmingham [England] in 1984. It involves building a corpus of words – a collection of language either written or spoken – and putting it into a computer.

We take the language that people commonly come into contact with, especially for dictionaries like the latest one, which is for learners whose first language is not English.

We take written language from newspapers, novels, magazines, letters, e-mails and the like. Spoken language we get from recorded conversations like meetings with bank managers, unscripted seminars and radio programmes. We don’t take scripted spoken language because it’s not always true to spoken language.

You need a corpus of about 200-million words because then you can be pretty sure that the statements you make about them are reasonably accurate.

For learner dictionaries, we then look at the frequency of word use – how many times the word is repeated in the corpus. The cut-off for this is the 7 500 most-used words – which actually represents about 90% of the English language commonly used in everyday life. There are about 750 000 English words, so that means there are many words sloshing around out there that are not being used.

Do you have a favourite word?

If I was to do my doctorate, I think I’d do it on the verb ‘to give” because it’s quite complicated. But my favourite word would be one that sounds nice, like ‘serendipity”.

Some people think there is a ‘proper” English and everyday usage should stick to that. What are you thoughts?

If you try to stop your language changing, for one thing you’re not going to succeed, and for another if you did, the language would start to shrivel and become as dead as Latin. I love the fact that people can use language so creatively.

What do you think of all the emphasis that is currently being placed on the sciences instead of humanities and languages?

In the past, science was undervalued in education, and particularly if you were a girl, they thought you were a bit peculiar if you

studied the sciences. The pendulum has now swung very far the other way and we need to get it back into the middle. If you’re going to be a properly educated person, you need both.

Is much work being done on lexicography for African languages?

I was recently in Namibia for a conference on African lexicography, and I was bowled over by the excitement of what’s going on with African languages – in Botswana, Gabon, Zimbabwe and especially South Africa.

What did you study to become a lexicographer?

I didn’t study to become one. I did my first degree in English language and literature, going on to do a Master’s in teaching English as a foreign language. I’ve been involved in teaching English to second-language students and training teachers in this as well.

Do you work with a team when you write dictionaries?

I worked with about 100 people on the last one. Of course, there’s a lot of intense debate about all kinds of things and that’s really exciting. People get very heated.

What’s the worst thing about your job?

I suppose the final proofreading of the dictionary is pretty grim – that’s the bit I don’t like.

And the best part of your job?

I love looking at the data and at a word that I think I know quite a lot about, and then suddenly seeing something in it I haven’t even thought about before.

What kind of person should think of lexicography as a career?

You couldn’t do the job if you don’t have a fascination for words. But you’ve also got to be very pragmatic – you’ve got to make sensible decisions about what should and shouldn’t go into a dictionary.

How much can a lexicographer hope to earn?

In England where I’m based your salary is fairly low, even when experienced. You don’t make a fortune being a lexicographer.