The ATA Chronicle - May/June 2017 - 28

OUR WORLD OF WORDS continued
over the past 50 years have been,
partly from the influence of theoretical
linguistics, that the emphasis is now
more on description. Also, because
computerized databases have brought
about a quantum leap in the amount
of evidence available to lexicographers,
dictionaries now reflect more accurately
the language as a whole, rather than just
the literary tip of the iceberg.

When a neologism is imported, are statistics
kept on the country of origin? Are there
dictionaries or lists of words arranged
according to where they originated?
I don't know of any specific register
devoted to that subject, but it's the sort
of information that would be fairly easy
to access by doing a search of, say, the
Oxford English Dictionary database. By
looking in the etymology field one would
be able to discover, for example, how
many words of Italian origin had come
into English in the 1950s.

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28

The ATA Chronicle | May/June 2017

Human beings are no less impatient
than we have ever been when it
comes to getting our thoughts down
on paper (or screen), and we're
ingenious at working out ways to do
it as fast as possible.

How has the internet affected lexicography?
Do online resources take market share from
the traditional product? Is there a future for
paper dictionaries?
Online reference resources are clearly
here to stay, whether as new products
or as existing material transferred
online. It's the obvious place for very
large books. The third edition of
the Oxford English Dictionary is very
unlikely ever to appear on paper, and
I can't imagine how much shelf space
a printed version of Wikipedia would
need. As far as smaller dictionaries are
concerned, the jury still seems to be
out. Hand-held devices that can access
reference resources are widely available,
but I continue to see shelves full of
dictionaries in bookshops. Time will
tell, but I suspect that in book format
encyclopedias are a more endangered
species than dictionaries.

The lexicographer lives on, presumably, by
switching to online reference works? How
does that differ from the traditional product?
As an originator of text, I think the
online lexicographer's job remains
fairly similar to that of her offline
predecessor, except, as I said above,
in the amount of evidence available to
use. The most important differences lie
in the possibility of giving users more
differentiated and sophisticated ways of
accessing the text. It's still comparatively
early, but there are all sorts of potential
ways in which the look-up procedure
can be digitally streamlined (talking to
the dictionary, for example; say a word
you don't know how to spell and it'll
find it for you). For all I know such
a thing may already exist. Automated
speech recognition is now apparently

95% reliable (though it doesn't seem
that way when I try to communicate
with a computer over the phone).

Is lexicography an expanding field? Are
there more new lexicographers every day?
If so, what sustains or fuels that expansion?
There certainly seem to be more amateur
lexicographers around today, or perhaps
it's just that the internet enables them to
publish compilations that in previous
decades would have remained forever
in a desk drawer at home. As far as
professional lexicography is concerned,
I'm not so sure. Publishers certainly tend
not to have in-house teams these days,
preferring to rely on freelancers employed
on a casual basis, and the demand for
these will fluctuate according to the
projects the publishers have on hand. My
impression is that there aren't significantly
more of us around than when I started out
40 years ago.

What advice do you have for those who
might be interested in a career in the field
of lexicography?
First, make a dispassionate assessment
of your own aptitudes. To be a good
lexicographer you need methodicalness
and the stickability to see a long project
(probably several years), with elements
of repetitiousness, through to its finish.
You also need a lively and inquiring
imagination and a flair for writing. This
is an unusual combination of attributes
that any prospective employer will be
trying to search out in an applicant.
They won't be so interested to know
you have "a love of words," although
presumably if language didn't exert a
fascination over you, you wouldn't want
to be a lexicographer.
John, thanks for taking the time
to share your thoughts about this
fascinating field! 
Tony Beckwith was born in
Buenos Aires, Argentina, spent
his formative years in Montevideo,
Uruguay, then set off to see the
world. He moved to Texas in 1980
and currently lives in Austin,
Texas, where he works as a writer, translator, poet, and
cartoonist. Contact: tony@tonybeckwith.com.
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