Review Article

A survey of current textbooks of lexicography

Gergely Peth
Henri Bjoint: Modern Lexicography. An Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2000. xii + 276 pages.
Sidney I. Landau: Dictionaries. The Art and Craft of Lexicography. Second Edition.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. xvi + 478 pages.
R. R. K. Hartmann: Teaching and Researching Lexicography. Harlow: Pearson Education,
2001. xii + 212 pages.
Stefan Engelberg / Lothar Lemnitzer: Lexikographie und Wrterbuchbenutzung. Tbingen:
Stauffenburg, 2001. x + 278 pages.
Howard Jackson: Lexicography. An Introduction. London: Routledge, 2002. x + 190 pages.
Piet van Sterkenburg (ed.): A Practical Guide to Lexicography. Amsterdam/Philadelphia:
John Benjamins, 2003. xii + 460 pages.
If one examines how the supply of lexicography textbooks has developed recently, it becomes
obvious that lexicography as a theoretical discipline must have established itself as a subject
that is regularly taught at universities. Whereas a few years ago the choice of such textbooks
was very limited, by now several of the major linguistics publishers offer one. Remarkably,
the contents of these books are not as uniform as one would expect on the basis of ones
experience with textbooks of other fields. For example, you normally assume that a new
general introduction to syntax, morphology or formal semantics will treat mostly the same
topics as all the others, and will differ from these mainly in terms of quality, level of attention
given to particular issues and pedagogical value. By contrast the new lexicography textbooks
are rather diverse in every possible respect, without clearly indicating (in their blurbs, their
forewords etc.) where their own focus lies and what kinds of reader they aim to address.
Therefore, the main aim of this survey is not just to introduce these books one by one, but also
to compare them and to establish what their strong and their rather less strong sides are in
relation to their competitors.
First I will summarize each of the books and then compare their contents and possible uses.
Throughout I will refer to the books discussed by naming their authors (in small capitals).
1. BJOINT
This book is the oldest one in terms of date of publication (2000), and, although this is
indicated nowhere but in the publication data and the preface, it is actually a reprint of an
even earlier edition which appeared under a different title: Tradition and innovation in
modern English dictionaries (1994). In comparison to this earlier edition it contains just two
minor additions: the preface (two pages) and an update on references, 1994-2000. The latter
is just one and a half page long, which is rather unimpressive if one considers the huge
amount of important publications that appeared during these 7 years in the relevant books,
journals and conference proceedings.
That this text is ten years old is quite apparent, since it does not discuss one of the most
popular recent topics in lexicography: electronic dictionaries. It does not reflect adequately
the role which large corpora play in todays lexicography either. Apart from these
shortcomings it is a solid and well-written introduction.
Its first chapter briefly discusses the question how dictionary can be defined, what the
structure and goals of a dictionary are, which main types can be distinguished etc.
The second chapter, The lexicographical scene of English-speaking countries introduces the
main American and British monolingual dictionaries that were available at the time of

writing, i.e. at the beginning of the 1990s. It should be noted that although this might not
seem to be a serious problem at first blush, it is in fact rather unfortunate that the more recent
editions could not be considered. The other introductions, especially LANDAU and
ENGELBERG/LEMNITZER, emphasise that a distinct evolution could be observed in practical
lexicography during the 90s, including such aspects as the recognition of the importance of
user-friendliness, more and more reliance on corpus data and, as a consequence, a shift from
the more traditional prescriptive-style dictionaries (which have been dominant especially in
the USA) to more descriptive ones etc. These trends could not yet be observed when Bjoint
wrote his book. Otherwise, this overview adequately demonstrates the differences between
American and British lexicography, as it concentrates on the most typical products of these
two lexicographic scenes: the general monolingual dictionary in the USA and the
monolingual learners dictionary in Britain. Other types of dictionaries receive much less
attention.
Chapter 3, The historical origins of the general-purpose dictionary, examines the general
trends in the history of dictionary-writing in a very concise manner, concentrating on the
substance of these trends rather than on the individual dictionaries which represented them. It
summarizes stages of development like the early dictionaries of hard words, then those
dictionaries which should record the whole language, thereby fulfilling a normative function,
and finally the present descriptive dictionaries.
Chapter 4, The general-purpose dictionaries and society, examines the expectations of the
public towards dictionaries. It demonstrates convincingly that the way dictionaries are made
today depends to a very large extent on the users expectations. These expectations are mostly
irrational, e.g. non-linguists tend to imagine that print dictionaries are basically versions of a
single ideal Dictionary, which contains the absolute truth on what words mean, which uses of
words (or even which words as such) are acceptable and which are wrong etc. It is
demonstrated on the standard example of Websters Third New International Dictionary that
although actual dictionaries impose a norm on language rather than reflect the objectively
given norms and although the creators of dictionaries are absolutely aware that the abovementioned public view is fundamentally mistaken, they have to adhere to the normative
tradition and conform to the users expectations or risk the financial failure of the dictionary
project. This chapter also includes an interesting examination of how directly the choice of
lemmas and the phrasing of definitions reflect the society in which the dictionary was created,
by looking at the treatment of taboo words and political terms as well as sexist definitions.
Chapter 5, What are general-purpose dictionaries really for, presents the results of the wellknown studies by Barnhart, Quirk etc. which aimed to establish what kinds of information the
users actually consult their dictionaries for, and how they proceed when they try to look up
some information. It is shown that modern lexicographers try to determine very consciously
how reference works have to be improved to respond to the users needs.
Chapter 6, The linguistic traditions of lexicography, first briefly examines the relationship
between linguistics as an academic discipline and practical lexicography, i.e. the writing of
dictionaries and then summarises some prominent traditional assumptions that guide the
process of dictionary-writing, e.g. that all words have meanings, word meanings are discrete,
definitions must not be circular etc. These assumptions are briefly explained, illustrated by
one or two examples, and criticised if necessary.
The final chapter turns to two linguistic topics which the author assumes to play an important
role in the creation of future dictionaries: the treatment of idioms and of polysemy. Firstly, he
outlines recent publications on idiomaticity and collocations (particularly John Sinclairs
famous writings on these issues), which suggest that the syntagmatic delimitation of lexical
items as it is traditionally done in lexicography is generally inadequate. It is claimed that
much more attention should be paid to multiword units both during the compilation of a

dictionary and in theoretical linguistic work. And secondly, he mentions recent ideas in
lexical semantics which have been proposed as possible solutions to problems of the treatment
of lexical ambiguity, in particular the monosemy/contextual variation approach, the
regular/systematic polysemy approach, and cognitive semantics/prototype theory. He assumes
that these could lead to dictionary treatments of multiple word meanings which would be
substantially different than the previous ones.
Overall, BJOINT serves as an entertaining, compact and reliable general introduction to
dictionaries. It mentions many topics which someone who is interested in dictionaries should
be aware of, but at the same time the discussions remain quite simple (although they could
hardly be described as superficial). For someone who is already well acquainted with
lexicography, it should still be interesting, since it contains many interesting thoughts and
examples. On the other hand, as a textbook it is not of much use for anything other than a
general introduction. In particular, it cannot be used as a teaching material in university
courses which aim to acquaint students with the techniques of dictionary use or the education
of such techniques; and neither (at least as the primary textbook) to teach practical
lexicography or metalexicography. Importantly, it does not say anything about bilingual
dictionaries, so its usefulness for foreign language teachers is even more limited.
An interesting aspect of BJOINT, however, is the extensive reliance on French literature on
lexicography, which is almost completely missing from the other textbooks. This should make
it especially worth reading for metalexicographers who do not read French but are interested
in the topics that the rather rich French tradition is concerned with.
The major negative point of this book is that, as already mentioned, the presentation of the
current state of lexicography is clearly outdated. Whereas it provides a very good overview of
the state of the art about 10 years ago, it fails to take into consideration more recent farreaching changes which were induced by the extensive computerisation and the effect that
modern learners dictionaries had on the market in general. It is a shame that the publisher
presents it as if it were a new book rather than a reprint of a (back in 2000) six-year-old
original.
2. LANDAU
This book is a second edition of an earlier work as well, but in contrast to BJOINT, it has been
very thoroughly updated throughout, and therefore the fact that it is not a completely new
book is not at all noticeable. It is the most voluminous of the textbooks reviewed here, its
main text being more than 400 pages long. Somewhat surprisingly, it is also arguably the most
entertaining one, i.e. its extensiveness is not due to bad writing style but rather to the huge
amount of information in the text.
It contains eight chapters, most of which are rather long themselves, around 50 pages.
The first one introduces the reader to a large variety of dictionaries. It proceeds as a simple
taxonomy, grouping dictionaries by categories like number of languages, size, period of time
covered and form of presentation, instead of trying to develop a more principled and rigid
typology. Reasonably the reference works mentioned as examples are all English dictionaries
which should be accessible to the reader.
The second chapter is a very informative brief history of English lexicography, which
retraces the evolution of English dictionaries from early bilingual and hard-words-dictionaries
through Johnsons and Websters work, the OED and other unabridged dictionaries, up to the
late 20th century with the characteristic learners dictionaries and offline and online electronic
lexical resources. It pays attention both to the internal mechanisms of the profession,
indicating the relations of different dictionaries to each other, and external aspects like the
effects of historical changes or the relation between the editors and society.

Chapter 3, Key elements of dictionaries and other language references, discusses general
formal (micro- and macrostructural) properties of reference works, like selection and ordering
of the entries, the counting of entries (and its effect on the commercial advertising of the end
products), grammatical, phonetic and etymological information, the treatment of synonyms,
illustrations, and front and back matter. Instead of proposing some ideal rule system for the
presentation of these information types, Landau demonstrates how they are actually handled
on numerous characteristic examples.
Chapter 4, Definition, is a very detailed and informative study of the practice of defining in
monolingual dictionaries. It explains what principles such definitions aim to follow (e.g.
avoiding circularity, being simple and brief), how words belonging to different parts of speech
can be defined, and how corpus data are employed as sources in the process of defining. This
chapter also includes some very interesting observations concerning the definition of technical
terms (which relates to the authors own work on medical dictionaries). Innovative defining
styles, like those first systematically employed in the Collins COBUILD dictionary and since
then also adapted by numerous other reference works, are scrutinized as well. In addition, the
importance of illustrative quotations as parts of dictionary entries is emphasised.
The fifth chapter, Usage, examines the treatment of different varieties of language in
dictionaries: regional variation, terminologies, taboo and insulting words; and the normative
function of dictionaries as guides towards correct usage. Landau explains why this function is
especially important for American dictionaries by identifying the social causes of the
linguistic insecurity of certain parts of the populations of the United States.
Chapter 6 discusses the role of electronic corpora in todays lexicography. It sketches the
history of corpus linguistics, shows how the use of large-scale corpora changed the way
dictionaries are created since the 1980s, and summarises the current situation. Then it explains
how corpora are in fact employed by lexicographers. The author cites some interesting and
convincing examples of how the examination of computer-generated concordances can
support or correct the decisions of the dictionary compiler, e.g. when the existence of certain
rare or dialectal uses of words is to be established. Finally he deals with the compilation of
computer corpora, in particular with problems like having to persuade publishers to provide
access to their electronic texts, the question of how the representativeness of a corpus can be
assured, and what computational tools are required (e.g. concordance and part-of-speech
tagging software).
Chapter 7 acquaints the reader with technical details of the process of dictionary making: e.g.
the scheduling of the dictionary project, estimating expenses, selecting the appropriate staff,
and providing them with a style manual to coordinate the work. It is explained why the
structure of the editing software is especially important, and how proofreading, printing or
abridging a dictionary works.
The final chapter, Legal and ethical issues in lexicography, contains a rather diverse
selection of topics which are quite unrelated to each other. These include the problem of
plagiarism in dictionaries (the wide-spread practice that earlier dictionaries are extensively
copied by compilers of a new one), legal controversies over the treatment of trademarked
expressions (product names) that have become common nouns (like kleenex and band-aid) in
general dictionaries, and guidelines how lexicographers who have contributed to a dictionary
(especially to an earlier edition) should be credited.
The style of the book is excellent throughout, it is very interesting (due in part to the skilful
selection of examples), entertaining and occasionally even humorous, which is not what one
would probably expect to find in a textbook on lexicography. It is also obvious that the author
is extremely well acquainted with the subject and mostly knows from personal experience
what he is writing about.

The selection of topics makes this book especially useful for practical lexicographers who
would like to gather ideas and expert advice for their work. Parts of it could be directly
adapted as teaching material for a university course in lexicography, although some of the
chapters are somewhat too eclectic to serve this purpose without extensive modifications. The
literature references are also mostly interesting. The inside information that Landau shares
with the readers in chapter 7 is particularly exciting.
On the other hand, readers who would like to gather material for a course dealing especially
with dictionary use will not find much of direct interest in the book, since the relevant issues
are mostly ignored by Landau.
3. HARTMANN
This volume is clearly the shortest of these textbooks. Its main text is just 146 pages long (8
of which are either blank or contain nothing more than a section title). This is followed by a
list of relevant web sites, which takes up about 20 pages, a short glossary, and 20 pages of
bibliography. Unfortunately, it is also not very satisfying content-wise. All of the numerous
sections, which treat a wide selection of topics, are rather sketchy and one misses the depth of
the discussions that is characteristic of both BJOINT and LANDAU.
Chapter 1, The lexicographic scene, defines lexicography as a two-sided field: it includes a
practical branch (dictionary making) and a theoretical one (dictionary research). The author
briefly sketches the aims of the latter and mentions its current state as an academic discipline.
Chapter 2 is about the process of creating dictionaries. First it cites several dictionary
definitions of the word dictionary and then names the main stages of a dictionary project.
These are then elaborated briefly. The style of the elaboration deserves mention, since it is
rather peculiar and remains the same throughout the book. Hartmann proceeds through the
section by naming several more or less well-known lexicographic publications. Each such
publication receives a short paragraph of its own, where Hartmann summarizes very
succinctly what its author has got to say about the topic at hand. As a result, you get the
impression that you are reading an annotated bibliography rather than a textbook. This style
might appeal to some readers, but I find it rather awkward and would prefer a coherent,
continuous and detailed exposition of the views of a single author instead of short sketches of
the positions of several.
At the end of this chapter Hartmann reports on one dictionary project he has worked on
himself, the Dictionary of Lexicography. Unfortunately, this report is too short and superficial
(just two pages) to really be of use.
Chapter 3 describes the goals of dictionary research. In this chapter, another very typical
feature of this book becomes apparent, namely, the distinct fondness of the author for
numbered and bulleted lists, the individual points of which are not further explained. These
take up a significant part of this chapter and of the whole book in general. To cite an example
from page 30: Dictionary research is charged [...] to answer all the various (e.g. theoretical,
methodological, terminological, historical and pedagogical) questions that may arise in:
the design and compilation of new dictionaries;
the care and maintenance of older dictionaries;
the critical evaluation of dictionaries;
the assessment of the dictionary users needs and skills;
the use of computers in dictionary making and dictionary research;
the elaboration of a history of dictionary making and dictionary research;
the determination of the cultural-historical importance of dictionaries;
the specification of dictionary formats and structures
and the list goes on with an additional five entries. These might possibly be interesting for
someone who wants to describe systematically what dictionary research is about, but a reader

who is not already familiar with the field will find very little use for such lists and learn even
less from them.
This chapter concludes the first, introductory section of the book. The second section is about
dictionary research and comprises the next three chapters.
Chapter 4, Historical and critical perspectives, treats different ways to approach the history
of dictionaries and dictionary criticism. The former include language history (how
dictionaries document the change of language), cultural history (how the dictionaries are
related to the cultural context in which they were created), genre-specific history (how the
different kinds of dictionaries have evolved) and genealogical history (how different
dictionaries are related to each other, viz. which copied which). These are introduced very
briefly on about one page each, in the usual style of the book, with many references to the
literature and even more lists (of possible research topics, individual dictionaries etc.). The
second large part of this chapter on perspectives on dictionary criticism discusses critical
reviews of dictionaries, product tests, buying guides, critical monographs etc.
Chapter 5, Structural and typological perspectives, introduces the most important concepts
in connection with dictionary structure (like micro- and macrostructure and access structure),
different ways to classify dictionaries, and some important dictionary types.
Chapter 6 discusses the role of the user in lexicography, mentioning different reference needs,
the skills required for successfully using dictionaries, and ways users can be trained in
dictionary use. It is concluded by an enumeration of desiderata of dictionary use research.
The third section of the book is entitled Issues, methods and case studies and consists of
chapters 7 to 9.
Chapter 7 begins with a summary of the earlier chapters and continues with an inordinately
long list of (mostly very general) issues for further dictionary research, e.g. What do we
know about reference professionals and their working methods?, Do we have directories of
lexicographers?, Do we have accounts of their qualifications, their training (e.g. courses),
their career structure and job descriptions?, How have different lexicographic traditions
emerged, and how do they change over time and space?, What theoretical framework is
needed for metacriticism in lexicography?, What is the public image of dictionaries and
other reference works?. Unfortunately, these questions are just stated as such and not
explained at all, so it is not clear what the point of answering them would be in many cases.
For example, I fail to see any reasonable use that a directory of all the active lexicographers in
the world (as demanded by Hartmann) could possibly be put to.
Chapter 8 is concerned with the methods that can be employed in dictionary research, e.g. the
writing of critical reviews, questionnaires, interviews and protocols about dictionary use
(which are the main tools for inquiring into the way users interact with reference works and
which are an essential prerequisite for improving them). It also mentions some
interdisciplinary relations of lexicography.
Finally, chapter 9 contains ten case studies of dictionary research. Each case study is
essentially an abstract of a lexicographic publication. Each of these is concerned with quite
different topics, e.g. developing dictionaries for the indigenous languages of South Africa,
criticism of an English learners dictionary, or promoting the teaching of dictionary reference
skills in China. Each such abstract is followed by some suggestions for follow-up studies,
which are very similar to the lists of issues in chapter 7, although somewhat more specific,
e.g. What are the regulations in your country about dictionary use in secondary and higher
education? Are dictionaries permitted or encouraged in, or banned from, examinations in your
institution? What reasons are given for this?
The last 50 pages are taken up by a long list of information sources (mostly web sites) that
could be used by researchers and students of lexicography, e.g. sites of journals, dictionary
publishers, and research institutions; a glossary; a bibliography; and an index.

Overall, the book feels like a draft or a sketch of an introduction to lexicography rather than a
finished work itself. The ways in which this textbook can be used are therefore quite limited.
Since most of the text is very much like an annotated bibliography it can reasonably be used
as a guide to the literature of the field. One notable point in connection with this aspect of the
book is that it takes the German and French literature of the field seriously and refers to it
regularly, which is unfortunately not the case in LANDAU, for example. The suggestions for
further research, especially in chapters 7 and 9, can be used conveniently by teachers of
lexicography courses as a source of assignments for the students.
Unfortunately apart from its contents the style of the book is somewhat curious as well. That
the author is in love with numbers becomes apparent already in the preface where the contents
of the book are characterized quantitatively instead of in terms of the aims or the contents of
the chapters: Chapter 4 documents seven historical and six critical perspectives, Chapter 5
specifies six structural perspectives and some aspects of dictionary typology in greater detail,
and Chapter 6 has more to say about six user perspectives. In Section III, I look at eight sets
of issues that have emerged for more detailed treatment in dictionary research (Chapter 7),
explore various methods tried, including the notion of interdisciplinary collaboration (Chapter
8), and single out ten case studies (Chapter 9) in order to encourage readers to carry out their
own projects. (page xi). Or to cite another typical sentence from the text: the MA
dissertation of Nakamoto (1994) attempted to establish criteria in the form of 27
macrostructural and 26 microstructural check-points or rules for the evaluation of (English)
learners dictionaries as well as 21 check-points about the focus of the review and a further 13
about the status of the reviewer (page 55). Hartmann even goes as far as counting the
contributors and the papers in edited volumes and adding this information to the entries in the
bibliography, e.g. the Zrilex 86 proceedings edited by Snell-Hornby contain 45 papers by
51 authors (page 202). Although this might not sound particularly disturbing, most readers
will probably be extremely irritated by it in the long run.
4. ENGELBERG/LEMNITZER
This work of two young German linguists is the only non-English textbook reviewed here. In
a way, it is the most straightforward practical introduction to lexicography that is available
today. The authors do not treat topics which are of little utility to someone interested in either
the use or the compilation of dictionaries (most notably the history of dictionaries), and
concentrate on those which are directly important to students of languages.
The first chapter examines the concept of dictionary, the typology of dictionaries, the
differentiation of dictionaries and encyclopaedias and mentions the problem of separating
lexical and world knowledge. As in every chapter, the text is illustrated by a relatively very
large number of relevant quotations from dictionaries and by figures. There are also exercises
and suggestions for further reading which are not just listed but also briefly characterised.
A peculiar characteristic of this textbook are the short digressions from the main topic of the
chapter, which treat mostly some theoretical problem like lexical semantic theories or some
less central and sometimes odd issues like the mechanisms of tolerant search in electronic
dictionaries. These digressions, exercises and literature references are printed in frames with a
light grey background, in smaller type than the main text.
The second chapter is an overview of many more or less important kinds of dictionaries. The
main emphasis is on surveying the market and acquainting the students with dictionaries
which are available for different purposes, rather than on developing a systematic typology.
Interestingly the authors not only treat print dictionaries and the more usual electronic ones
but also internet dictionaries, e.g. of gay slang, comics or dialect words, which are created in
part interactively, i.e. the visitors of the site can contribute their own material to them. These

are completely ignored by the other textbooks, although they constitute a trend which will
possibly become very influential in the near future.
The third chapter discusses dictionary use from different perspectives. It briefly reviews the
main goals, methods and results of the relevant research and then examines the process of
looking up information in print and electronic dictionaries. Most of the chapter is devoted to a
more thorough analysis of different ways dictionaries are consulted: to solve comprehension
and production problems in ones native language, a foreign language, and for translation.
The fourth chapter covers the general structure of dictionaries. This is done according to the
theoretical framework developed by Wiegand and elaborated most thoroughly in the
international encyclopaedia of lexicography. The three basic levels of structural analysis are
the macrostructure, the microstructure and the access structure. As opposed to HARTMANNs
appropriate chapter (which is based on the same framework) these levels are not just
abstractly explained but also illustrated by many examples.
Chapter 5 explains how the quality of dictionaries can be assessed. The authors propose
several principles for dictionary criticism and describe these in detail. Some of these
principles are general rules, e.g. of fairness, others are actual criteria that can be employed
when analysing a dictionary, e.g. how multiword lexical items are treated, or if the front
matter explains adequately to the reader how the dictionary is to be used and how the entries
are built up. It is worth mentioning that such criteria are suggested not only for print
dictionaries, but for electronic ones as well.
The last chapter reviews the process of the creation of dictionaries. As opposed to the
treatment of this topic e.g. in LANDAU, it is presented in a rather general way. All the
important stages of a dictionary project are covered (from market research and the selection of
the editors to the publication of the completed work in printed or electronic form) without
going into the details of any of these. The goal of the authors is just to familiarize the students
with the rudiments of the process, not to train dictionary compilers.
The main text of the book ends on page 228. The last 50 pages contain a short glossary, an
index, and a rather long bibliography of dictionaries and scholarly publications referred to in
the text.
Overall ENGELBERG/LEMNITZER is an excellent textbook which can be used effectively in a
course on lexicography which is a part of a modern languages curriculum at a university.
Features which are especially useful in this respect are the numerous citations from print
dictionaries and screenshots of electronic ones, and the exercises (which are unfortunately of
varying quality).
The style of the text is somewhat uneven, ranging from facetious to rather demanding. In
contrast to JACKSON, which has similar goals, this book is not meant for readers with no
background in linguistics at all. In fact, in some sections even students of a modern philology
who are not especially familiar with linguistics will have problems understanding what the
authors are talking about. Since even some knowledge of the terminology of lexicography is
required at certain points, students who wish to study the book on their own rather than under
the supervision of a teacher will probably have to use the glossary at the end of the book
regularly.
5. JACKSON
This is the shortest of the textbooks covered here. As opposed to BJOINT and LANDAU it is
clearly conceived as a book for students in lexicography courses. This is quite apparent when
one looks at its structure. It contains 14 short chapters which can be comfortably read during a
university semester.
The book begins with a short introduction to English lexicology (20 pages), which is
contained in the first two chapters. This part introduces standard topics like different notions

of word, multiword lexical items, parts of speech, morphological and semantic analysis of
words. It is intended for students who have very little or no background in linguistics and take
part in a lexicography course.
The introduction to lexicography itself starts in the third chapter, where it is explained to the
readers what dictionaries are, that they are structured on the levels of micro- and
macrostructure, and that they differ from each other in terms of contents. The creation and
criticism of dictionaries is also briefly discussed.
Chapters 4 through 6 are concerned with the history of English dictionaries, in a way similar
to the appropriate chapter in LANDAU, the most obvious difference being that American
dictionaries receive somewhat less attention here. The history of the OED is treated most
thoroughly; the whole fifth chapter is devoted to its development from its origins up to its
planned third edition. Chapter 6 includes an overview of the most important dictionaries of
different types available today.
The topic of chapter 7 is the interaction of users and dictionaries. It discusses the possible
aims of dictionaries and what the users actually do with them, and the possibilities and
methods of researching such issues.
Chapters 8 through 10 examine different parts of the microstructures of general-purpose
monolingual dictionaries. Chapter 8 takes a look at dictionary definitions, i.e. how word
meanings are explained. It mentions different techniques of treating lexical ambiguity and
also examines how sense relations (like synonymy) are handled. Chapter 9 covers the other
information types in the entries of general-purpose dictionaries, e.g. pronunciation, inflection
and types of usage restrictions. Etymological information is discussed separately in chapter
10. It is explained how to make sense of such information and why it is included at all in
synchronic dictionaries.
Chapter 11 contains a very informative comparison of the four major learners dictionaries
(OALD, LDOCE, COBUILD and CIDE). It highlights the innovative characteristics of
modern learners dictionaries in general and of each of these four dictionaries in particular.
Chapter 12 discusses thematically-arranged dictionaries (i.e. thesauruses), their history,
structure and possible uses. It emphasises the tradition of thesauruses and treats e.g. Rogets
classic work besides examining the current situation of print and electronic thesauruses.
Chapter 13 describes the process of compiling dictionaries, concentrating especially on the
use of electronic corpora.
Finally, the topic of Chapter 14 is dictionary criticism. It is considered which criteria are
appropriate for judging the quality of dictionaries.
Each chapter is concluded by a few suggestions for further reading. These were selected very
reasonably, i.e. only the arguably most important and most recent works on the respective
topics are referred to, so those readers who are interested in some issue are provided with a
good place to start researching it, but are not overwhelmed by a huge number of suggestions.
As its size already indicates, this book was written with students in mind who are not familiar
with lexicography at all. This conception is carried through very systematically. An important
feature of this book is the authors intensive use of illustrative quotations, which makes the
discussion of the introduced concepts very accessible.
Other readers who are already well acquainted with lexicography will profit little from
reading this book, since all the topics treated are quite basic.
One subject that in my opinion should have received somewhat more attention in this book is
the popular misconceptions concerning dictionaries which are widespread among the public
and probably also shared by some of the typical readers of this introduction. These are
mentioned in some places ironically but not refuted, which may lead to misunderstandings.
6. STERKENBURG

This sizeable volume, which was edited by the Dutch lexicographer Piet van Sterkenburg, is a
collection of very short sections (about 10 pages each) which were written by different
authors (mostly, but not necessarily experts of the respective topics). Although its title, A
practical guide to lexicography, suggests that this is a book from which lexicographers can
learn how to create a dictionary, it is definitely not a systematic and coherent introduction to
the field in general and to the tools of the trade in particular. Since it lacks both a general
conception and a clear line of thought that would hold together the material, it is rather a
reference work, somewhat similar to the encyclopaedia of lexicography.
What is especially eye-catching in the table of contents is, on the one hand, the unusually
large number of very famous linguists who have contributed to this collection, e.g. Geeraerts,
Booij, Verkuyl, Ferenc Kiefer and John Sinclair, and, on the other hand, the predominance of
less well-known Dutch authors. Summarizing all the 29 sections would be quite pointless, so I
will only outline the seven chapters by which the volume is organized.
Chapter 1, entitled Foundations, introduces a wide variety of topics, namely, how
dictionary can be defined, the general history of dictionaries, their sources, research of
dictionary use, types of articles (e.g. nested lemmas) and dictionary typology. Since all these
diverse topics are treated on a mere 70 pages it should not come as a surprise that their
treatment is rather shallow. The problem is even more obvious if one looks at how much
space was devoted to individual issues. E.g. the history of dictionaries takes up 9 pages and
the experimental research of dictionary use gets two and a half. (It should be noted that the
size of these pages is not particularly large, unlike e.g. the international encyclopaedia of
lexicography. They are roughly the same size as those of ENGELBERG/LEMNITZER and
LANDAU, and somewhat less dense than those of JACKSON.)
Many of the authors (not just in this first chapter, but throughout the book) were obviously
puzzled how such complex topics can be described under the given limitations and chose to
elaborate one or two interesting details and ignore everything else instead of attempting to
race through many issues very superficially. A very typical example is the section on source
material for dictionaries (1.2), which devotes 4 pages to corpora as lexical resources.
Elementary concepts like concordances are not even mentioned here, tagging gets about half a
page, and most of the four pages examine what kinds of texts two electronic corpora (the
British and the Czech national corpus) are composed of.
Chapter 2 (Descriptive lexicography) examines mostly different parts of microstructure,
namely, the treatment of phonetic, morphological, syntactic, pragmatic and semantic
information. Additionally, two special types of dictionary are treated in this chapter in two
separate sections: dictionaries of proverbs and onomasiological dictionaries (synonym
dictionaries and thesauruses). It is unclear why these two latter sections were included here
and not in the following chapter.
The section (2.2) entitled Meaning and definition by Dirk Geeraerts is an interesting
representative of those sections which do not concentrate on few specific topics (like the one
mentioned above) but try to cover (within 10 pages) the whole range of topics that can be
associated with their title. Geeraerts introduces the concepts of semasiology and
onomasiology (1 page), polysemy (1 page), different types of meaning (denotational, emotive,
grammatical, pragmatic 2 pages), intensional vs. extensional (prototypical) definitions (2
pages), and definitional formats (1 page). It should be obvious that such a short overview
cannot possibly serve as a practical guide for beginning lexicographers who would like to
learn how word meanings should be specified in a dictionary. For the sake of comparison,
LANDAU treats just the definitional formats on more than ten dense pages. To make matters
worse there is not even a single reference to the relevant literature in this section, which
would at least enable the novice to gather the needed information elsewhere.

Chapter 3, Special types of dictionaries, consists of two sections: one on bilingual and one
on specialized dictionaries. Both are much too short to be informative.
According to its title, chapter 4 is supposed to discuss the role corpora play in lexicography.
The first section on the notion and the collection of corpora and the second section on the
annotation of corpora do exactly this and are among the best contributions to this volume
(both were written by John Sinclair). The third section (by Truus Kruyt) seems to revolve
around machine-readable dictionaries (like the classic LDOCE) and stresses that these have to
be reusable in order to be employed effectively for different tasks like natural language
processing applications. This section does not seem to have anything to do with corpora, but
rather with lexical databases. However, this discussion is so extremely unspecific that I was
not able to understand the point of this section (and I am not sure if it has one at all). Oddly
the fourth section is not about corpora at all either, but is rather a description of the software
used by the staff of the dictionary of Afrikaans for editing the dictionary entries.
Chapter 5, which covers the issue of designing (paper or electronic) dictionaries, contains
three sections. The first explains how an electronic dictionary is designed. The second
considers what possibilities are opened by todays technology to make looking up information
more user-friendly. The third describes very superficially some important characteristics of
electronic dictionaries, e.g. searchability, the use of multimedia, and that there is no need for
abbreviations anymore.
Chapter 6, Realisation of dictionaries, treats basically the same kind of topics as chapter 2,
i.e. information classes in microstructure. It contains a section on phonological,
morphological and syntactic information in dictionaries (6.1 by Booij), which is somewhat
surprising, as a short section on exactly the same topic already appeared in chapter 2. The
emphasis is different in these two sections (which is not surprising, since they were written by
different authors): Section 2.1 (by de Caluwe and van Santen) is more practical, citing several
examples from dictionaries, whereas 6.1 concentrates on theoretical notions like allomorphy
and productivity. However, their coverage is basically the same (apart from the fact that in 6.1
just a special kind of syntactic information is discussed, namely, idiomatic patterns.
Another topic that was already treated in chapter 2 and reappears here is semantic
information. Section 6.3 by Fons Moerdijk concentrates on the issue of lexical ambiguity in
dictionaries. It introduces such notions as polysemy and homonymy and illustrates these by a
relatively detailed case study. The author cites several real-world occurrences of the word
school and then examines how this word is treated in four current English dictionaries.
Further sections in this chapter cover occurrence examples, usage labels (which were partly
already treated in section 2.4 on Pragmatic specifications) and etymological information.
Finally, chapter 7 describes the design and production procedures of different kinds of
dictionaries. This chapter is as heterogeneous as all the others. The first two sections (on
bilingual and terminological dictionaries) really concentrate on stages of design and
production (like specifying a general architecture, constructing a corpus and making a
business plan). The third one on bilingual dictionaries by Kiefer and van Sterkenburg devotes
disproportionately much attention to the description of the microstructure of general
monolingual dictionaries (which is a waste of space, since these questions have already been
dealt with in chapters 2 and 6) and indicates only roughly what the actual planning stages
consist in (e.g. style manual and organisation of staff). And the last section on collocation
dictionaries does not mention the design and production processes at all, but rather compares
several dictionaries of this type.
As one can probably deduce from the above summary of the contents, I am not at all pleased
with this book. The reason why it fails to be a reasonable choice for a textbook of
lexicography is that its general conception is seriously mistaken. The text is extremely
incoherent and the individual sections are arranged unsystematically, therefore the reader has

the impression of reading a collection of papers or a conference proceedings. One expects a

textbook to confer an understanding of a subject to its readers. STERKENBURG fails to deliver
this, because one only gets to see small fragments of the picture which do not combine to a
complete whole.
The one to blame for this is not the authors, but the editor, who worked in an outrageously
sloppy way on this volume. This is apparent on every level of the editing process. The
illogical arrangement and the unmotivated repetitions of the chapters have already been
mentioned. But it is also the editor who should have noticed that having the contributors write
short essays on different topics which can be read each by themselves is not the right way to
handle the material. Each section contains an introduction, the exposition of the concepts
considered most important to the topic by the author, and a conclusion. Unfortunately, this
takes away too much space from the exposition of the topics of the sections. Also it becomes
very irritating to read yet another definition of dictionary or microstructure for the fifth time
in the same book.
The editor should have followed the example of the encyclopaedia of lexicography in heavily
cross-referencing the sections. This would have created at least some sense of congruity and
made finding some needed information easier. For example, it was mentioned that the section
on source materials for dictionaries contains a short and relatively useless section on corpora
as lexicographic resources. It would have been very reasonable to indicate at that point that
the use of corpora for such purposes is discussed in several other chapters as well, especially
4.1, 4.2 and 6.2. Of course, this problem is not specific to this single topic, but applies to the
whole book. Generally it seems that the authors were not aware of what the other contributors
were writing about in their sections.
The references to literature have not been standardised consistently by the editor either.
Although most of the contributors refer to publications in the standard way (by author and
year of appearance) and there is a combined bibliography for all the section at the end of the
book (which is a sensible and standard solution), there are sections that do contain a
bibliography themselves. Notably at the end of section 2.4 one finds a long list of dictionaries
referred to in this section, and it seems that the editor forgot to remove the references from the
end of 5.2.
There are many other inconsistencies in the handling of the references as well. To mention
just three cases I have noticed without checking systematically:
Firstly, the 1997 paper of Atkins and Varantola appears twice in the bibliography, once under
Atkins, B. T. S. and once under Atkins, S..
Secondly, one finds a reference to Harper Dictionary of Contemporary Usage (Norris &
Norris 1971) on page 65 (section 1.5 by Swanepoel); and a few lines later another reference
to Morris and Morris (1975). Although it does not become clear from the text that these are
supposed to refer to the same publication, this seems to be the case, since neither of these two
references are to be found in the bibliography, but rather a third one: Norris, W. & Norris,
M. (1975). Harper Dictionary of Contemporary Usage.
And thirdly, it is hardly understandable that a textbook published in 2003 contains several
references to the 1984 edition of LANDAU, but not a single one to the current edition.
Whereas the editor has the sole responsibility for the deficiencies mentioned up to this point,
there is a further point that at least the publisher ought to have checked, namely, the quality of
the language of the contributions. Several chapters, especially those written by the Dutch
contributors, contain some unidiomatic English, and there are lots of typos that were not
corrected either.
Overall, STERKENBURG is a remarkably unprofessional textbook. It is a shame that a halffinished work like this could be published by a reputable publisher. Since not only the quality

of this book is below par but it is also disproportionately expensive to boot, one should not
reward John Benjamins by buying it.
7. Comparison of the contents of the textbooks discussed
After having summarised each of the six books individually, I will give a brief overview of
how certain topics that should be of interest to several prospective readers are covered in
them.
a) Overview of general monolingual dictionaries currently available:
The definitely most usable introduction and comparison of general monolingual English
dictionaries is to be found in JACKSON. Both ENGELBERG/LEMNITZER and HARTMANN list
current major monolingual dictionaries (including the English one) but do not examine how
they differ. LANDAU only mentions the major English dictionaries and concentrates on the
American ones, but he compares them only on a fairly abstract level, which does not help
much to get acquainted with their most important characteristics. BJOINT is too outdated to
be of any use in this respect. There is no comparable section in STERKENBURG.
b) Bilingual dictionaries
The characteristics of bilingual dictionaries are treated quite consistently in
ENGELBERG/LEMNITZER throughout the book, although they do not receive much attention.
STERKENBURG also contains a relevant section (3.1). The others have very little or nothing at
all to say on this topic.
c) Other kinds of dictionaries
ENGELBERG/LEMNITZER systematically surveys the different types of non-general dictionaries
and illustrates this with numerous examples. LANDAU does something similar in chapter 1,
although that overview is less systematic and lacks examples, which means that readers
unfamiliar with representatives of the different types of special dictionaries will have
problems following this part.
d) History of dictionaries
None of these textbooks contains a serious general history of dictionaries. However, the
history of English lexicography is examined quite thoroughly in LANDAU and in less detail,
but still informatively in both JACKSON and BJOINT.
e) Structural characteristics
HARTMANN contains only a very general and abstract overview of the structure of dictionaries.
ENGELBERG/LEMNITZERs treatment of this topic is substantially similar, but significantly
more detailed. As usual they illustrate this part with examples, which makes it especially
accessible to beginners. JACKSON treats microstructure in chapters 8 to 10 (using many
examples as well), but ignores macrostructure. LANDAU devotes almost 200 pages to a
relatively short discussion of macrostructure and to elements of microstructure, especially the
treatment of pragmatic and semantic information. One can gather much information on
structural topics from STERKENBURG if one has the patience to look for them, since it is
dispersed throughout the book.
f) Dictionary use
ENGELBERG/LEMNITZER, HARTMANN and STERKENBURG contain useful (although somewhat
sketchy) general overviews of dictionary use research. The relevant chapter of JACKSON is too
short and does not contain much material of interest. The discussion in chapter 5 of BJOINT is

better than any of these, but does not take the research of the past 10 years into account
(which has produced many interesting results) and is therefore outdated. LANDAU does not
discuss such issues.
g) The creation of dictionaries
Although it also contains a rather long and informative separate chapter on dictionary making,
most of the other chapters of LANDAU are presented from the point of view of the practical
lexicographer as well. Therefore, this is the best source by far for someone who wants to learn
about details of how a dictionary is compiled. ENGELBERG/LEMNITZERs overview is still very
informative but of manageable size, whereas JACKSONs is too short and superficial. Some
sections of STERKENBURG (especially 4.4, 7.1 and 7.2) are also interesting.
8. Possible uses of the textbooks discussed
In my opinion only two of these books can be used as a course material for an introduction to
lexicography at a university, namely, ENGELBERG/LEMNITZER and JACKSON. They are both
reasonably priced, treat a wide variety of topics, and are accessible to readers who do not have
any background in lexicography. JACKSON could be best used in an easier course for
beginners who are not particularly interested in these topics, whereas ENGELBERG/LEMNITZER
is most appropriate for an intermediate-level course for language teachers in training (with a
good background in linguistics) who should be familiar with different types of dictionaries to
be able to work successfully in their jobs. Unfortunately there is no comparable intermediatelevel introduction in English.
LANDAU is much too detailed to be used efficiently as a course material, but should be the
most interesting of the books discussed for teachers and researchers of lexicography and
especially for practical lexicographers, since it contains a wealth of background information
on all possible aspects of dictionaries, particularly their creation.
Although BJOINT is outdated and STERKENBURG unsuited because of the reasons mentioned
above to be used as teaching material, some of their chapters would make good reading
assignments for students. Chapters 4, 5 and 6 of BJOINT could be especially well suited. On
the other hand, most of STERKENBURG will be of little interest to either researchers or
dictionary writers as well, since the majority of the sections are very general or superficial.
BJOINT is somewhat better but still too basic and too old to be interesting for these readers,
who probably know the 1994 printing anyway.
Although HARTMANN is unusable for beginners because of its very schematic character, it
could be well used by advanced students, e.g. those who would like to write an MA thesis in
lexicography, since it reviews the literature on certain topics fairly well. Although JACKSON
approvingly states that HARTMANN sets the agenda for future research in lexicography, and
should therefore be especially interesting for metalexicographers, I found its presentation of
the goals of research less than convincing.
9. Conclusions
It can be concluded that all groups of readers should find something of interest in the current
offering of lexicography textbooks. Both JACKSON and ENGELBERG/LEMNITZER are good
introductions. LANDAU is an excellent and entertaining exposition of the field that should be
read by all those who are more deeply interested in dictionaries and those who make a living
as practical or theoretical lexicographers. HARTMANN is a usable and informed resource for
advanced students and researchers, although it has its flaws.
Besides these books which can be recommended to the interested readers, the other two
deserve to be ignored by them. BJOINT seems to have been republished by Oxford University
Press only because there is a need for introductions to lexicography and because several other

publishers also have one. It is a well-written textbook with a single serious but fatal flaw: that
it was written more than ten years ago and misses the recent changes of the field. All of those
who could be advised to read BJOINT are better served today by either JACKSON and
ENGELBERG/LEMNITZER or LANDAU. Finally, STERKENBURG suffers from a flawed editorial
conception and sloppy publishing.
There remains one desideratum in the market of lexicography textbooks: an introduction in
English which provides a deeper picture than JACKSON but is more pedagogically conceived
than LANDAU.