Lexikographie

Lexicography is the discipline that studies the theory and practice of dictionary making, and more broadly the documentation and description of a language's lexicon. It combines descriptive analysis of word meanings, usage, pronunciation, etymology, and spelling with the editorial methods used to present this information in reference works. Practical lexicography covers the selection of headwords, the organization of senses, the writing of definitions and usage examples, and the presentation of grammatical and morphological information, as well as related data such as etymology, pronunciation, synonyms, antonyms, and collocations. The field distinguishes descriptive lexicography, which records actual language use, from prescriptive approaches, which argue for particular norms.

Historically, lexicography has roots in ancient glossaries and bilingual word lists and evolved through medieval and early modern dictionaries, culminating in comprehensive monolingual works that shaped standard language norms. In the contemporary period, lexicography includes general dictionaries, bilingual and historical dictionaries, and specialized dictionaries for domains such as science, law, medicine, and technology, as well as encyclopedic dictionaries and data-driven online resources.

Modern lexicography relies on linguistic data from corpora, user needs, and empirical evidence. Digital lexicography expands these methods through online platforms, search interfaces, APIs, and crowd-sourced contributions, while contending with questions of reliability, licensing, and editorial control. International standards, such as ISO 12620 and the Lexical Markup Framework, support the encoding and interchange of lexical data for software and natural language processing. The field underpins language education, linguistic research, and computational linguistics by providing structured, navigable representations of a language's vocabulary.