[Lexicog] popular lexicography

[phil cash cash]

Hi Jim,

> What is the need to label such dictionaries?  Is it to boast one's
> professional linguistic sophistication?

dictionaries are interesting cultural products regardless of who makes 
them.  however, i have found that if the choice existed for a community 
intellectual to engage in creating a dictionary, the likelihood is high 
that his or her work would go unrecognized because it lacks the 
"professional linguistic sophistication" you speak of.

there are many reasons for this.  the most obvious notion being is that 
when a linguist is present in a community-driven language project it 
will have the hallmarks of professionalism but when no linguist is 
present well...who knows, right?  i would claim that this assumption is 
wrong.

i have made a strong case for what i call "community linguistics" (my 
masters thesis 2000).  community linguistics takes into account both 
the world view and communicative practices of the community when 
creating lexical resources.  what this means is that "data" will be 
arrived very differently than if a linguist were creating it because of 
the way community linguistic practices shape discourse.  in other 
words, you will find that there is a greater emphasis on words as 
lexical resources for communication (as opposed to words as lexical 
recourses for etymology, etc.).  you typically won't see words taken 
apart and examined morphologically or examined in their "parts of 
speech", not mention other unique applications in general.  this is 
because community-based language projects, when given the choice, 
actively engage their lexical resources as real world elements.  
community linguists and practitioners are addressing the same problems 
lexicographers and linguists face, however, their unnique solutions to 
these problems need to be recognized and validated not in 
"professional" terms but on their own terms.

> Perhaps this need to label is simply a
> professional academic exercise amongst peers which has little 
> reception and
> value for the members in the language community itself for whom they 
> wish to
> assist with language documentation, lexicography, etc. to bring 
> literacy and
> maintainence to the eommunity speakers.

as for professionalism, i've noticed a trend where vague and esoteric 
concepts tend to develop in proportion to an increase in 
professionalism of a discipline.  there is just no way to get around 
this.  but the impact of professionalism is real and can be devastating 
to stake holders particularly endangered language communities where the 
lexical resources are unstable.  my feeling is that professional 
linguistic practices and professionalism has yet to address this issue.

in Chinook Jargon (a NW pidgin language), over a hundred dictionaries 
were created by non-native lexicographers (professional and otherwise) 
despite the use of CJ by many indigenous communities of the Pacific 
northwest.  even with the "labels" that many of you suggested, i am 
still uncertain it describes this interesting phenomena.

qe'ciyéew'yew' (thanks),
phil cash cash (cayuse/nez perce)
university of arizona



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