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In many countries of the world, perspectives on gender equality and racism have changed in recent decades. One result has been more attention being devoted to traces of androcentric and racist language in society. This also affects dictionaries. In lexicography there are discussions about whether or to what extent social asymmetries are inscribed in dictionaries and if this is still acceptable. The issue of the nature of description plays an important role in this discussion. If sexist usages are often found in language use, i.e. in the corpus data on which the dictionary is based, does the dictionary also have to show them? How is this, in turn, compatible with the normative power of dictionaries? Do dictionaries contribute to the perpetuation of gender stereotypes by showcasing them under the banner of descriptive principles? And what roles do lexicographers play in this process? The article deals with these questions on the basis of individual lexicographical examples and current discussions in the lexicographic and public community.
Dictionary usage research views dictionaries primarily as tools for solving linguistic problems. A large proportion of dictionary use now takes place online and can thus be easily monitored using tracking technologies. Using the data gathered through tracking usage data, we hope to optimize user experiences of dictionaries and other linguistic resources. Usage statistics are also used for external evaluation of linguistic resources. In this paper, we pursue the following three questions from a quantitative perspective: (1) What new insights can we gain from collecting and analysing usage data? (2) What limitations of the data and/or the collection process do we need to be aware of? (3) How can these insights and limitations inform the development and evaluation of linguistic resources?
In the past two decades, more and more dictionary usage studies have been published, but most of them deal with the question what users appreciate about dictionaries, which dictionaries they use and which information they need in specific situations. These studies presuppose that users indeed consult lexicographic resources. However, language teachers and lecturers of linguistics often have the impression that students use too few high-quality dictionaries in their every-day work. Against this background, we started an international cooperation project to collect empirical data evaluating that impression. Our aim was to evaluate what students (here from the Romance language area) actually do when they correct language problems. We used a new methodological setting to do this (screen recording with a thinking-aloud task). The empirical data we gained offers a broad insight into what language users really do when solving language-related tasks today.
Eine europaweite Umfrage zu Wörterbuchbenutzung und -kultur. Ergebnisse der deutschen Teilnehmenden
(2018)
Gebrauchsgegenstand, Streitschlichter, Spielzeug, Nationalsymbol, Arbeitshilfe oder doch nur etwas, für das sich hauptsächlich Akademikerinnen und Akademiker interessieren? Welche Rolle spielen einsprachige Wörterbücher heute? Um unter anderen diesen Fragen nachzugehen, koordinierten wir gemeinsam mit Iztok Kosem (Universität Ljubljana) und Robert Lew (Adam-Mickiewicz Universität Poznań) die bis dato größte europaweite Umfrage zur Wörterbuchbenutzung und -kultur. Gemeinsam mit 26 ‚lokalen‘ Partnerinnen und Partnern aus ganz Europa führten wir im Rahmen des European Network of e-Lexicography (ENeL) diese Umfrage durch. Die Ergebnisse der Studie versprechen neue Einsichten in den gesellschaftlichen Status von Wörterbüchern in vielen europäischen Ländern. Durch die möglichst parallele Erhebung der Daten in den teilnehmenden Ländern werden außerdem interessante Vergleiche der lokalen ‚Wörterbuchkulturen‘ möglich sein. Im Fokus der Befragung standen allgemeine einsprachige Wörterbücher in der oder den jeweiligen Landessprache(n).
Wiktionary is increasingly gaining influence in a wide variety of linguistic fields such as NLP and lexicography, and has great potential to become a serious competitor for publisher-based and academic dictionaries. However, little is known about the "crowd" that is responsible for the content of Wiktionary. In this article, we want to shed some light on selected questions concerning large-scale cooperative work in online dictionaries. To this end, we use quantitative analyses of the complete edit history files of the English and German Wiktionary language editions. Concerning the distribution of revisions over users, we show that — compared to the overall user base — only very few authors are responsible for the vast majority of revisions in the two Wiktionary editions. In the next step, we compare this distribution to the distribution of revisions over all the articles. The articles are subsequently analysed in terms of rigour and diversity, typical revision patterns through time, and novelty (the time since the last revision). We close with an examination of the relationship between corpus frequencies of headwords in articles, the number of article visits, and the number of revisions made to articles.
We present studies using the 2013 log files from the German version of Wiktionary. We investigate several lexicographically relevant variables and their effect on look-up frequency: Corpus frequency of the headword seems to have a strong effect on the number of visits to a Wiktionary entry. We then consider the question of whether polysemic words are looked up more often than monosemic ones. Here, we also have to take into account that polysemic words are more frequent in most languages. Finally, we present a technique to investigate the time-course of look-up behaviour for specific entries. We exemplify the method by investigating influences of (temporary) social relevance of specific headwords.