Speaker
Description
Practical, commercial lexicography in the United States, in particular, is a field that relies heavily on tradition, and it has been loath to abandon the tried-andtrue methods of corpus creation, analysis, and defining that have been established 16since the time of Murray. Yet frame semantics has provided a broader lens through which the practical lexicographer can view meaning, and its integration (though slow) into the practice of lexicography has yielded defining methods that are more user-oriented while giving the lexicographer tools to move beyond their own unconscious or implicit biases – something that is increasingly important in successful modern lexicography. But technological and social changes in the last several decades – the ease with which mis- and disinformation moves into the mainstream, the rise of generative AI and the regular presentation of generated text as natural language, the proliferation of varieties of English accessible to the lexicographer that are sometimes themselves removed from context, and the changing ways in which online dictionaries are used – have presented difficulties to the practical lexicography who seeks to integrate frame semantics deeper into their practice. This paper will present case studies on the successes of integrating frame semantics into lexicographical practice, and the current challenges that lexicographers face when the “frame” itself is illusory, shifting, or debated.
