Lexicography as a base for the philologist

GULZHAZIRA GABDKARIMOVA

Master of Arts., Senior Teacher at the Department of

Foreign Philology and Translation Studies 

Tulekhanova Dinara, master's student of

Al-Farabi Kazakh National University

Lexicography refers to a discipline of linguistics dealing with the creation of a dictionary. Dictionary, on the other hand, is an organized collection of words that describes the peculiarities of their structure and functioning.  Because a dictionary is primarily a linguistic aid, it is also an important tool for science research. 

In today's world, lexicography is widely used in the development of a particular language, the culture of speech, and the improvement of language knowledge. Despite the fact that there is a debate whether it is science or art, we can safely say that lexicography is at the intersection of art and science. For example, the lexicon of a national language is both an instrument of speech culture and a component of that culture.

Dictionary as a subject of lexicography, being an instrument of learning, not only reveals the accumulated knowledge for years, but is also capable of imparting skills, teaching, giving rich material in various studies, also in the field of linguistics. Moreover, lexicography includes the results of linguistic analysis, has its own tasks, object of study and purpose.  That is why lexicography can be seen as a scientific tool for philologists.

The famous English lexicographer Eric Patridge, who devoted his life to compiling dictionaries, called his last book on lexicography "The noble art of lexicography to be the object of employment and the practice of a passionate devotee of it."

And F. Gove, editor-in-chief of Webster's third edition of Dictionaries, wrote in a keynote article, "Advances in Linguistics and Lexicography." "Lexicography is not yet a science. Apparently it never will be a science. But it is a complex, all-consuming art that requires subjective analysis, arbitrary decisions, and intuitive evidence."

The main social purposes of dictionaries are classified into such as: 

 The function of communication (social) in between languages - bilingual dictionary and phrasebooks.

The function of teaching a language, native and foreign.

The function of describing a native language - a reference, explanatory dictionaries.

Function for scientific study. 

To summarize, we can safely say that lexicography, for all its depth, is a core and important discipline, which is studied at Al-Farabi Kazakh National University, not only in linguistics and philology, but also in various aspects of activity as social communication, interpretation and research, cultural familiarity. And what is most interesting is that it is an unbounded, constantly renewed and filled with neologisms.