Preparation of specialized dictionaries. Lexicography.

Lexicography is an important branch of applied linguistics and is closely connected with lexicology. It is a science of dictionary compiling. 1. Lexicography is connected with all the levels of language (semantics, lexicology, grammar, phonetics, stylistics). The dictionary is really the meeting of all the systems - linguistic and non-linguistic.
2. The meaning of lexical units upon which the lexicographer concentrates his attention presents very special difficulties of its own.
3. A lexicographer is doing scientific work but he publishes it for the users whose needs are more practical.
4. Each entry must be self-contained, as we consult a single entry in a dictionary.
The numerous linguistic dictionaries of the English language may be grouped by the following criteria: 1) the nature of their word-list, 2) the information they contain, 3) the language of the explanations, 4) the intended user
Dictionaries are divided into encyclopedic and linguistic. Linguistic dictionaries are dictionaries which are concerned with the lexical units of the language and all their linguistic properties.
Usually the word encyclopedia suggests a huge work of many volumes concerned with all the fields of human knowledge.
Linguistic dictionaries are dictionaries which are concerned with the lexical units of the language and all their linguistic properties. Linguistic dictionaries can be divided into different categories by different criteria. One of the divisions is that between diachronic and synchronic dictionaries.
Among the diachronic dictionaries two types are distinguished: historical (dictionaries that register the changes that occur in the form and meaning of a word) and etymological (that concentrate their attention on the origin of a word).
Synchronic dictionaries (descriptive) are concerned with the present day form, meaning and use of words. According to the nature of their word-list the dictionaries may be grouped into general and restricted. General dictionary represents the vocabulary as a whole with a degree of completeness depending on the scope of the book. The Oxford Dictionary is one of the largest dictionaries of this type.
General dictionaries are contrasted to special or restricted dictionaries. They cover only a certain specific part of the vocabulary. The restriction may be based on any variation of a language, e.g. technical, terminological, phraseological dictionaries, dictionaries of abbreviations, of foreign words, of slang, of idioms.
One more type of dictionaries is a Thesaurus. Ideographic dictionaries are designed for English-speaking writers, orators or translators seeking to express their ideas adequately. The Latin word thesaurus means treasury.
For dictionaries in which words and their definitions belong to the same language, the terms unilingual, monolingual, explanatory are used. These dictionaries provide information on all aspects of the lexical units entered: graphical, phonetical, grammatical, semantic, stylistic, etymological, etc.
Two languages are represented in bilingual or translation dictionaries. The aim of a translation dictionary is to help in translating from one language into another.
Phraseological dictionaries accumulated vast collections of idiomatic or colloquial phrases, proverbs and other, usually image-bearing word-groups with profuse illustrations. Dictionaries of slang contain elements from areas of substandard speech such as vulgarisms, jargonisms, taboo words, curse-words, colloquialisms, etc.
Dictionaries of word-frequency inform the user as to the frequency of occurrence of lexical units in speech, to be more exact in the “corpus of the reading matter or in the stretch of oral speech on which the word-counts are based.
Pronouncing dictionaries record contemporary pronunciation. They indicate variant pronunciations (which are numerous in some cases), as well as the pronunciation of different grammatical forms.