MED Magazine - Issue 45 - June 2007
MED profile
Interview with Michael
Rundell
Michael Rundell is Editor-in-Chief
of the Second Edition of the Macmillan
English Dictionary and a director of Lexicography
MasterClass. Michael has been a lexicographer for 27 years. His special
area is monolingual English dictionaries designed for learners. In this
interview, Michael answers questions about dictionary making, what it
takes to be a lexicographer and the future of the dictionary.
How did you become a lexicographer?
Michael Rundell:
By accident, mostly. Back in 1980 I was involved in the lower reaches
of TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) in London. Id just
completed a PGCE (Postgraduate Certificate in Education) in TEFL and my
tutor, Monica Vincent, to whom I am eternally grateful, drew my attention
to an ad for freelance lexicographers. I spent a couple of years learning
about lexicography from Della Summers one of the best people in
the business. Then, by another stroke of luck, I ended up at Birmingham
working on the early stages of the COBUILD project under the late John
Sinclair. I was lucky I learned about dictionary making from Della
and about language analysis and working with a corpus from John Sinclair.
And now you are editor-in-chief of the Macmillan
English Dictionary. But what does an editor-in-chief actually do?
Michael Rundell:
I see the job as about setting a philosophy and a personality for the
dictionary.
Philosophy?
Michael Rundell:
Yes. I see the philosophy of the Macmillan English Dictionary as being
leading edge in terms of the language software we use, aware of relevant
linguistic theory but making it user-friendly for both teachers and students,
using elements like design.
And the personality would be like an Apple Mac computer?
Michael Rundell: I
hope so! Of course, once youve got the philosophy youve still
got to work out your editorial plan and gather a team of people around
you to produce the book. On the Macmillan English Dictionary
we had editors working with me to create the text, but we also got valuable
input from the Macmillan side, headed by Gwyneth
Fox. I think that gave us a real edge, as did the advice we got from
outside experts like Michael
Hoey and Simon
Greenall.
Whats the best thing about being a lexicographer?
Michael Rundell:
A lot of people think its all very boring. Its really not.
Everything to do with dictionary making, everything that affects it, is
in a state of constant change. The language is always renewing itself.
Our understanding of how language works is always improving. The software
just gets better and better. And as for the language resources available,
when COBUILD first came out it was based on a seven-million-word corpus,
which was absolutely amazing at the time. Now there are corpuses with
a billion words. Just when you think youve got the hang of it, something
new comes along.
For example?
Michael Rundell:
For the new edition of the Macmillan English Dictionary, we wanted
to look at the kind of language that learners actually use, particularly
in academic writing. The Macmillan dictionary team are pretty skilled
at analysing corpus data for native speakers, but what about a non-native
speaker corpus? The best way to learn about a new aspect of a field is
to work with the experts, so we worked with Sylviane
Granger and her team
at the University
of Louvain, using their learner
corpus. It was a very interesting and rewarding experience.
Where do you think dictionaries are now?
Michael Rundell:
Theres now so much available free on the Web, the challenge for
us is to provide our users with something they cant get for free.
The work weve done with Sylviane and the Louvain team, for example,
means the new edition includes well-researched materials to help learners
become better writers thats providing something a) they need
and b) isnt easily available elsewhere.
One of the things that took me ages to figure out was
that dictionaries are not books about words but books about language.
That hit me about three years ago. So much of linguistic behaviour follows
patterns and conventions, something that was articulated most clearly
by John Sinclair. Most English language teaching dictionaries now include
some of these elements. But there is always more we can do. In our new
edition, for example, we have included a set of language awareness essays
written by experts in the field rather than lexicographers. We
have Frank
Boers on idioms, Rosamund
Moon on metaphor and Michael Hoey introducing his concept of lexical
priming. What we are trying to do is give the learners information on
the systems in the language, a sense of how it works. Theres lots
more we can say in dictionaries. Pragmatics for example. I dont
think weve really cracked how to include that in a way that helps
learners.
Isnt there a danger that dictionaries will
just become bigger and bigger, with more and more features?
Michael Rundell:
English language teaching (ELT) dictionary makers are all still using
the Hornby
model from 1948, one large universal monolingual dictionary for learners
from all language groups and for all language needs. I think the ELT dictionary
will gradually morph into something different, into a kind of collection
of linguistic resources with learners accessing the resources that suit
them. What we are talking about is a dictionary that is customised by
the user rather than a one size-fits-all version. In our new edition we
have used the CD-ROM to help learners choose what they need to know. They
can look at a complete dictionary entry if they like, or they can look
at a stripped down version and then choose, by clicking on buttons, to
get any other information they need, like collocation for example, or
inflections. Were trying to reflect the way the Web has taught people
to access information, to start from a simple entry and then broaden out
or narrow down their search.
What kind of person makes a good lexicographer?
Michael Rundell:
Its not that different from what makes a good journalist really.
You need to be able to analyse facts and then present them to users in
a way that is relevant, straightforward and approachable. Its the
last bit that is the hardest writing sharp definitions. The very
best definitions combine economy and accuracy and some sort of punch
what mathematicians call elegance. None of us get it right all the time.
[D: Please style the following line the same way as the line at the bottom
of the New word of the month articles, e.g.:
http://www.macmillandictionaries.com/med-magazine/April2007/44-New-Word.htm
Link from this page to the Feature article in this edition.]
For an introduction to the new edition of the Macmillan English Dictionary,
visit this page.
This interview, by Melanie Butler, was first published
in the April 2007 edition of EL
Gazette. MED Magazine would like to thank EL Gazette
for permission to reprint the interview.
Copyright © Macmillan Publishers Limited 2007
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