The 16th International Conference of the Asian Association for Lexicography (ASIALEX 2023) will be held from 22 to 24 June 2023 at Yonsei University, the oldest private university in Korea. The main theme of the conference is “Lexicography, Artificial Intelligence, and Dictionary Users”, and all submissions on topics relevant to lexicography are welcome.

• Conference Dates June 22 (Thu) - 24 (Sat), 2023
• Venue Yonsei University, Seoul, Korea
• Main Theme Lexicography, Artificial Intelligence, and Dictionary Users
• Contact asialex2023@gmail.com

ASIALEX 2023 Conference Theme

The theme of ASIALEX 2023 is Lexicography, Artificial Intelligence, and Dictionary Users. While proposals on any other topics related to the study and use of dictionaries are also welcome, ASIALEX 2023 aims to provide opportunities to discuss the changes and challenges that go beyond the realms of traditional lexicography and seek new directions and prospectives for lexicography and dictionaries to cope with social problems and changes. Dictionaries, including their accompanying resources and tools, technologies, platforms, and publication formats, have been continuously developing according to changes in the trends and cultural contexts of the times. As lexicography undergoes periods of transition, researchers have questioned the future of dictionaries and dictionary-maker, and even the EURALEX 2010 roundtable discussion on the theme ‘Will there be people who make dictionaries in 2020?’. Now that we are well beyond 2020, fortunately, the activities of many associations and researchers in the field of lexicography remain strong and ongoing. Although commercial models based on profit structures of print dictionaries no longer exist, the demand for refined language resources and the power of language information seem to have become even stronger. The questions we are faced with are thus related to what opportunities as well as crises dictionaries and lexicography face. With this in mind, we look forward to discussing the cultural roles of lexicography and lexicographers, the value of language information in the AI era, and dictionary users themselves as major topics. The following points detail our intention to propose the theme of Lexicography, Artificial Intelligence, and Dictionary Users for ASIALEX 2023.

Dictionaries in the Age of Artificial IntelligenceIn the current era of AI, dictionaries exist not just for human beings, but also for machines, and this shift urges us to deepen the discussion of theoretical lexicography and to expand the scope of dictionaries more flexibly. While the word has long been considered the basic unit of dictionary entries, it is now necessary to consider how to better adopt typically unregistered categories, such as neologisms, non-standard forms, loanwords, hate speech, slang, and pragmatic or nonverbal information, which have often been neglected in traditional lexicography. As Sinclair et al. (2004) referred to an ideal dictionary as containing all semantic units, it is time to consider the useful extensions and forms of a dictionary containing all such semantic units used in everyday communication.

Implication and Significance for and of Dictionary UsersNot only have the boundaries of what is considered a dictionary expanded. but the definitions of dictionary users have expanded as well. As the term ‘machine readable’ shows, nowadays dictionary users include machines as well as humans. Nonetheless, even dictionaries designed for machines ultimately aim to represent human intuition. For a dictionary to properly function as a medium connecting human intuition and machines, it is necessary to think about how to represent knowledge of the world more precisely.

Popularization of Lexicography and the Role of ProfessionalsFinally, we hope that this conference will lead to discussions on popularizing dictionaries and fostering subsequent generations of lexicographers. Dictionaries are found all around us, and they are used everywhere in our daily lives, although we may not be aware of their presence. Despite the achievements of lexicography throughout human history and the relatively recent corpus revolution (Rundell and Stock 1992, Rundell 2008, Hanks 2012), the study of dictionaries does not seem to be widely appreciated by the public. For the public in general, dictionaries are still difficult to use, and lexicography is an unknown area. Scholars and professionals in lexicography thus need to seek out the desired identity of dictionaries as required in modern times by approaching and interacting with the public. We hope that ASIALEX 2023 will present opportunities to diagnosing modern social communication problems by gaining a better understanding of the public use of language, and listening to the needs of a new, modern era with a more flexible attitude toward the structures, forms, and boundaries of lexicography and dictionaries

Hanks, P., 2012. The Corpus Revolution in Lexicography. International Journal of Lexicography, 25(4), pp.398-436.

Rundell, M., 2008. The corpus revolution revisited. English Today, 24(1), pp. 23-27.

Rundell, M. and Stock, P., 1992. The corpus revolution. English Today, 8(4), pp.45-51.

Sinclair, J., Jones, S. and Daley, R., 2004. English Lexical Studies: The OSTI Report. London: Continuum.