LEXICOGRAPHY IN TURKEY AND THROUGHOUT THE WORLD: THE DEFINITION AND THE SCOPE OF LEXICOGRAPHY AND ITS RELATIONSHIP WITH OTHER SCIENCES

Dictionaries are the first reference guides that come to mind as far as any unknown expression related to words is concerned. In order for these dictionaries to be able to apply to different requirements and different user groups, they should take both the linguistic knowledge and the non-linguistic elements into consideration and present them to people by utilizing them in a proper way, since the success/applicability of a dictionary is equivalent to the capacity of the material/ingredient it contains to respond instantly when required. Therefore, dictionaries are designed as a major system in which quite far-reaching and different variables work in conformity with each other. Lexicography is also the science which controls each moment of this system and produces suitable solutions to achieve successful results after all. In this study, how lexicography is perceived, defined and where it is positioned in Turkey and throughout the world have been discussed by also taking the advancements of the 21st century into consideration. To perform this, the studies in relation to lexicography were reviewed and compared with each other, and the result was clarified through re-intepretation. As the result of this research, it was seen that lexicography, which was once considered to be contained within the lexicology or within linguistics and which was regarded as the sub-branch or applied branch of these sciences, is, today, recognized as an independent science. However, while much interest has been shown to lexicography throughout the world since 1980s, and although several works on lexicography, notably the periodicals, have been published for a long time, such a level has not yet been reached with respect to this science in Turkey.