“Dictionaries and Society”

After more than 20 years, the international conference of the European Association for Lexicography (EURALEX) will return to Germany in 2022 under the auspices of the Lexicography Department of the Leibniz Institute for the German Language (IDS). The conference on "Dictionaries and Society" opens this afternoon in Mannheim Castle and ends on Saturday.

Under the motto “Dictionaries and Society”, the conference will bring together experts from different subject areas such as lexicography, linguistics, publishing, research, or software development who are enthusiastic about the educational, cultural, political, and social significance of dictionaries in everyday life. “We are very pleased that we can now host this international congress in Mannheim,” emphasizes Prof. Dr. Henning Lobin, Scientific Director at the Leibniz Institute for the German Language. “Dictionaries are meant to be used, they address specific target groups, they have a practical use and, among other things, this is where their social legitimacy comes from.” Lexicographers always have the responsibility to provide language documentation that is reliable and scientifically based, yet comprehensible, as well as ideologically and politically neutral, but factually correct. (Scientific) lexicography also moves in a field of tension between the lay understanding of dictionaries as norm-preserving instances and the scientific claim of documentation and the accompanying research of lexicography as a scientific practice.

Almost 200 participants from a total of 43 countries are expected at the conference venue in Mannheim Castle. All European languages are permitted as conference languages, mostly lectures will be held in English, but also in German, French etc.. This makes the EURALEX conferences the world's largest and most diverse lexicographic conferences with a particularly high international reputation. Basically, hardly any other country in the world has such a rich and diverse lexicographical tradition as Germany. EURALEX 2022 therefore represents the central opportunity for scholars from Germany to present and discuss their current research and ongoing projects with an international audience.