ABSTRACT
Lexicography, the science and practice of dictionary-making, is a vibrant field, experiencing rapid growth as a result of the spectacular advances in technology of the last few decades. A distinction is drawn in lexicography between a dictionary's microstructure, the internal organization of individual word entries, and its macrostructure, the organization of the whole work. Lexicologyis the academic study of words: their spoken and written forms, their syntactic and morphological properties, and their meanings; in a particular language or in human language in general; both at a fixed point in history and as they change through time. In some of the world's more 'powerful' language communities, dictionaries may play a more overtly prescriptivist role in the language management process, responding to the spread of English and the perceived 'sullying' of the national tongue through loan words. Dictionaries of slang, record the informal words and phrases associated with particular subcultures or simply with unstandardized usage that goes beyond regional or social dialect.
