AUSTRALEX

The Australasian Association for Lexicography (Australex) was founded in 1990 as a companion association to Euralex. It is committed to the development of lexicography in all languages of the Australasian region. Its interests include:

  • dictionaries of all kinds
  • the theory of lexicography
  • the history of lexicography
  • the practice of dictionary-making
  • dictionary use
  • endangered languages
  • revivalistics
  • terminology and terminography
  • corpus lexicography
  • computational lexicography
  • sign language
  • lexicology

Membership consists mainly of people from Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific Islands, but also from many other countries, including Japan, South-Africa, Spain, the UK and Zambia. Australex includes career lexicographers, students of lexicography, researchers into dictionaries, publishers, teachers and people who just like dictionaries.

The association is governed by a committee of 10 members, who are elected every two years during the biennial conference. It consists of a president, vice-president, secretary, treasurer, five officers and the immediate past president. Membership is free.

Until 2009, meetings were held regularly every one or two years, in addition to specific conferences (e.g. on Australian placenames of indigenous origins) and workshops (e.g. on dictionary writing). Since then conferences have been held biennially, in either Australia or New Zealand. The conferences are usually small, which has the benefit of promoting close collaboration and networking, with the opportunity for delegates to attend most of the presentations. One or more student bursaries are offered to help with conference attendance.

Australex has one self-publication of peer-reviewed papers from its 2013 conference, entitled Endangered Words and Signs of Revival (2014).