Ethical issues in oral-language lexicography and how Bazabaza:Lex addresses them
Jocelyn Aznar gave a talk titled Bazabaza:Lex: Towards an Ethnographic Approach to the Lexicography of Oral Languages that Reflects Diverse Perspectives and Language Realities at the European Society for Oceanists 2025 from June 24th to June 27th. Current lexicographic practices remain oriented towards producing dictionaries. While dictionaries serve as resources for researchers and communities, they impose a form of normativity (Cameron, 1995), which becomes particularly problematic when the lexicographers are outsiders. Dictionaries are rooted in two problematic principles. The first is the monolingual boundaries between languages, which overlook the multilingual nature of many interactions lexicographers have. The second is lexicographic entextualisation (Urban, 1996), which eliminates personal perspectives and encourages definitions shaped by the linguist’s view. These principles risk placing authority in the hands of the lexicographer and reinforcing epistemic inequalities, marginalizing speakers’ voices and agency.
I argue for a more ethnographic approach to lexicography. Drawing on my ongoing work with the Nisvai community in South-East Malekula, Vanuatu, I present examples of discourses that showcase the limitations of traditional workflows. I introduce the platform Bazabaza:Lex, which offers a more flexible framework to represent multilingual content and enables its users to define their units and metadata so that they can be more accurate about how lexical knowledge emerges in specific socio-cultural settings. By making it possible to record and reference the metalinguistic discussions and multiple viewpoints that contribute to lexical understanding, the platform seeks to acknowledge speakers’ contributions as co-creators of knowledge.