Lexicographical representation of an individual's speech: type of dictionary and its use in dictionary practice

The rapid development of dictionary compiling and the increase of lexicographical sources reflecting speeches of certain individuals raises the issue of naming this type of dictionaries, its essential features, and place in the typology of dictionaries and other similar works. The most suitable name for the given dictionary type may be the ''idiolect dictionary'': it has the broadest semantics; it satisfies the requirements for the term of brevity and consistency; it has a transparent inner form; it has long been used when classifying dialect dictionaries; recently it has entered the general typology of the Russian linguistic dictionaries. The sub-types of the idiolect dictionary are author's dictionaries (those representing the written speech of certain artists), writer's language dictionaries (a kind of author's dictionaries), and dictionaries of common speakers. The main typological feature distinguishing the idiolect dictionary from other types is the object of description — the speech of a certain individual. The features of idiolect dictionaries result from such parameters as the object and the subject of lexicographical description, as well as the scope of individual discourse analysis. By the parameter of the object of description all idiolect dictionaries represent the microsytem of individual speech, not the common language system. The possible types depend on the object of lexicographical description, which simultaneously is the speech producer. So far the dictionaries based on artists' speech (mostly writers, sometimes politicians and scholars) prevail. The number of dialect speaker dictionaries increases. There are dictionaries of language personalities of the past and of the present. By the scope of individual discourse analysis there are complete dictionaries describing all kinds of individual's speech, and incomplete — describing particular speech types and / or genres. Most of the existing dictionaries analyse the written literary speech of a particular person (the whole or parts of it); still, there are dictionaries of oral speech in its dialect form. The subjects of description can be diverse: there are general and aspect explanatory, figurative means, author's neologisms and idioms, frequency, ideographic, and other dictionaries. Classification of idiolect dictionaries according to other criteria (units of description, their arrangement, material selection, number of languages, target reader, etc.) is similar to the general typology of linguistic dictionaries. Further development of this field is in compiling new idiolect dictionaries, and creating their new types.

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