The lexicographic methods and resources available to editors of the Oxford English Dictionary have been in constant development since the project’s origins in the 19th century. This talk will give an insight into the techniques that today’s editors use in bringing the dictionary up to date, with an overview of the steps taken to transform a 100-year-old entry into one that meets the demands of a modern reader. As well as modernizing definitions and restructuring entries, editors focus on providing good evidence of usage throughout a word’s history, through the series of quotations given for each sense of an entry. There will be a short discussion of the sources of data that OED editors use to complete these tasks, including processed linguistic corpora, historical text collections, and modern databases. The talk will also briefly introduce some other projects at OUP that OED editors contribute to, such as a project to develop new corpus resources for historical English, and the Oxford Word of the Year.

The codification of Nigerian English has progressed significantly in recent decades, yet debates surrounding its legitimacy and standardisation persist. While the variety has been extensively documented in linguistic scholarship, its institutionalisation remains contested. Drawing from my and others’ recent work on Nigerian English, this talk examines the ongoing process of codification, highlighting the progress made so far, the sociopolitical factors that shape the development of Nigerian English, and the roadblocks to its full institutionalisation. I will show how lexicographical documentation, scholarly engagement, public attitudes, pedagogy and policy initiatives contribute to codification. Ultimately, I will argue that while linguistic codification is an ongoing and multifaceted process, its success depends on sociopolitical dynamics, educational integration, and shifting attitudes towards linguistic legitimacy.