Towards the Epistemology of Linguistics: Creating a Terminological Hypertext Thesaurus

Abstract

An essay on the monograph The Metalanguage of Linguistics by S.V. Lesnikov (St. Petersburg, 2021). The author analyses the innovative principles of creating a hypertext thesaurus of linguistics terminology, emphasizes an extensive source base of digitized dictionaries of linguistic terms, and the integrated approach to the study of linguistics metalanguage including a multidimensional analysis of various scientific schools’ and national traditions’ terminological systems. The study was based on more than 1220 digitized sources – Russian dictionaries of linguistics terminology published from 1755 to 2021. S. V. Lesnikov introduces the concept of hyzaurus into scientific circulation. In fact, it is a digital ideographic dictionary of linguistics terminology providing hyperlinks designed to search for terms by their meanings. The monograph presents infographics, a systematic index of the hyzaurus, and the ability to search not only by keywords, but also by semantic fields and even by terminological paradigms. The author notes the importance of the performed research for the creation of linguistics epistemology.