Dictionaries for the future – The future of dictionaries. The 15 Villa Vigoni Theses on Lexicography

The dramatic transformation from print to online dictionaries during the last two decades and the users’ preferences for costless online data, waiving proof of the data reliability, has changed the academic and commercial worlds of dictionaries, lexicography as well as the relevant research. In a rapidly changing global and digital society the crucial question that needs to be asked is: what role do dictionaries play in cultural education today? How are dictionaries actually perceived by today’s society and how are they used in the process of cultural mediation? How should the reliability and traceability of lexicographic data be assessed? Which lexicographic approaches are at the center of scholarship and where are the publishing houses heading? What should dictionaries for the future look like? In order to provide answers to these questions, a particular workshop was held in November 2018 at the Centro Italo-Tedesco per l’Eccellenza Europea / Deutsch-Italienisches Zentrum für Europäische Exzellenz, Villa Vigoni on Lake Como, Northern Italy. Eighteen experts from the fields of Dictionary Research, Practical Lexicography, German as a For-eign Language, Italian Studies, Translation Science and Empirical Linguistics from Germa-ny, Austria and Italy congregated to debate the following topics in an innovative format of short kick-off presentations and intensive discussion groups: • lexicography and its status in society; • the production of dictionaries and the issue of their quality; • dictionary types and forms of presentation (printed, online and app format); • dictionary use and didactics. At the conclusion of the workshop the participants formulated The 15 Villa Vigoni Theses on Lexicography.