Encyclopaedic information in learner‘s dictionaries

Table of contents:

1. Introduction

2. General information on learner‘s dictionaries and encyclopaedicity
2.1 The idea of the learner‘s dictionary
2.2 The idea of the encyclopaedic learner‘s dictionary
2.3 What makes encyclopaedic information encyclopaedic
2.4 Encyclopaedic tradition in English dictionaries

3. Encyclopaedic learner‘s dictionaries
3.1 Examples of encyclopaedic learner‘s dictionaries
3.1.1 The Longman Dictionary of English Language and Culture
3.1.2 The Oxford Advanced Learner‘s Encyclopaedic Dictionary
3.2 Different types of encyclopaedic entries
3.2.1 Proper noun entries
3.2.2 Large encyclopaedic articles and their value for the learner
3.3 Comparing examples on the basis of those dictionaries

4. Conclusion

5. Bibliography

1. Introduction

Talking about encyclopaedic information in learner‘s dictionaries might lead to a never ending debate whether learner‘s dictionaries should include such additional information and at the same time to what extent. In fact Herbert Andreas Welker‘s survey of empirical studies concerning the dictionary use also helps to point out that there is little consent when it comes to this debate.

According to Snell-Hornby most students are in favour of including encyclopaedic information in „their“ dictionaries (Welker 2010: 64), but on the other hand one has to keep in mind that students tend to give answers which might not be this trustworthy: only by telling that they find encyclopae dic information useful, does not mean that those students actually use those kind of entries. Nowadays students are more likely „to google“ unfamiliar words or expressions (also via wikipedia), one might need a encyclopaedic piece of advice to understand its true meaning. Nevertheless one has to appreciate the long tradition of encyclopaedic entries in „normal“ dictionaries (Stark 1999: 20-24), which also influenced the way those pieces of information were embedded in learners‘s dictionaries. Without any doubt those historical developments have been very important to shape todays learner‘s dictionaries appearance when it comes to encyclopaedic entries. In addition to this there has been an interesting development concerning „special“ learner‘s dictionaries. As a matter of fact it is quite difficult to distinguish where exactly an entry becomes encyclopaedic or not. Therefore another special form of learner‘s dictionaries also is important to be mentioned when talking about encyclopaedic information: the encyclopaedic learner‘s dictionaries. Since those kind of dictionaries are somewhere in between a encyclopaedia and a dictionary, Martin Stark also likes to call them „Lexicographical Hybrid“ (Stark 1999: 3). In order to analyse encyclopaedic entries in learners‘s dictionaries it therefore seems to be inevitably regarding those encyclopaedic learner‘s dictionaries as well. As a consequence this paper will briefly illustrate some general information of learner‘s dictionaries as such. As a next step a closer look will be taken at the distinctive features of the encyclopaedic entries within learner‘s dictionaries and at the encyclopaedic learner‘s dictionaries and their role in language teaching and learning.

2. General information on learner‘s dictionaries and learner‘s encyclopaedic dictionaries

2.1 The idea of the learner‘s dictionary

Before talking a closer look at encyclopaedic entries in learner‘s dictionaries and several examples of entries in a learner‘s encyclopaedic dictionary, it is important to illustrate the most important aspects of learner‘s dictionaries in general. Therefore this paragraph will shortly show what the main ideas and intentions of the learner‘s dictionaries are and also differentiate between those and the concept of the learner‘s encyclopaedic dictionary.

When talking about the concept of the learner‘s dictionary, one might try to find some kind of definition which clearly points out what exactly can be defined as a learner‘s dictionary. Nevertheless it is quite impossible to provide a satisfying definition for everybody, Thomas Herbst‘s idea of „a synchronic monolingual dictionary intended to meet the demands of the foreign user“ (Herbst 1990, 1379) comes very close to what most people think of, when it comes to the term “learner‘s dictionary“. This might be an effect of the great success of the Oxford Advanced Learner ‘ s Dictionary of English, which most German learner‘s of the English language have come across during their time at school (Stark 1999: 29). Moreover it is very important for the learner „to be able to find accurate information concerning the suitability of a particular dictionary for their situation and also regarding the quality of its content and structure.“ (Chan and Taylor 2001: 163) what leads to the question which dictionary should be chosen by the students.

2.2 The idea of the encyclopaedic learner‘s dictionary

Unlike the „normal“ learner‘s dictionary, the encyclopaedic learner‘s dictionary contains a lot more information which can be called encyclopaedic. On the one hand there are people who claim that the publication of those hybrid dictionaries is a reaction to the commercial development of dictionary publishing as such (Stark 1999: 33). But if one thinks about the blurred distinction between the encyclopaedia and the dictionary as well as „linguistic“ and „cultural“ elements of describing meaning, it appears to be a very logical and consequent step to invent some kind of dictionary that covers both aspects at the same time. Another important aspect which „justifies“ the necessity of such an encyclopaedic dictionary, is the fact that there is cultural background knowledge which learner‘s of the English language need in order to chose the correct word. Mostly these kind of information are important when it comes to culture specific words, information about certain institutions and proper names. As an example the word pumpkin has a completely different second meaning (as a term of endearment) for the American English speaking population and therefore needs no further explanation in a dictionary for native speakers. In contrast to this, a learner of English as a foreign language might be confused coming across this term only knowing its original meaning of pumpkin as a vegetable and therefore needs some extra cultural information to understand its correct meaning within another context (Béjoint 1981: 210). Next to those very useful aspects of encyclopaedic learner‘s dictionaries or encyclopaedic entries in learner‘s dictionaries, Stark (1999: 34) also points out that the development of monolingual learner‘s dictionaries had very positive effects on their cultural content but at the same time they risk getting „too sophisticated for the limited consulting skills of their users.“ Nevertheless Aquilino Sánchez (2010: 20) criticises the way an encyclopaedic dictionary (he mainly talks about the LDELC) are ordered. From his point of view the fact that cultural information is sometimes added to entries „help[s] [to] reinforce the assumption that culture and language are two different components“ because this lexicographical practice only „looks at words as if they were autonomous lexical items, regardless of the context in which they are used“. However his proposal of a „non-dogmatic“ perspective does not clearly explain to what extend it could improve the way cultural and lexical information are presented.

2.3 What makes encyclopaedic information encyclopaedic

While talking about encyclopaedic entries in learner‘s dictionaries and learner‘s encyclopaedic dictionaries, one has not to forget to at least try finding a suitable definition for the term „encyclopaedic“. Consequently it is also important to point out what are the differences and similarities between dictionaries and encyclopaedias. According to Stark‘s survey the term „encyclopaedia“ is more likely to be connected with a reference work which is often published in many volumes, all of which containing normally longer articles than a dictionary does. Moreover it either covers one very particular subject or deals with all fields or branches of knowledge, which are considered trying to continue „a tradition that goes back to Platonic idealism.“ (Stark 1999: 8). Nevertheless encyclopaedias are mostly arranged in alphabetical order, those often contain useful cross-references and there are also some exceptions which are organised thematically (Stark 1999: 6-7). On the other hand the term „dictionary“ also talks about a work of references which is only arranged in alphabetical order and giving mainly linguistic information about the words of a language like pronunciation, inflection, grammatical functions and their etymological background. Still there are many dictionaries which also contain encyclopaedic data in a quite condensed form. (Stark 1999: 6-8). Altogether it is not very easy to draw a clear line since there are often so many features both works of reference have in common and especially when it comes to „meaning“ there is many overlap between dictionaries and encyclopaedias (Stark 1999: 8).

In order to analyse encyclopaedic information and encyclopaedic entries in learner‘s dictionaries this paragraph shall illustrate the distinctive „concept of encylopaedicity“ and how it can be applied to learner‘s dictionaries. As there had already been mentioned, the style of encyclopaedic texts is less condensed than the one of a dictionary entry and its content is more difficult to isolate since there is no clear line which divides linguistic from other kinds of information. However it is not possible to clearly differentiate between those two by saying that „Encyclopedias explain things, whereas dictionaries explain language“ (Stark 1999: 14). A very striking evidence that this very dualistic statement can hardly be applied to any learner‘s dictionary can be found by looking at examples of dictionary entries which show that is very difficult to give useful information about a particular word without explaining abstract or concrete „things“ it refers to because words inevitably achieve their usefulness by referring to other things (Stark 1999: 14-15). Furthermore it is very problematic to give a useful definition of a encyclopaedic piece of information by contrasting the term „encyclopaedic“ against „linguistic“. Keeping in mind that there is no such expression like „extralinguistic information“ that could be applied as an opposition to „encyclopaedic information“, one has to be aware how vague the term „encyclopaedic information“ actually is (Stark 1999: 16).

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