Beyond Butterscotch. The Place of Cultural Knowledge in the Bilingual Dictionary
Abstract
This paper examines the place of cultural knowledge in the bilingual dictionary. Changes in the place of foreign languages in British education have led to changes in the cultural knowledge which lexicographers can assume among potential users of their dictionaries. This paper first discusses what this implies for the use of supporting glosses, and illustrative examples are drawn from the principal large Spanish-English dictionaries. The range of treatments given is discussed, and it is argued that asymmetrical cultural prominence (the main principled justification for giving a supporting gloss) is not restricted to the obvious cases of literary, historical and culinary terms. Consideration is also given to the most explicit treatment of cultural information in current bilingual dictionaries - the "cultural box". The process of how these are produced is examined, and some discussion is given to what makes for a good cultural box.
Session
6. BILINGUAL LEXICOGRAPHY
Keywords
BibTex
@InProceedings{ELX06-070, author = {Liam Rodger}, title = {Beyond Butterscotch. The Place of Cultural Knowledge in the Bilingual Dictionary }, pages = {567-573}, booktitle = {Proceedings of the 12th EURALEX International Congress}, year = {2006}, month = {sep}, date = {6-9}, address = {Torino, Italy}, editor = {Elisa Corino, Carla Marello, Cristina Onesti}, publisher = {Edizioni dell'Orso}, isbn = {88-7694-918-6}, }
