This paper argues that there is a gap between language as recorded by the traditional standard Spanish dictionaries and the way language is actually used by the media, and considers the recent success of Spanish language style manuals as proof of the need to deal with the inadequacies of traditional lexicography. Distinctions are drawn between style manuals and dictionaries of correct usage. Comparisons are made between different style manuals in order to establish the underlying nature of the (grammatical and lexical) items covered, and the treatment of these categories of items in style manuals is compared to the one given by traditional monolingual (and one bilingual) standard dictionaries.This paper then tries to identify those area where the traditional dictionary is at fault: updating, breadth and depth of (lexical and grammatical) coverage and contrastive treatment ofitems. Finally, it is argued that style manuals point the way the standard dictionary should go in order to be a successful linguistic tool.
Session
The Dictionary-making Process
Keywords
BibTex
@InProceedings{ELX02-048, author = {José Aguirre}, title = {Beyond the Dictionary in Spanish}, pages = {441-449}, booktitle = {Proceedings of the 10th EURALEX International Congress}, year = {2002}, month = {aug}, date = {13-17}, address = {København, Denmark}, editor = {Anna Braasch and Claus Povlsen}, publisher = {Center for Sprogteknologi}, isbn = {87-90708-09-1}, }
