The controlled defining vocabularies of LDOCE3 and CIDE have been tested for phonetic difficulty and ideological bias. The research hypotheses were that: (1) they are on the whole not phonetically easier than the 'ordinary' lexicon of English, and (2) they are ideologically biased in that they tend to reflect the realm of material concepts better than spiritual. Both hypotheses failed: the two vocabularies are in fact phonetically easier than the reference lexicon (significant at p<01), and the slight bias towards the 'appearance&body' concepts in both vocabularies is statistically nonsignificant. Didactic ramifications in the EFL context as well as the lexicographic import ofthe findings are discussed.
Session
The Dictionary-making Process
Keywords
BibTex
@InProceedings{ELX02-053, author = {Włodzimierz Sobkowiak, Marek Kuczyński}, title = {Phonetics and Ideology of Defining Vocabularies }, pages = {495-502}, 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}, }
