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Course Outline

Course Content

• Dictionaries in society – their uses in the community and the professions; their role in relation to the language; defining the standard.
• Types of dictionary – from glossary to encyclopaedic reference; historical and contemporary general dictionaries; specialist dictionaries; learners’ dictionaries (monolingual); bilingual dictionaries; dictionaries in print and online.
• Scope of dictionaries – what range of words to include: words/compounds/phrases; size dictates selection for print dictionaries; selection in relation to presumed uses.
• Dictionary entries and their apparatus – headword and its spelling; pronunciation(s); grammar; labels; etymology;
• Auxiliary elements - uses of illustrative phrases, diagrams and graphics; usage notes
• Definitions and definitional style – from synonyms to paraphrase; level of language; how many definitions?
• Corpora and dictionaries (onlilne session) – micro and macro applications of corpus data in designing and writing of dictionaries, general and technical
• Pedagogical dictionaries – selection of entries; definitional styles/controlled vocabulary; use of keywords; embedded culture.
• Bilingual and bilingualized dictionaries – pedagogical and commercial issues; print and electronic bilingual dictionaries; bilingualized dictionaries and how much to bilingualize..
• Specialized dictionaries – terminological and technical dictionaries; special style such as slang, colloquialisms.
• Online dictionaries (online) – print/online comparisons; uses of hypertext – rethinking the structure of dictionaries online.
• Evaluation of dictionaries’ uses and users – surveys of uses; research on dictionary use in education and translation.

Assessments

Assessment is based on two written assignments, contributions to one bulletin board discussion and a bulletin board showcase.

Readings

Landau, Sidney (2001) Dictionaries: the art and craft of lexicography. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press.

Piet van Sterkenburg (Ed.) (2003) A Practical Guide to Lexicography. Amsterdam : John Benjamins Publishing Company.

An additional reference and useful introduction to the subject is:

Jackson, Howard (2002) Lexicography: an introduction. Routledge. London .

The major journals for lexicography and related areas of linguistics are:

Dictionaries:Journal of the Dictionary Society of North America

International Journal of Lexicography (available online in the Library)

International Journal of Corpus Linguistics (in the NCELTR Resources Library)

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