Lexicography, or the Gentle Art of Making Mistakes

Autor: Giovanni Iamartino
Jazyk: English<br />Spanish; Castilian<br />French<br />Italian
Rok vydání: 2017
Předmět:
Zdroj: Altre Modernità, Vol 0, Iss 0, Pp 48-78 (2017)
Druh dokumentu: article
ISSN: 2035-7680
DOI: 10.13130/2035-7680/8303
Popis: The man in the street’s attitude of mind towards dictionaries is that they are the true repositories of all the words in a language, and that they are both authoritative and objective – in short, dictionaries are perfect. By mainly referring to the early history of English mono- and bilingual lexicography, this essay explodes the myth of the perfect dictionary and shows that mistakes in dictionaries may profitably be discussed under two headings: lexicographical mistakes, i.e. vague or circular definitions and the so-called ghost words in monolingual dictionaries, and non-insertable equivalents in bilingual dictionaries; and socio-cultural mistakes, which are related to the often elusive impact of ideology on dictionary-making.
Databáze: Directory of Open Access Journals