What Web Ads , Blurbs and Introductions Tell Potential Dictionary Buyers about Users , User Needs and Lexicographic Functions

The present article deals with an investigation aimed at establishing the extent to which existing dictionaries provide potential dictionary buyers/borrowers with clear, unmistakable and easily understandable information about user need situations that might prompt consultation of the dictionary in question. The investigation analyses four monolingual English phrasal verbs dictionaries and fi ve monolingual English specialised dictionaries. The primary sources of such information are identifi ed as back cover blurbs of dictionaries, introductions to dictionaries and web ads for dictionaries. In the analysis, statements about user need situations extracted from these information sources are fi rst classifi ed as clear vs. unclear statements. The clear statements are then classifi ed under the lexicographic function to which they are related. The results of the analysis disconfi rm the hypothesis that the more well-defi ned and constrained the intended user group or groups for a given dictionary are, the more likely it is that the sources of information will provide the potential dictionary buyer/borrower with clear, unmistakable and easily understandable information about lexicographic function(s).


Introduction
For someone who fi nds himself/herself in a situation that requires the consultation of a dictionary to solve a particular problem, there are various sources of information which -in the ideal casecan tell the potential dictionary user whether a given dictionary will satisfy his/her needs. If the need for consultation requires the purchase of a dictionary, the following sources of information are available. Students for example may ask teachers (and perhaps also fellow students) for advice. Other information sources include reviews, publishers' printed and online book catalogues, publishers' ads including publishers' web ads (usually linked to publishers' online catalogues), blurbs and book introductions (also called 'prefaces' or 'forewords').
This study will analyse publishers' ads (in this case web ads), back cover blurbs and book introductions for a number of monolingual English dictionaries with the purpose of establishing whether these sources of information provide the kind of information potential dictionary buyers or borrowers need. The analysis will be based on the functional theory of lexicography in the sense that it will attempt to uncover whether the three sources of information give clear, unmistakable and easily understandable information about the kind of user group or user groups the given dictionary is intended for and, more importantly, whether they provide the potential dictionary buyer with clear, unmistakable and easily understandable information about the lexicographic function(s) covered by the dictionary 1 , so that the potential dictionary buyer can readily establish whether the given dictionary will satisfy his/her extra-lexicographic needs.
The three sources of information mentioned have been selected for this study because they are readily available to the potential dictionary buyer (provided he/she has access through a computer to the Internet). Not all dictionaries are reviewed, and it may furthermore be diffi cult and timeconsuming for a potential dictionary buyer to locate a review of a particular dictionary. Also, publishers' printed book catalogues are rarely readily available.
With respect to 'introductions' (or 'prefaces/forewords'), they have only been included in the analysis if they are not too long or integrated into another front matter text. The longest introduction included in the study is the one found in Longman Phrasal Verbs Dictionary, stretching over three pages. The reason why long introductions or introductions integrated into other front matter texts should be excluded from the analysis is that potential dictionary buyers in the actual purchase situations are unlikely to read through very long texts in their search for relevant statements that can tell them whether the dictionary will satisfy their needs.
The dictionaries analysed fall into two groups: a) Four monolingual English phrasal verbs dictionaries b) Five monolingual English specialised dictionaries (all published by Oxford University Press) 2 The hypothesis is that the more well-defi ned and constrained the intended user group for a given dictionary is, the more likely it is that the sources of information will provide the potential dictionary buyer with clear, unmistakable and easily understandable information about lexicographic function(s). This is based on the assumption that it is much easier to defi ne lexicographic function(s) for a clearly defi ned intended user group than for a diffuse user group. The three types of information sources have previously been studied from a variety of perspectives, mainly by genre analysts who have studied them with the aim of establishing communicative purpose(s) for these genres. Bhatia (1997) is a study of academic book introductions in which he establishes that such introductions mix a descriptive communicative purpose with a promotional communicative purpose. It also includes a discussion of possible differences between the terms 'introduction', 'preface' and 'foreword', for example with respect to authorship of these texts. His conclusion is that it is largely impossible to set up any clear-cut distinctions with respect to communicative purpose, authorship, etc. between 'introductions', 'prefaces' and 'forewords'. For this reason, no distinction between them will be made in this study. Bhatia (2004: 168-181) analyses three book blurbs (two from academic works and one from fi ction) and concludes that in fact all three blurbs share the same communicative purpose (description and evaluation), but there are differences between the fi ctional work on the one hand and the academic works on the other in terms of lexical choices in the blurbs, particularly with respect to adjectives. Gea-Valor (2005) investigates publishers' web site ads from four publishing companies (Penguin, Ballantine, Routledge, and Barnes & Noble). She fi nds that these ads share communicative purposes (persuasive and informative) with blurbs to such an extent that they constitute a single genre. Kathpalia (1997) is a study of cross-cultural differences between book blurbs of international publishers and local Singapore-based publishers. Cacchiani (2007) is an investigation of evaluative language in book blurbs taken from what she calls 'lazy reads', whose communicative purpose is almost exclusively promotional, whereas Gesuato (2007) is a study of evaluative language in back-cover blurbs of academic books. Basturkmen (2009) is a study of the blurbs of seven English as a Foreign Language course books with a view to identifying the values of the English Language teaching community. This is done through a study of the key lexical items in the blurbs. Finally, Cronin/La Barre (2005) defi ne blurbs as book recommendations on dust jackets written by named authors (called 'blurbers'), so that a book may contain more than one blurb. Their analysis of 450 non-fi ction books (history and business) with a total of 1850 blurbs had the aim of discovering whether there exist 'serial blurbers' (authors writing inordinate numbers of blurbs) or 'back-scratching blurbers' (authors writing blurbs for each other's books on a regular basis), but this could not be confi rmed by their study.
All of these studies are concerned with either works of fi ction or academic prose works. None of them have studied web ads, blurbs or introductions for reference works such as dictionaries or encyclopedia. There is every reason to expect that web ads, blurbs and introductions for utility tools such as dictionaries and encyclopedia will differ in content and structure from web ads, blurbs and introductions for both fi ctional and academic prose works.
First of all, the genuine purpose of dictionaries and encyclopedia is to fulfi l punctual (either communicative or cognitive) needs that arise in a range of extra-lexicographic situations, although some dictionaries contain outer matter texts with a genuine purpose that resembles that of academic prose works, i.e. to satisfy global cognitive needs. On the other hand, the genuine purpose of fi ctional works is to satisfy emotional, entertainment (and possibly other) needs, and the genuine purpose of academic works is to satisfy global cognitive (often educational) needs, although textbooks in particular are often provided with indexes to allow consultation to satisfy punctual cognitive needs.
Secondly, since dictionaries are compiled to cater for sometimes just one type of extra-lexicographic user need (monofunctional dictionaries), sometimes a multitude of extra-lexicographical user needs (polyfunctional dictionaries), potential dictionary buyers have a legitimate right to demand that those text genres that exist with the purpose of providing information about the user needs they were designed to fulfi l give clear, unmistakable and easily understandable information about the data included in the dictionary to satisfy those user needs. Gouws (2007) and Andersen/Fuertes-Olivera (2009) offer suggestions as to how this information can be formulated so as to give the potential dictionary buyer a clear indication of the communicative and/or cognitive needs a specifi c dictionary is meant to satisfy. Gouws (2007) suggests that information about lexicographic function(s) could be given in the front matter texts of the dictionary. For a dictionary with both receptive and productive functions a formulation such as Help with the writing and understanding of texts would be very helpful. Likewise, for a dictionary with an exclusively cognitive function, the front matter texts could include a formulation such as Help with knowledge about language (or some other specifi c subject fi eld).
Andersen/Fuertes-Olivera (2009) is an investigation, based on the functional theory of lexicography, of fi ve English monolingual business dictionaries with the aim of suggesting a functionally based classifi cation of such dictionaries. In addition, and more importantly in this context, they give some proposals for adding extra information (for example in the blurb) about the specifi c functions (and types of users) the dictionary is adequate for. They give the following proposals for the fi ve business dictionaries investigated (adapted from Andersen/Fuertes-Olivera (2009: 236): A communicatively oriented dictionary, with a cognitive touch, for semi-experts and interested laymen with both text production and text reception needs A balanced cognitively and communicatively oriented dictionary for semi-experts and experts with mostly text reception needs A cognitively oriented dictionary for experts and semi-experts with text reception needs A cognitively oriented dictionary for experts and semi-experts with text reception needs Whether the theoretically oriented expressions such as A communicatively oriented dictionary, text production and text reception needs, etc. are adequate for a potential dictionary buyer with no knowledge of theoretical lexicographic terms can be questioned, but the proposals at least indicate in an unmistakable way which function(s) each dictionary is meant to satisfy.

Methodology
The methodology of this study consists in the extraction -from the three sources of information -statements that are judged to contain more or less clear descriptions or expressions of extralexicographic need situations that might prompt consultation of the dictionary in question and therefore a desire to buy (or borrow) it. The statements are simply divided into statements that are judged to be clear statements about user need situations and statements that are judged to be unclear statements about user need situations. All statements appear from Appendix A.
A where it is doubtful whether all potential dictionary buyers will interpret 'explanations/explain' as 'defi nitions/defi ne' and thus conclude that the dictionary is intended to meet receptive needs. Another example is the statement explication of the new and sometimes baffl ing vocabulary associated with structured fi nance and the subprime lending crisis (Oxford Dictionary of Business and Management/Preface) where it is even more doubtful that potential dictionary buyers will interpret the term 'explication' to mean that they will fi nd defi nitions that will help them understand the meaning of the vocabulary items in question. The same applies to the statement clarifi cation of everyday business terms (Oxford Dictionary of Business and Management/ Web ad) However, since at least some dictionary users (perhaps the more experienced ones) may be able to unravel the probable intended meaning of these statements, they have been classifi ed as clear statements.
In the lists of statements (see Appendix A), all extracted statements have been classifi ed fi rst as 'clear statements' or 'unclear statements'. Secondly, 'clear statements' have been classifi ed under the lexicographic function to which they are related. A statement such as information about whether or not a phrasal verb is passive (Longman Phrasal Verbs Dictionary/Intro) has been classifi ed under the lexicographic function 'Production' since the statement is intended to provide the potential dictionary buyer with information about the capability of the phrasal verb to appear in the passive voice. 3 A statement such as recommended web links for many entries -these links are a valuable source of extra information (Oxford Dictionary of Economics/Web ad) has been classifi ed under the lexicographic function 'Cognition', because it tells the potential dictionary buyer that the dictionary is capable of guiding him/her to other sources of information where additional knowledge about the entry word in question can be obtained. A few statements in Macmillan Phrasal Verbs Plus, Cambridge Phrasal Verbs Dictionary and Oxford Phrasal Verbs have been classifi ed under the lexicographic function 'Vocabulary Building'. This applies for example to the following statement:

hundreds of synonyms and antonyms help build your vocabulary (Macmillan Phrasal Verbs Plus /Blurb)
In the traditional functional theory of lexicography, 'Vocabulary Building' will probably be viewed as a sub-function under 'Cognition'. However, since these learner's dictionaries explicitly refer to this (important) aspect of language learning, 'Vocabulary Building' has been set up in this study as a separate lexicographic function.
The following two statements in Oxford Dictionary of Law have been related to two different functions, namely both 'Cognition' and 'Production': the Writing and Citation Guide provides detailed advice on how to write and present essays on legal subjects (Oxford Dictionary of Law/Preface) a useful Writing and Citation Guide that specifi cally addresses problems and establishes conventions for writing legal essays and reports (Oxford Dictionary of Law/Web ad) In most cases, consultation of this Writing and Citation Guide will be for cognitive reasons, i.e. not related to any specifi c communicative-productive situation, but we cannot rule out the possibility that on rare occasions, the Guide may be consulted in a specifi c communicative-productive situation.
The same might perhaps apply to the following statements: Language Study articles on pronunciation, register, grammar, metaphor and learner errors (Macmillan Phrasal Verbs Plus/Blurb)

explanations of how particles contribute to the meaning of phrasal verbs (Macmillan Phrasal Verbs Plus/Blurb)
However, in these cases it is very unlikely that users will consult these outer matter texts to solve communicative problems. They have therefore been classifi ed only under the function 'Cognition'.

Users
With respect to statements about intended users it clearly appears from the analysis that the four phrasal verbs dictionaries see themselves as English learner's dictionaries. This is explicitly stated in Macmillan Phrasal Verbs Plus/Intro, Cambridge Phrasal Verbs Dictionary/Intro, and in Oxford Phrasal Verbs/Blurb (front cover). Longman Phrasal Verbs Dictionary/Blurb further specifi es that the dictionary is intended for 'advanced' and 'upper intermediate' learners of English. Longman Phrasal Verbs Dictionary/Web ad, Cambridge Phrasal Verbs Dictionary/Intro and Oxford Phrasal Verbs/Web ad mention 'learners' as an intended user group without further specifi cation of type of learner. The same implicit information is given through the use of the term 'students' in Longman Phrasal Verbs Dictionary/Blurb, Macmillan Phrasal Verbs Plus/Web ad, Cambridge Phrasal Verbs Dictionary/Web ad, and Oxford Phrasal Verbs/Web ad.
However, since all four dictionaries are monolingual English dictionaries, we must assume in all these cases that potential buyers of these dictionaries will take this information to mean that the dictionaries are intended for 'learners of English'.
Three of the phrasal verbs dictionaries restrict their intended user groups to this category whereas Longman Phrasal Verbs Dictionary/Blurb further gives 'general' as an intended user group. 'General' will probably have to be interpreted as 'the general public' and is probably included by the publishers in an attempt to reach as large a user market as possible.
However, on the whole it can be concluded that the four phrasal verbs dictionaries indicate that their intended user groups is quite clearly defi ned and constrained to learners of English.
With respect to intended user groups for the fi ve specialised dictionaries, the picture is quite different. They all mention 'students' and 'professionals' (mainly of the relevant subject fi eld, i.e. the subject fi eld covered by the dictionary) as intended user groups, and with the exception of Oxford Dictionary of Accounting, they also see 'teachers/lecturers' (also mainly of the relevant subject fi eld) as potential dictionary users. 'Teachers/lecturers' as potential users are mentioned mainly in the web ads. But then the picture becomes blurred, cf. the following statements: These statements alone clearly show that the compilers/publishers of these specialised dictionaries have had the intention of appealing to so far-reaching a user market that we are left with the impression that they have had no clear perception of whom the dictionaries are intended for. We must therefore conclude that the fi ve specialised dictionaries have no clearly defi ned and constrained intended user group(s).

Functions
As mentioned in the Methodology section, statements about lexicographic functions of the dictionaries have been classifi ed as clear, if there is no doubt about which user need(s) the statement refers to. That section provided a few examples. In the following, a few more examples are given, classifi ed according to lexicographic function: Not only do potential dictionary buyers have a legitimate claim to be told to what extent a given dictionary can satisfy (a range of) user needs. They also have a legitimate claim to be given this information in a language they can understand. We already touched upon this issue in the Introduction where it was questioned whether the formulations containing theoretical lexicographic terms suggested in Andersen/Fuertes-Olivera (2009) will be understood by potential dictionary buyers. Statements have therefore been classifi ed as clear only if they avoid the use of such terms. In fact, no statement extracted from the nine dictionaries analysed have used theoretical lexicographical terms, and we can therefore conclude that all clear statements are also easily understandable statements. An analysis of the main reasons for classifying statements as unclear with respect to the potential satisfaction of user needs reveals that for the phrasal verbs dictionaries many of these statements refer to linguistic data included in the dictionary articles or in outer matter texts, however without giving any clues as to which user needs they were included to satisfy. This applies for example to the following statement about synonyms and antonyms: if a phrasal verb has a synonym or a word that has almost the same meaning, this is shown at the end of that sense of the phrasal verb (Longman Phrasal Verbs Dictionary/Intro) In two of the dictionaries, there are in fact clear statements about synonyms and antonyms, but there is not total agreement as to what this kind of linguistic data can be used for in terms of satisfying user needs. Macmillan Phrasal Verbs Plus states that synonyms and antonyms have been included to support 'Vocabulary Building': Some statements refer to special layout features such as highlighting or the use of symbols, but again it is diffi cult to deduce from these statements which specifi c user needs the features were included to satisfy. Examples include: In the Methodology section we have already mentioned and given examples of nouns such as 'information' and 'coverage' whose meaning is too general to give clues as to the data referred to, unless the noun is modifi ed in some way so as to give the potential buyer a clue to the user needs the data are intended to satisfy. Examples from the phrasal verbs dictionaries include the following: up-to-date information about phrasal verbs in general English, as well as in business, Internet and computing contexts (Macmillan Phrasal Verbs Plus/Blurb) The verb 'include' is used in the same fashion in the following statement: includes marketing, accounting, organizational behaviour, global fi nance, business strategy, and taxation (Oxford Dictionary of Business and Management/Blurb) In fact, the number of statements in the information sources for the specialised dictionaries with 'coverage/cover' without some form of modifi cation to explain which user needs the 'coverage' intends to satisfy is 26, i.e. almost half of the 56 unclear statements in the information sources for the specialised dictionaries.
A few statements for the specialised dictionaries refer to the dictionary as a whole using such terms as 'guide', '(source of) reference', 'reference work' or 'source of information'. Examples include: guide to assist professional advisers in their work (Oxford Dictionary of Accounting /Preface) an essential source of reference (Oxford Dictionary of Economics/Blurb) a handy guide to legal terminology (Oxford Dictionary of Law/Blurb) the authoritative A-Z guide to the world of money (Oxford Dictionary of Finance and Banking/Blurb (front cover)) These terms do not in any way in themselves give any assistance to the potential dictionary buyer with respect to revealing information about intended lexicographic functions.
Rough calculations of the proportion of clear statements to unclear statements about user needs in the three sources of information for the dictionaries analysed give the following results 4 : If we look fi rst at the total proportion of clear statements to unclear statements in the sources of information for the two groups of dictionaries (phrasal verbs dictionaries vs specialised dictionaries) (Tables 1 and 2), it is evident that the phrasal verbs dictionaries do better than the specialised dictionaries with respect to providing the potential dictionary buyer with clear statements about the user needs the dictionaries are intended to satisfy. First of all, however, the difference is not judged to be signifi cant enough to fully support the hypothesis that the sources of information for dictionaries with clearly defi ned and clearly constrained intended user groups are much better at providing potential dictionary buyers with clear, unmistakable and easily understandable information about their capability of satisfying specifi c user needs.
Secondly, there are signifi cant differences within each group of dictionaries in this respect. As far as the phrasal verbs dictionaries are concerned, Longman Phrasal Verbs Dictionary performs signifi cantly better than Macmillan Phrasal Verbs Plus and Cambridge Phrasal Verbs Dictionary, and Oxford Phrasal Verbs performs somewhat better than Macmillan Phrasal Verbs Plus and Cambridge Phrasal Verbs Dictionary.
With respect to the specialised dictionaries, Oxford Dictionary of Accounting and Oxford Dictionary of Law stand out compared with the other three specialised dictionaries with respect to providing clear, unmistakable and easily understandable information about the user needs they were designed to satisfy. In fact, both of these dictionaries perform better than Cambridge Phrasal Verbs Dictionary and almost as well as Macmillan Phrasal Verbs Plus.
We must therefore conclude that the analysis cannot confi rm the hypothesis that sources of information about lexicographic functions for dictionaries with clearly defi ned and constrained intended user groups are clearly better at providing potential dictionary buyers with clear, unmistakable and easily understandable information about the user needs they were designed to fulfi l compared to sources of information for dictionaries with diffuse intended user groups.

Phrasal Verbs Dictionaries
Clear  Table 3. Total proportion of clear statements to unclear statements in the three sources of information If we turn for a moment to each of the sources of information (Table 3) in order to see whether there are signifi cant differences between them with respect to the proportion of clear statements to unclear statements, we can fi rst of all conclude that the picture is quite similar for the two groups of dictionaries. The analysis shows that for both groups of dictionaries blurbs and web ads provide the potential dictionary buyer with a higher proportion of clear statements to unclear statements than the introductions/prefaces. These results might be interesting if we could establish with certainty the authorship of each of the three types of information sources. We might assume that introductions/prefaces are mainly written by the editors/compilers of the dictionaries as a clear and objective guide to the contents and functions of the dictionaries. After all, editors/compilers may be expected to have a clear perception of who the intended users of their dictionaries are and which user needs they designed their dictionaries to satisfy -in other words the function or functions of their dictionaries. We might also assume that blurbs and web ads are mainly written by the publishers of the dictionaries as marketing tools for the dictionaries with a less clear perception of intended users and lexicographic function(s).
In essence, under these assumptions, we might expect introductions/prefaces to have a higher proportion of clear statements to unclear statements about lexicographic functions than the other two types of information sources.
Unfortunately, the literature does not provide us with a clear picture of the authorship of the three types of information sources. As already mentioned, Bhatia (1997) was unable to establish unequivocal authorship for introductions to academic books. With respect to the authorship of blurbs, Cronin/La Barre (2005: 19) says that "Blurbs are brief, effusive and often edited by the publisher", while Bhatia (2004: 170) says that "It is a bit diffi cult to decide who actually writes the blurb. Is it the author of the book or the publisher? Or may both of them have a role to play?".
In any case, the remarks by both Cronin/La Barre and Bhatia relate to blurbs for academic books and should not be generalized so as to include also blurbs for reference works such as dictionaries. However, in four of the fi ve specialised dictionaries 5 , the prefaces are initialled by the editor of the dictionary and in one of the four phrasal verbs dictionaries 6 , the introduction is signed by the chief editor of the dictionary, which must be taken as an indication that the introduction/preface was actually written by the editor. Table 4  These results are remarkable if our assumptions with respect to authorship for blurbs and web ads hold, namely that these information sources are written by publishers' marketing people, particularly with respect to the specialised dictionaries, where the editors of the dictionaries are clearly more vague in their statements about dictionary functions. However, as already mentioned, verifi cation of these conclusions will have to await further research into the authorship of the sources of information here investigated.

Conclusion
The hypothesis set forth in the introduction to this study -that the more well-defi ned and constrained the intended user groups for a given dictionary is, the more likely it is that the sources of information, on which potential dictionary buyers can rely prior to the purchase of the dictionary, will provide the potential dictionary buyer with clear, unmistakable and easily understandable information about lexicographic function(s), could not be confi rmed. First of all, the differences with respect to proportions of clear statements to unclear statements in the information sources for dictionaries with well-defi ned and constrained target user groups (the phrasal verbs dictionaries) and the proportions of clear statements to unclear statements in the information sources for dictionaries with rather ill-defi ned and unconstrained target user groups (the specialised dictionaries) were not judged to be signifi cant enough to provide confi rmation of the hypothesis.
Secondly, the analysis revealed signifi cant differences within each group of dictionaries with respect to proportions of clear statements to unclear statements. These differences also serve to disconfi rm the hypothesis.

Appendix A: Lists of statements
In the following lists, passages in italics are comments by the author of this article.        a) students on business and management courses at all levels b) business professionals including lawyers, bankers, accountants, advertising agents and insurance brokers c) the general reader looking for clarification of everyday business terms (encountered, for example, in house-buying, tax returns, or share investment)