Specialised Lexicography for Learners: Specific Proposals for the Construction of Pedagogically-oriented Printed Business Dictionaries

Abstract

The function theory of lexicography argues that specialised lexicographical products must help learners to transform their information needs into aspects of knowledge of the discipline, and of its discursive properties. Lexicographers, then, must combine information and data access with the user’s need for information and knowledge. To achieve this aim they need to devise theories providing solutions to different lexicographical problems. One such theory has recently been proposed by Tarp (2008), who claims that there are four categories which are central to a general theory of learner’s lexicography: users, user situation, user needs, and dictionary assistance. This paper focuses on dictionary assistance and addresses several lexicographical issues connected with polysemy: the selection of the lemmata of some printed English-Spanish/Spanish-English business dictionaries, their entry structures, sense differentiation, and sense ordering. The analysis leads the author to discuss some proposals with the aim of making business dictionaries more pedagogically oriented, and to include a set of principles pedagogically-oriented business dictionaries must have. They are illustrated in a model entry which has been compiled by rearranging one of the entries studied according to the proposals and principles previously discussed.