Ordbokskritikk

Resumé

The essence of the article is that dictionary criticism should be seen as a research activity. Dictionary criticism is here divided into two groups, one with users as its target audience, and one with lexicographers. Dictionary criticism with lexicographers as a target audience may then be seen as meta-lexicography with the concrete dictionary as its starting point. In order to write a good review, the object of inquiry must be divided in smaller parts, still in a way so that the central aspects of the dictionary are still taken into account. Relevant parts are e.g. , parts of speech, the set of lemmas, grammatical information, disposition of the dictionary articles, definitions, and translations. Dictionary criticism may also be allowed to evai uate only parts of the dictionary. The article contains an evaluation of dictionary criticism, with two examples as a starting point: Definitions in Nordic monolingual dictionaries, and the marking of stem classes in bilingual Finnish dictionaries. The first case study clearly shows to what extent the field is dependent upon an active dictionary criticism in order to be able to learn from similar projects. The second case shows how an unfortunate solution may spread from dictionary to dictionary, without being corrected by a precise dictionary criticism. The article presents concrete suggestions as to how dictionary criticism should develop. Finally comes a di scussion of dictionary criticism with end users as target group.