Dictionary
A dictionary is a kind of document, which organizes
information about words, for
example, their etymology, meaning, translation, pronunciation etc.
The study of dictionaries is termed lexicography.
In theory and practice is a distinction usually made between dictionaries and encyclopedias. Dictionaries describes the use, function and definition of lexical units and concepts. They provide "linguistic information". Encyclopedias may also analyze concepts, but their main task is to describe classes of referents for those concepts. Encyclopedias concentrates on "real" information. Examinations of dictionaries and encyclopedias shows, however, that such principles are seldom consequently respected. This distinction is also difficult to maintain theoretically and Eco (1984) regards dictionaries as a kind of "disguised encyclopedia":
The tree. . .blows up in a dust of differentiae, in a turmoil of infinite accidents, in a nonhierarchical network of qualia. The dictionary is dissolved into a potentially unordered and unrestricted galaxy of pieces of world knowledge. The dictionary thus becomes an encyclopedia, because it was in fact a disguised encyclopedia. (Eco, 1984).
Ray (1994) writes: "Both dictionaries and encyclopedias give an image of a cultural set of information and knowledge. Only dictionaries are metalinguistic, but both are metasemiotic and can be considered didactic texts, whose meaning is interpretative of a set of semiotic―cultural and ideological―systems. These are indices of a society as a source of judgments and opinion".
Dictionaries are studied in the field of lexicography.
Information science is especially interested in dictionaries in relation to
information seeking and information retrieval processes. Especially one kind of
dictionary,
the thesaurus, have been important in this respect. Dictionaries are kinds of
knowledge organization systems, or more precisely: they are kinds of
semantic tools.
Important kinds of dictionaries include:
National dictionaries (e.g. Oxford English Dictionary, WordNet)
Translation or bilingual dictionaries (e.g. English-Danish dictionaries)
Subject dictionaries (e.g. medical dictionaries)
Historical dictionaries (cf., Begriffsgeschichte).
Literature:
Eco, U. (1984). Dictionary vs. Encyclopedia (Chapter two in his: Semiotics and the Philosophy of Language. London: MacMillian. http://www.rhizomes.net/Issue3/fernandezhtml/disguised.htm
Eco, U. (1994). Dictionary vs. Encyclopedia (Pp. 201-206 in: Sebeok, Thomas A.: Encyclopedic Dictionary of Semiotics. 2.ed. Tome 1-3. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter. (Approaches to Semiotics 73)).
Litkowski, K. C. (2005). Computational Lexicons and Dictionaries. IN: Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics (2nd ed.). Oxford: Elsevier Publishers. http://www.clres.com/online-papers/ell.doc
Ray, A. (1994). Dictionary. Pp. 200-201 IN: Sebeok, Thomas A.: Encyclopedic
Dictionary of Semiotics. 2.ed. Tome 1-3. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter. (Approaches to Semiotics 73).
Rey-Debove, J. (1971). Étude linguistique et sémiotique des dictionnaires français contemporains. The Hague & Paris: Mouton.
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. (2005). Dictionary. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dictionary
See also: Encyclopedias;
Semantic tools;
Thesauri.
Birger Hjørland
Last edited: 22-10-2006