Cryptic avatars: the ornamental illustrations of rare initial letters in French dictionaries

• Autores: Thora Van Male
• Localización: Proceedings of the Tenth EURALEX International Congress, EURALEX 2002: Copenhagen, Denmark, August 13-17, 2002 / Anna Braasch (ed. lit.), Claus Povlsen (ed. lit.), Vol. 2, 2003, ISBN 87-90708-09-1, págs. 741-746
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • This paper examines the ornamental illustration of rare initial-letters in some 19th and 20th century French dictionaries and attempts to show how these illustrations offer a few predictable - and somewhat exotic - items on the one hand, and on the other reveal a great many diversionary tactics meant to dissimulate the difficulty ofillustrating words that start with these letters. These tactics include 1) grouping of rare letters into a single head-piece; 2) graphic stratagems such as drawing "big" or adding irrelevant items; 3) breaching a thematic programme of illustrations for lack ofitems whose name starts with the necessary letter; 4) stratagems more related to the lexicon itself, such as addition of labels, illustrations based on variant or even fanciful spellings.