Lexicography, or the Gentle Art of Making Mistakes

• Autores: Giovanni Iamartino
• Localización: Altre Modernità: Rivista di studi letterari e culturali, ISSN-e 2035-7680, Nº. Extra 1, 2017 (Ejemplar dedicado a: Errors: Communication and its Discontents), págs. 48-78
• Idioma: italiano
• Enlaces
  • Texto completo (pdf)
• Dialnet Métricas: 3 Citas
• Resumen

  • The man in the street’s attitude of mind towards dictionaries is that they are the true repositories of all the words in a language, and that they are both authoritative and objective – in short, dictionaries are perfect. By mainly referring to the early history of English mono- and bilingual lexicography, this essay explodes the myth of the perfect dictionary and shows that mistakes in dictionaries may profitably be discussed under two headings: lexicographical mistakes, i.e. vague or circular definitions and the so-called ghost words in monolingual dictionaries, and non-insertable equivalents in bilingual dictionaries; and socio-cultural mistakes, which are related to the often elusive impact of ideology on dictionary-making.