6. What are dictionaries for?

The first four postulates were concerned with the internal situation of lexicography, its subject-matter and working tools. The fifth and last deals with its external relations vis-a-vis its public, the dictionary user. Ultimately all dictionaries are motivated by and judged against the lexical needs of those who consult them.

The question "What is a dictionary for?" has been asked many times during the long history of lexicography. Samuel Johnson asked it in 1747, and gave a didactic answer; "The value of a work must be estimated by its use: It is not enough that a dictionary delights the critic, unless at the same time it instructs the learner".

In 1854 the famous German linguist, grammarian and lexicographer Jacob

Grimm took a more detached, scientific stand: "What is a dictionary for? According

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to its all-embracing generality it must be given a great, wide purpose".

A century later, following the controversy surrounding the publication of the 3rd edition of the American IVj, Bergen Evans asked it again, this time (and this is a significant rum) from the point of view of the 'common reader' and his needs (1962): "He wants — and has a right to — the truth, the full truth. And the full truth about any language, and especially shout American English today, is that there are many areas in which certainty is impossible and simplification is misleading".

The lexicographer (especially the one who, like the compilers of W₃, sets out to document current usage) is faced with the awkward choice between uncommitted recording of evenaliing (thus disappointing the appeal to the dictionary as an authority) or being deliberately selective (and at the same time abrogating his responsibility to scientific objectivity).

But these arc global abstractions. Both the lexicographer's tasks and the user's needs are much more differentiated There are numerous types of dictionaries, compiled by many different kinds of lexicographers and consulted by untold numbers of users for a variety of reasons. We must take the question at the head of this section seriously and find out empirically in what situations people use dictionaries. Tins is the vantage point from which Herbert Ernst Wiegand (1977) has demanded a 'sociology of the dictionary user' for which he supplied a long list of open questions:

Who owns what kinds of dictionaries? How is this ownership distributed throughout the population? What sort of situations of dictionary use can we distinguish? Are dictionaries used as guides to usage or to settle questions of fact? Are there class differences in dictionary look-up? What roles do dictionaries play in the home, in schools, in the office?

How often are dictionaries borrowed from libraries?

Who influences the content of monolingual dictionaries, and in what ways? etc.,

etc.

Having recognized, a few years earlier, the paucity of information on these issues, Randolph Quirk carried out an investigation into what 'image' various dictionaries had among a student population of 220 at University College London (reported in 1972 and published in the collection of his papers entitled The Linguist and the English Language, 1974). The most useful findings of the survey relate to the question of what kind of information this group of users hoped (and failed) to find in the dictionaries which they regularly consulted. Looking for meanings and synonyms and checking spellings are among the most frequent motives for dictionary use.

Information is only one of the factors we need to take into account when we want to assess users' needs. Л second factor is 'operations', i.e. the activities and skills that we rely on when we perform such tasks as reading, writing, and translating. Attempts have been made to classify these communicative operations, e.g. in terms of productive processes (like writing and speaking), receptive processes (like reading and writing), or compound activities (like translating), but more research is needed before we can claim a full understanding of dictionary look-up operations.

There are two more factors to take into account before we can round off the chapter. One is the users themselves and the various functions they may be performing as child or adult, pupil or teacher, trainee or technician, scientist, librarian, secretary, etc. The other factor covers the various purposes these users want to achieve, e.g. learning, explaining, analysing, and playing. These four factors are summarised in tabular form.

Information	Operations
meaning/synonyms	finding meanings
pronunciation/syntax	finding words
spelling/etymology	translating, etc.
names/facts, etc.
Situations of dictionary use
Users	Purposes
child	extending knowledge of the mother tongue
pupil/trainee	learning foreign language
teacher/critic	playing word games
scientist/secretary, etc.	composing a report
	reading/decoding FL texts, etc.

REINHARD RUDOLF KARL HARTMANN CONTRASTIVE LINGUISTICS AND BILINGUAL LEXICOGRAPHY⁴