THE IMAGE OF THE MONOLINGUAL DICTIONARY ACROSS EUROPE. RESULTS OF THE EUROPEAN SURVEY OF DICTIONARY USE AND CULTURE Local Partners (original) (raw)
Related papers
International Journal of Lexicography, 2018
The article presents the results of a survey on dictionary use in Europe, focusing on general monolingual dictionaries. The survey is the broadest survey of dictionary use to date, covering close to 10,000 dictionary users (and non-users) in nearly thirty countries. Our survey covers varied user groups, going beyond the students and translators who have tended to dominate such studies thus far. The survey was delivered via an online survey platform, in language versions specific to each target country. It was completed by 9,562 respondents, over 300 respondents per country on average. The survey consisted of the general section, which was translated and presented to all participants, as well as country-specific sections for a subset of 11 countries, which were drafted by collaborators at the national level. The present report covers the general section.
Lexikos, 2018
We present ESDexplorer (https://owid.shinyapps.io/ESDexplorer), a browser application which allows the user to explore the data from a large European survey on dictionary use and culture. We built ESDexplorer with several target groups in mind: our cooperation partners, other researchers, and a more general public interested in the results. Also, we present in detail the architecture and technological realisation of the application and discuss some legal aspects of data protection that motivated some architectural choices.
Slovenščina 2.0: empirical, applied and interdisciplinary research
This paper presents the results of a survey on dictionary use in Europe, the largest survey of dictionary use to date with nearly 10,000 participants in nearly thirty countries. The paper focuses on the comparison of the results of the Slovenian participants with the results of the participants from other European countries. The comparisons are made both with the European averages, and with the results from individual countries, in order to determine in which aspects Slovenian participants share similarities with other dictionary users (and non-users) around Europe, and in which aspects they differ. The findings show that in many ways the Slovenian users are similar to their European counterparts, with some noticeable exceptions, including (much) stronger preference for digital dictionaries over print ones, above-average reliance on other people when dictionary does not contain the relevant information, and the largest difference between the price of a dictionary and the amount will...
Online Dictionary Use in the Digital Era: A Survey among Italian Users of English
Conference proceedings. ICT for language learning, 2016
Since their first compilation dictionaries have become important tools for the speakers of any language. Monolingual, bilingual dictionaries, dictionaries for specific purposes like synonyms or technical ones have been edited in order to help people in the challenge of using a language appropriately. In the recent decades, ICT and computer technology in collaboration with some branches of Applied Linguistics such as Corpus Linguistics have changed the habit of many people and also influenced the criteria in which dictionaries are currently compiled and published. Since the predominance of paper dictionaries few years ago, the market demand has experienced a fast shift towards digital editions on CD or DVD devices. Still, the creation of online dictionaries is currently leading to another major change avoiding any physical device guaranteeing a permanent update in terms of entries and examples. After a brief preliminary review of the major evolution in the field of lexicography during the last century, the study examines the use and perception of online dictionaries in Italy taking advantage of a survey administered to Italian L2 speakers of English of different ages. The study highlights a number of innovative trends and approaches to the use of linguistic resources. Above all, the results show how more and more users understand the need of a tool which alongside with adequate definitions also reports some examples of language in use. Based on the data emerged from this research, some possible implications are provided in order to frame this study in the context of a wider research. Particular emphasis is also placed on the role language corpora in the development of new online digital resources for a permanent and reliable update of linguistic data. This paper may also stimulate further research on this evolving topic.
2002
Abstract The paper presents a selection of results from a study investigating dictionary use by 712 Polish learners of English representing a variety of FL competence levels and backgrounds. Data from Learner Survey, experiment, and Teacher Survey are brought in to test hypotheses relating to a variety of aspects of dictionary use. Here two aspects have been selected for presentation. First, frequency with which learners seek different types of information in their dictionaries is analyzed.
Dictionary use by English language learners
Language Teaching, 2014
Research into dictionary use does not have a long history. Although publishers recognised in the 1960s that ‘dictionaries should be designed with a special set of users in mind’ (Householder 1967: 279) there were extremely few empirical user studies before the 1980s – Welker's most recent survey (2010) lists only six. The subsequent surge of interest in this field was fuelled by big changes to dictionary content and design in the 1980s and 1990s, changes that were particularly evident in dictionaries for learners of English as a foreign language, conventionally known as ‘learners’ dictionaries’. In the space of a few years the Oxford advanced learner's dictionary, generally considered to be the earliest advanced learners’ dictionary (first published under a different title in 1942, with subsequent editions in 1948, 1963, 1974 and 1989) was joined by two new competitors: the Longman dictionary of contemporary English (first edition 1978, second edition 1987) and the COBUILD E...
Lexikos, 2009
This volume contains a selection of papers read at the 12th International Symposium on Lexicography, held in Copenhagen from April 29 to May 1, 2004. Many topical issues are discussed, and even though the volume is arranged according to different lexicographical themes, there are also many common elements between the different papers. For example, sample articles selected for the empirical analyses on which the papers are based, often deal with the use of phraseology in different dictionaries, the finding of suitable translation equivalents in bilingual dictionaries, and the user-friendliness in dictionaries. In some cases, the participants have selected the same mainstream dictionaries for discussion, which means that these dictionaries are examined from different viewpoints, making the volume an interesting and useful reference work. The six parts into which the articles in this collection have been classified are online lexicography, dictionary structure, phraseology in dictionaries, LSP lexicography, dictionaries and the user, and etymology, history and culture in lexicography. The issues raised are of great importance to lexicographers, especially those working in dictionary houses and lexicography units where comprehensive lexicographical works are published and compiled, such as multivolume corpus-based monolingual dictionaries and comprehensive bilingual dictionaries. It is taken for granted that technology is part of the lexicographical process nowadays, and therefore the papers in this volume are most relevant. The main speaker was Arne Zettersten who is also the 'founding father' of this symposium (see p. ix). His paper 'Glimpses of the Future of English-based Lexicography' (pp. 299-318), found in the last part of the volume, is the Otto Jespersen Memorial Lecture, dedicated to Otto Jespersen for his direct and indirect role in promoting lexicography. Zettersten contemplates on the future use of English in lexicography, and the nature of future lexicographical works. Since English is currently a lingua franca in many spheres of the modern world, including technology and the internet, Zettersten proceeds from the assumption that this will still be the case, even when other languages such as Chinese Mandarin, Spanish, Arabic and Hindi will gain in importance. Therefore, the question 'What kind of English or Englishes do we expect in the world tomorrow?' will have to be considered. He reflects on how quickly current electronic sources such as the Encarta products by Microsoft (e.g. the Encarta World English Dictionary Online) and The Literary Encyclopedia (released in 2001) will become outdated, and what possibilities the future might hold. Especially in the field of technology, the growth of vocabulary is accelerating all the time, and printed reference works cannot keep up with the pace of change. In addition, new technical devices are produced very quickly, which opens up exciting wissenschaft 2.1. Berlin/New York: De Gruyter.
Language Learners and Dictionary Users: Bibliographic Findings and Commentary
1998
This is a report of the findings of an exhaustive bibliographic search done on scholarly articles written over the past thirty years about learners' dictionaries. The completed annotated bibliography of over 460 academic articles on learners' dictionaries, both monolingual and bilingual, written in English, German, French, and Italian, reveals a number of truths about the field of lexicography in the 1990's. The findings revolve around the tension between two notions: lexicography as a science vs. lexicography as an art. Empirical findings, based on the compilation of all citations in a computer database, include, but are not limited to, the following: most often cited learners' dictionaries, most often cited bilingual dictionaries, and the most influential trends in learners' dictionaries over the past thirty years.
Research into dictionary use by Polish learners of English: Some methodological considerations
2006
The call for research on dictionary use has been present in the literature on the subject for a few decades now. The user perspective in lexicography goes back to the early 1960s and Barnhart's (1962: 161) statement that “[i] t is the function of a popular dictionary to answer the questions that the user of the dictionary asks, and dictionaries on the commercial market will be successful in proportion to the extent to which they answer these questions to the buyer”.
Assessing the effectiveness of monolingual, bilingual and 'biligualised' dictionaries
The Modern Language Journal 81/2: 189-196., 1997
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