A New Research Into Pragmatic Information In Learner's Dictionaries

As a relatively new branch,pragmatics has been developed at a fast speed in recent years.More and more lexicographers both at home and abroad have began to pay attention to the important role of pragmatics in communication,and tried to incorporate them into dictionary making.In this regard,some monolingual English learner's dictionaries have set an example as they do well in providing pragmatic information in terms of both the ways and the forms.They use not only a lot of different labels,usage notes and so on to help dictionary users to avoid language errors, but also definitions and examples to provide pragmatic information.In addition,they offer cross-references to lead readers from one entry to another,by which the microstructure and macrostructure are well connected.On the contrary,current Chinese-English dictionaries,as an important type of learner's dictionaries,have not provided enough or satisfactory pragmatic information in terms of both amount and forms,thus need improving.The present thesis,from the research point of Dictionary as Communication,has introduced the status quo of pragmatics in the circle of dictionary making,definition, importance and forms of pragmatic information and so on.One way of analyzing pragmatic information is to study it from the macrostructure and microstructure of a dictionary.However,the present thesis has dealt with the topic by using another important analytic approach from three levels,namely,lexical level,sentence level and discourse level.Using the Big Five as examples,the thesis has explored their ways of treating pragmatic information,and considered the implications of their practice for CELD making.