A Contrastive Analysis Of Pragmatic Information In LDOCE5and Foreigner-oriented CEDS

A dictionary is indispensible in language learning as it is the most common type of reference work. Since language is a special component of culture and an important tool in cross-cultural communication, learning a language not only means the correctness of grammar but also the appropriateness of the language itself. Accordingly, pragmatic information is an inevitable part to be incorporated into learners’dictionaries, which has received more and more attention of lexicographers. However, the studies of pragmatic information mainly lie in the monolingual learners’dictionaries and English-Chinese dictionaries, and few studies are conducted in the respect of foreigner-oriented Chinese-English dictionaries.A comparative study of pragmatic information between LDOCE5and three foreigner-oriented CEDs is conducted. And the results of contrastive analysis show that the incorporation of pragmatic information into dictionaries is reasonable and LDOCE5has done a great job in pragmatic information. Firstly, the macrostructure is utilized sufficiently, in which front matter, interleaf and appendix are used. Secondly, the means adopted in microstructure are adequate enough, including label, definition, example, frequency, register notes, thesaurus notes and common error notes. However, the three selected foreigner-oriented CEDs lag far behind. Firstly, no pragmatic information is mentioned in macrostructure. Secondly, the means in microstructure is too over-simplified, which results in the limitedness of the amount of pragmatic information in dictionaries. At the end of the thesis, a model for reference is suggested by the author.In the suggested model, macrostructure is made full use of, including users’guide, interleaf and appendix. Firstly, the ways to present pragmatic information in the dictionary should be introduced in the users’guide. Then, some Chinese characteristics should be introduced in interleaf and appendix, such as family relationships, measure words and HSK vocabulary.Then, the methods in the microstructure are enriched and the contents of pragmatic information are improved by the author. Firstly, the arrangement of entries in the foreigner-oriented CEDs should be based on the corpus. Secondly, all the examples in the dictionaries should be provided with Hanyu Pinyin. Thirdly, the discrimination notes are suggested to be as concise as possible in order to avoid wordy explanations. Moreover, the explanations in the discrimination notes should be in English, which is convenient for CFL learners to understand. Fourthly, pictorial illustrations are suggested to be used in the entries with abundant cultural and historical elements, which are more vivid than verbal explanations.