Pragmatic Information In Monolingual English Learner's Dictionaries And English-Chinese Learner's Dictionaries: A Critical Survey

In cross-cultural communication people with different cultural backgrounds often encounter misunderstanding between each other even though they find little difficulty in understanding the literal meaning of their utterances. Linguistic competence does not guarantee using the language appropriately. The deficiency in pragmatic competence is preventing Chinese learners of English from developing their communicative competence. As an important tool in foreign language learning, English-Chinese learner's dictionaries (ECLDs) have to contribute to improving the situation by providing pragmatic information more efficiently to English learners in China.English monolingual learner's dictionaries (MLDs) represented by LDOCE, OALD, CCALD, etc. are doing better than ECLDs as far as the treatment of pragmatic information is concerned. In these dictionaries, various means have been taken to handle pragmatic information. Corpora have been consulted to find necessary information used in lexicography. Colour printing and labels are used to show word frequency. A large number of pragmatic labels, usage notes and error warnings are used to give guidance on appropriate usage and to help to avoid possible pragmatic errors. Definitions and examples are filled with pragmatic information, and cross-reference is applied to direct the user to the usage note in another entry. Even pictorial illustrations are employed to convey more or less pragmatic information. Very often, an MLD is accompanied by its CD-ROM and paperback version.Compared with MLDs, ECLDs are doing a less satisfactory job. They have to incorporate more pragmatic information by more effective means, some of which can be found in some current MLDs. Some parallel corpora and learner corpora have already been constructed and they should be put into use in the process of ECLD compilation. The corpus works well in providing word frequency, examples and common learner errors. Frequency information can be handled in a similar way as the MLDs. More learner error warnings which are common to Chinese English learners should be offered. Examples in the entries can be more"bold", made to contain more useful pragmatic or cultural information. For instance, an example like Black Americans usually prefer to be called African American can be included in the entry "prefer". More pictorial illustrations can be adopted, and the dictionaries can be printed in full colour. And, it is suggested that CD-ROM version and paperback version of the print dictionary can be published to facilitate English language learning.