The Treatment Of Chinese Culture-bound Words In The Chinese-English Dictionary For Advanced Foreign Learners: A Psycholinguistic Perspective

The mental lexicon centers on the study of how words are stored and retrieved in the human brain. In a psycholinguistic sense, the aim of L2 vocabulary acquisition is to help L2 learners construct an L2 mental lexicon which shares characteristics of the L1 mental lexicon. Bilingual dictionaries are regarded as an important reference tool for L2 vocabulary acquisition. Therefore, it is necessary to improve the compilation of bilingual dictionaries in order to benefit the construction of the L2 mental lexicon for L2 learners. Compared with the increasing number of CSL learners all over the world, the Chinese-English dictionaries specifically designed for foreign learners are in short supply. Among the lexical units to be treated in such dictionaries, Chinese culture-bound words, which refer to any words that are peculiar to Chinese culture and mostly have no equivalents or only partial equivalents in any other languages, can be divided into two categories: (a) Chinese culture-specific words (or Chinese folk custom words); (b) Chinese words which share the same conceptual meaning with their English equivalents but differ in cultural meaning. Words of this kind constitute great difficulties for CSL learners in the process of L2 vocabulary acquisition. Under such circumstances, this thesis has attempted to explore the treatment of Chinese culture-bound words in the Chinese-English dictionary for advanced foreign learners by utilizing the theory of mental lexicon. The present study has investigated two major issues: the entry selection of Chinese culture-bound words and definition of such words in the Chinese-English dictionary for advanced foreign learners, both from a psycholinguistic perspective. It is found that psycholinguistic evidence supports the inclusion of such words in the dictionary, but three general principles should be abided by, namely, the principle of suitability, the principle of coverage and integrality, and the principle of representativeness and practicality. On the other hand, the definition of Chinese culture-bound words in five Chinese-English dictionaries is studied by taking advantage of models of bilingual lexicon. Through the investigation, it is found that definition alone is not sufficient to express rich cultural information that Chinese cultural-bound words contain. Therefore, five supplementary measures are suggested for the problem: (a) to provide cultural examples; (b) to design pictorial illustrations; (c) to add cultural notes; (d) to supply cultural information in the back matters of the dictionary; and (e) to use cross-references to interconnect Chinese culture-bound words with one another. It is hoped that better treatment of Chinese culture-bound words in the Chinese-English dictionary for advanced learners will facilitate CSL learners' acquisition of Chinese vocabulary.