Political Correctness In English Learner's Dictionaries

"Political correctness"(PC) was proposed in the late 20th century with the influence of Civil Rights Movement, Women's Rights Movement and Black Power Movement. People use PC to help historically-suppressed and long-underprivileged groups of people to obtain their equal rights and opportunities. In the course of fights, PC movements experienced two important periods respectively in the 1960s and the 1990s, attracting much attention from all walks of life. Besides, as the U.S. entered the 21 St century, PC movements again reached another peak.Influenced by the comments on PC movement, it claims to use PC language in everyday communication. "He" is not the general use of all the people, instead, people use "he" and "she". Dictionary compilers begin to notice PC language and provide detailed information of PC language and politically incorrect language, especially in learner's dictionaries. The thesis tries to give an overview of PC and study on how PC words are presented in ELDs so as to find the limitations of the treatment of the words referring to PC in ELDs and propose some suggested improving methods.First of all, this thesis traces PC to the year of 1793 and exposes the different meaning of PC in different time in different place of the world; secondly, the thesis summarizes the three movements concerning PC; thirdly, It carries out the related linguistic study on PC, for example, social functions of PC language, comments on PC language, PC language and politeness principle, similarities and differences between PC language and euphemism. Based on the above study, the thesis does the diachronic study of OALD4, OALD5 and OALD6 from the aspects of definition, example, grammar and pragmatic information to reveal the evolution and demerits of OALD with respect to PC. Aiming to find the demerits of current learner's dictionaries with respect to PC and provide some suggestions on dictionary improvement with respect to PC, the comparison study is also carried in the learner's dictionaries which published around 2003, namely, OALD6, LDOCE4, MED1, COBULID3and CALD.In the end of the thesis, it proposes the improving methods for ELDs with respect to PC from the points of vocabulary used in ELDs, words collection, the citation of example sentences and cross-reference.