A Study On Pragmatic Information In English Learner’s Dictonary

A dictionary is regarded as a text conveying information. English learner’s dictionary (hereafter ELD) which has a long history is in the leading place in foreigner-oriented learner’s dictionaries and sets a good example in the compilation of learner’s dictionary in other countries. In the development of linguistics, pragmatics is a relatively new branch of linguistics, and has been covered in dictionary-making. Thus lexicographers have paid much attention to pragmatic information in learner’s dictionaries recently. Due to the interlanguage, Chinese English learners have much pragmatic failure and urgently need a pragmatic guidance. Pragmatic information in ELD is a product of the combination of pragmatics and lexicography and the study on it is interdisciplinary. It is the same with the study on etymology information study, cultural information study and grammatical information study in ELD. Pragmatic information study is also the study of information in ELD. But in fact, the theoretical study on pragmatic information legs behind dictionary compilation and needs to be developed further. In the recent study, scholars have got a consensus on the importance of pragmatic information in ELD. But as for the contents of pragmatic information, different scholars have different views in different standpoints. Macmillan English Dictionary for Advanced Learners (hereafter MEDAL), a new member of ELD, is published in2002, and has got a lot of innovative aspects. It is adopted the latest fruits of linguistic research and is of great value to be studied.For ELD sets a good example in the compilation of foreigner-oriented learner’s dictionary, this thesis firstly gives an introduction to the definition of learner’s dictionary, the development of ELD and the lexicographic features of ELD. Secondly, the combination of pragmatics and lexicography is introduced. And based on Levinson’s (1983) pragmatic meaning, the classifications of pragmatic information is provided as a theoretical basis of the whole thesis. And some presentations of pragmatic information in ELD are concluded in an inductive way. Thirdly, a case study of MEDAL is made with an inductive, deductive and descriptive method from two structures: macrostructure and microstructure and three levels:lexical level, sentence level and discourse level. Based on the analysis of pragmatic information in MEDAL, a conclusion is made that MEDAL is loaded with rich pragmatic information in various ways and can be taken as a good model to the compilation of Chinese-English dictionaries in pragmatic information.