On The Microstructure In Business English Learner's Dictionaries From The User's Perspective

Verbs play key roles in sentence meanings.As a special type of words,speech act verbs have their own uniqueness,which is shown in two aspects.In lexical level,the conceptual meanings of speech act verbs imply semantic features and varying degree of illocutionary force;in syntactical level,speech act verbs form explicit performative utterances?EPU?.As a specialized dictionary,business English dictionary provides language information and encyclopedia information for business terms in different situations.It serves as a main guideline for students majoring in business English or for people who are eager to engage in business activities.At present,studies on speech act verbs in business English learner's dictionaries require to be explored further.This paper combines qualitative analysis with quantitative analysis.Two prestigious business English learner's dictionaries in 21^st centuries are selected to compare and analyze the representative states and models of micro-structures of fifty speech act verbs in two dictionaries.Multidimensional definition model theory as well as adaptation theory are regarded as mainly theoretical frameworks.Spoken Business English Corpus is utilized to optimize and strengthen the representative effects of speech act verbs.By analyzing,we find there is a significant difference in microstructure of speech act verbs including annotation system,definition system,example system in business English dictionaries.Besides,microstructure on both dictionaries fails to show the uniqueness of speech act verbs completely,fails to use pragmatic skills like euphemism,modest form of address,respect form of address according to varying degree of illocutionary force of speech act verbs,fails to present explicit structure of speech act verbs fully by syntactic patterns.Generally speaking,business English learner's dictionaries still adopt traditional definition model,which is unable to show the uniqueness of speech act verbs fully.Besides,the micro-structure is imbalanced.Abundant information focuses on sense division and examples,which leads to the loss of information on syntax and language use.What's more,traditional business English dictionary only focuses on itself instead of user's cognitive features and processing model.The paper studies microstructure of speech act verbs in business English learner's dictionary,which strengthens the close connection between pragmatics and lexicography,exploring continuously the representatives of microstructure of speech act verbs for the purpose of enriching the contents of business English dictionaries,facilitating the students majoring in business English to study further.This thesis samples,analyzes and optimizes speech act verbs,which is beneficial to making up for the shortcoming of traditional definition,exploring further the theoretical study on speech act verbs,improving the compiling quality of business English learner's dictionaries.