English Dictionaries As Cultural Mines

English Dictionaries as Cultural Mines
English Dictionaries as Cultural Mines
Edited by
Roberta Facchinetti
English Dictionaries as Cultural Mines,
Edited by Roberta Facchinetti
This book first published 2012
Cambridge Scholars Publishing
12 Back Chapman Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2XX, UK
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Copyright 2012 by Roberta Facchinetti and contributors
All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,
or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or
otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner.
ISBN (10): 1-4438-3647-8, ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-3647-0

CONTENTS
Introduction ................................................................................................. 1
Roberta Facchinetti
Riches; Money, or Precious Goods: The Lexis of Wealth in Modern

English......................................................................................................... 7
Elisabetta Lonati
Phraseology in Time: Examples of Culture-Bound Expressions

from Barettis Easy Phraseology (1775) and from Duvergers
Dictionary (1810?)..................................................................................... 35
Stefania Nuccorini
Giving Voice to Local Cultures: Reflections on the Notion of Dialect

in the English Dialect Dictionary .............................................................. 55
Marta Degani and Alexander Onysko
Culture-specific Lexis and Knowledge Sharing in the Global Village...... 73

Susan Kermas
Brand Culture Mirrored in Dictionaries: Generic Trademarks in English

and Italian .................................................................................................. 95
Cristiano Furiassi
Culture-specific Lexical Items, Concepts and Word-level Communicative

Strategies in English-Bulgarian/Bulgarian-English Lexicography.......... 115
Alexandra Bagasheva
Translating the Lexicon of the Law: A Cross-linguistic Study

of De Franchiss Law Dictionary ............................................................ 147
Elisa Mattiello
Art for Dictionaries Sake: Comparing Cultural Outlooks

through Dictionaries and Corpora ........................................................... 171
Geoffrey Clive Williams
vi Table of Contents
Towards a Corpus-Driven Bilingual Italian-English Dictionary

of Collocations......................................................................................... 201
Barbara Berti and Laura Pinnavaia
An Innovative Tool for an All-inclusive Sports Language Database ...... 223

Alessandra Fazio
Intercultural and Ideological Issues in Lexicography: A Prototype

of a Bioethics Dictionary......................................................................... 247
Alessandra Vicentini, Kim Grego, Barbara Berti, Paolo Bellini
and Grazia Orizio
INTRODUCTION
ROBERTA FACCHINETTI
Dictionaries are mines whose word-gems encapsulate centuries of language

history and cultural traditions; they are store-houses of meanings and uses,
lamp genies to be set free at the very moment readers set their eyes on
their entries.
This book is an attempt to free such lamp genies by focusing on the
role of dictionaries in the identification and expression of cultural aspects
in language, with special reference to English. As such, its eleven chapters
have been arranged so as to deal with dictionary analysis and compilation,
both from a diachronic and a synchronic perspective, in terms of general,
genre-specific, monolingual and bilingual lexicography.
We start diachronically with Elisabetta LONATIs chapter (Riches;
money, or precious goods: The lexis of wealth in Modern English),
which focuses on early 18th-century dictionaries, mirroring a time of great
change in British society. Much of this change depended on the business
challenge characterizing British domestic and foreign affairs, especially
with regard to its huge economic enterprise from the East Indies to the
American colonies. The need to give a name to new values and realities
that is to new social identities and rituals triggered off the emergence of
terms and concepts as well as the need to popularize them. One of the
principal means to achieve this goal but also the result of this new
intra/inter-cultural climate is the inclusion of the linguistic stock in
dictionaries and encyclopaedias, either universal or specialized. The
heritage analyzed in this chapter covers such terms as commerce, money,
manufacture, and labour, which (a) lexicalize the core values of 18th-
century British society, and its wealthy hue; (b) entail a re-definition of
terms such as convenience, commodity, comfort, luxury/ies, needs, wants,
fashion, variety, and quality; (c) point to those precious goods ob-
jectifying middle-class everyday life, interests and desires, like metal
works, printed cloths, ceramics, fans, and gloves. The study testifies to the
fact that 18th-century dictionaries transform into words, shared knowledge,
and collective imagination the rising British wealthy-power, its
foundations, values and principles at home and around the world.
2 Introduction
The second chapter moves on in time and deals with two dictionaries
published respectively in late 18th-century and early 19th-century;
specifically, Stefania NUCCORINI (Phraseology in time: Examples of
culture-bound expressions from Barettis Easy Phraseology (1775) and
from Duvergers dictionary (1810?)) discusses the word phraseology as it
is dealt with in Barettis Easy Phraseology and Duvergers Comparison
between the Idioms, Genius and Phraseology of the French and English
languages. These two works differ in many formal and substantial aspects,
but they are both bilingual (the former includes Italian and English, the
latter English and French) and share similar backgrounds and objectives.
Indeed, Duvergers work marked a first significant shift in the use of the
word phraseology over a relatively short period of time, as illustrated by
the analysis of a few phraseological, culture-bound expressions taken from
both dictionaries. While contents of Barettis work represent an obsolete
use of phraseology, the nature of the expressions included in Duvergers
work and the language-specific characteristics they present point to a
considerably innovative approach.
One century later, between 1898 and 1905, Joseph Wright published
the English Dialect Dictionary (EDD), which can be considered the first
scholarly compendium of English dialects. In their chapter, Marta DEGANI
and Alexander ONYSKO (Giving voice to local cultures: Reflections on
the notion of dialect in the English Dialect Dictionary) posit that, if
dialectal speech is regarded as an expression of local culture, the EDD can
also be considered a major lexicographic achievement that gives voice to
local cultures in the United Kingdom in the late Victorian era. Since the
maker of the dictionary did not provide an explicit definition of dialect, it
is important to take a closer look at the dictionary and try to reconstruct
Wrights notion of dialect. A better understanding of what dialect entails
in the EDD also provides insights into which aspects of English local
cultures are represented. In the study, a close analysis of the different entry
sections of the dictionary is complemented by a detailed description of
lexicographic labels and semantic domains covered by the many
headwords, so as to reveal the silenced and the resounding voices of local
cultures represented in Wrights dictionary.
With Chapter four our birds eye view on English lexicography reaches
the present time, since Susan KERMAS (Culture-specific lexis and
knowledge sharing in the global village) examines representation of
culture-specific terms in 20th-century English dictionaries and Indian-
English glossaries. In particular, her study throws further light on the
impact of globalization on lexicography and posits the need to address the
expanding cultural dimension of English as a Lingua Franca. The author
Roberta Facchinetti 3
remarks that the Oxford English Dictionary certainly includes an

increasing number of culture-specific lexemes from a broad spectrum of
Englishes but its viewpoint is still prevalently native-speaker oriented.
Indeed, a search of the Web for Indian botanical terms illustrates not only
the possibility to include new items and to update old ones, but also the
necessity to enhance its programming if the dictionary is to keep astride
the changing needs of the community and retain its role as repository of
the English language.
Further developing on the need to keep pace with contemporary
changes, Cristiano FURIASSI (Brand culture mirrored in dictionaries:
Generic trademarks in English and Italian) sheds light on the relationship
between vocabulary and cultural heritage, by focusing on the recording in
dictionaries of American and British trademarks, conceived as the
embodiment of ideas and cultural models. This has affected not only the
English language but also the languages of other countries, including Italy,
to which products often associated with a specific trademark have been
exported. However, what starts out as a trademark, that is a symbol that
serves to distinguish one product from similar ones sold by competitors,
may eventually be used with a more general reference; when this happens,
trademarks are said to be affected by genericness. Bearing this in mind,
Furiassi retrieves instances of trademarks in some authoritative
dictionaries of the English and the Italian language, so as to assess the
influence of generic trademarks on the Italian vocabulary, which are
attested in the English language and at the same time used as generics in
Italian.
Moving from monolingual to bilingual lexicography, Alexandra
BAGASHEVA (Culture-specific lexical items, concepts and word-level
communicative strategies in English-Bulgarian/Bulgarian-English lexico-
graphy) remarks that, so far, little attention has been paid to lexical items
as sites of cultural investment. By theoretically dissociating lexical
concepts from lexical items, it is possible for a model of refined sites of
translation equivalence to be used so as to reveal the intricacies of dealing
with cultural (non)-correspondences in lexicography. Taking Bulgarian as
an example, the author discusses the major areas of lexical divergence
between English and Bulgarian and suggests possible solutions for their
adequate treatment. In such a framework, compounds in English-
Bulgarian dictionaries (more specifically compound verbs) surface as an
area requiring careful, linguistically informed treatment. Moreover,
Bulgarian diminutives are characterized as a powerful appraisal resource
that might require the sacrifice of the ideal translation equivalence in
favour of more unappealing lexicographic treatment via the provision of
4 Introduction
appendices or supplements presenting sub-word information to encode

purposes.
The analysis of bilingual dictionaries leads to the issue of word
translatability, particularly with reference to specialized genres. Indeed,
Chapter seven, authored by Elisa MATTIELLO (Translating the lexicon
of the law: A cross-linguistic study of De Franchiss Law Dictionary),
concentrates on the translation of the lexicon of the law, which is
particularly difficult because law terminology is so culture-bound that a
satisfactory translation of all the legal terms of a text from one system to
another is at times impossible. For instance, unlike the English legal
system, the Italian one does not distinguish lawyers between barristers
and solicitors, for which it has no equivalent terms, nor does it have
concepts corresponding to English jury or tort, although the terms
giuria and torto do exist in the Italian general lexis. This chapter suggests
that translators from legal English should use lexicographical tools that
provide information about the etymology of legal terms, their use in actual
contexts and their cultural system. To illustrate this tenet, the author
discusses data from De Franchiss encyclopaedic Law Dictionary, so as to
identify the lexical strategies and the semantic processes used by the
lexicographer to convey language or culture-specific concepts into a
different linguistic and cultural system.
The following four chapters concentrate on methodological aspects of
dictionary compilation, particularly bearing in mind, as remarked by
Geoffrey Clive WILLIAMS in Chapter eight, that Corpus Linguistics has
contributed a lot to modern lexicography. In his Art for dictionaries sake:
Comparing cultural outlooks through dictionaries and corpora, Williams
emphasizes the fact that corpora allow linguistics to explore language in
context and study the often surprising data coming out of the text and taking
us beyond intuition. Bearing this in mind, the author looks at how
dictionaries are generally perceived and tackles the underlying difficulties in
handling data. As an example, he discusses how the term art is handled in
different dictionaries in English and French and what corpora in English and
French reveal about the aura of culture surrounding this word in context.
Finally he calls for a rethink of dictionaries so as to integrate the wealth of
data held in corpora in order to provide a bridge between cultures.
Corpora are a great help in compilation of dictionaries for second
language acquisition purposes as well, where mastering the way lexical
items combine is of paramount importance, as highlighted by Barbara
BERTI and Laura PINNAVAIA (Towards a corpus-driven bilingual
Italian-English dictionary of collocations). Indeed, corpus linguistic
studies have highlighted that the sole knowledge of strictly morpho-
Roberta Facchinetti 5
syntactic and semantic rules does not guarantee a natural-sounding

production in L2 learners; moreover, lexical combination is an area
where Italian students of English show difficulties notwithstanding their
level. This can be accounted for by the fact that the two languages are
based on different, culture-bound word combinations. Studies on the
presence and treatment of collocations in bilingual dictionaries have
shown that these lexical chunks are scarcely available in this type of
resource. Bearing all this in mind, their chapter illustrates practical
motivations and hypotheses for the compilation of a corpus-driven
bilingual Italian-English dictionary of collocations for Italian learners of
English, accompanied by due thought on the theoretical aspects and
problems it might entail.
Finally, Chapters ten and eleven combine issues of corpus-based
dictionary compilation with the acquisition of specialized genres.
Alessandra FAZIO (An innovative tool for an all-inclusive sports
language database) illustrates the development of a glossary for the
language of sport; indeed, sports language reflects complex and different
activities concerning the description of specialized factual and theoretical
competences that are part of theory of different sports and imply different
language topics. Furthermore, it focuses on additional issues related to
specific textual genres as well as to cultural themes. In this chapter the
author highlights two directions of analysis for the construction of such
glossary, starting from a contrastive study of the language of sport in
Italian and English. The first of these directions investigates the extension
of single language concepts including the relevant references to the related
significant terms from general language; the second regards the inter-
disciplinary nature of sports language. Data are discussed in order to
outline an all-inclusive genre-specific database where automatic extraction
of key words in terms of keyness and new exploratory techniques might
highlight new professional and socio-cultural issues.
In turn, Alessandra VICENTINI, Kim Serena GREGO, Barbara
BERTI, Paolo BELLINI, and Grazia ORIZIO (Intercultural and ideological
issues in lexicography: A prototype of a bioethics dictionary) remark that
(a) the emergence of issues related to the biomedical technological
development, (b) the presence of new modalities of production,
consumption, provision and use connected to globalization, (c) the
widening of participation frameworks and (d) the dissemination of medical
information to different social actors have resulted in a growing
phenomenon of hybridisation at the cultural, linguistic, medical,
philosophical, and Information Technology (IT) levels. All this requires a
redefinition and update of the lexicographic material available on the
6 Introduction
subject. Hence, the authors illustrate their project called Pro.bio.dic

(Prototype of a bioethics dictionary) aimed at building a dictionary
prototype collecting the English terms of contemporary bioethics, to be
published online on a web platform. Compiled by a joint team of experts
in philosophy, medicine, law, linguistics and IT, the database will feature a
word list assembled through the analysis of a corpus of real specialized
and non-specialized texts on bioethical subjects. Relevant is the
employment of a scientific, updated and innovative methodology which,
by combining the principles of corpus linguistics and text mining, will
account for the new conceptual and terminological developments in
bioethics. This will allow for the extraction of specific lemmas, which will
then be complemented with a usage label and context, so as to provide a
more precise description of their usage. A pilot version will be published
online in open modality, to make it available to the public for possible
modifications and updates. A final development will evaluate the role and
impact of translation to cement the various perspectives brought together
by this project into a truly intercultural product.
All the topics of this book from monolingual dictionary analysis to
bilingual dictionary and glossary compilation, tackled in an
interdisciplinary and intercultural perspective, with either a descriptive or
an applied linguistic aim, in a diachronic or a synchronic perspective
were discussed during the LEXIS conference (The study of lexicon across
cultural identities and textual genres) held on 11-13 November 2010 at the
University of Verona, where the eleven chapters of this book were
originally delivered.
Its broad spectrum allows the book to be of use to lexicographers and
lexicologists, as well as to corpus linguists, historical and contemporary
English linguists, students of English, and anybody interested in the
relationship between dictionaries and culture(s), bearing in mind that, as
remarked by Alexandra Bagasheva (this book, page 117), the DNA of a
culture is to be found within its language and its communicative practices
and the lexicon is a salient core that is transmitted through joint
attentional acts in the process of socialization and enculturation
ostensibly/inferentially from generation to generation. Dictionaries are
indeed cultural mines, from whose words and phrases we can extract the
juice of (more than) one culture; being aware of this is a fundamental step
forward in the enhancement of fruitful intercultural communication.
Verona, October 2011
RICHES; MONEY, OR PRECIOUS GOODS:1
THE LEXIS OF WEALTH IN MODERN ENGLISH
ELISABETTA LONATI
(UNIVERSITY OF MILAN)
1. From the far East to the far West:

Defining wealthy Britishness
The Modern Period is one of great change in British society and customs,
particularly concerning the way people imagine and categorize themselves
and others, according to both new standards of living and the meanings of
the goods that they buy and use (Hancock 1998: 202). As a matter of fact,
much of this socio-cultural transformation depends on the business
challenge characterizing 18th-century British domestic and foreign affairs,
especially with regard to its huge commercial-economic enterprise,
whether East India Trade or trans-Atlantic Commerce. Eastern imported
goods such as fashionable textiles, porcelain, lacquerware, toys, food and
beverages,2 etc. carried with them an idealized set of new values in
everyday British life, at least for the middle and upper classes. Such goods
and the values attributed to them spread from the far East to the Western
World Europe first and then the West Indies-Colonial British America
re-defining their respective social, cultural, national identities in a kind of
intra/inter-cultural exchange.3 The period between the end of the 17th
century and 1783 (end of the American War of Independence) was one
1
Johnson (1755), under WEALTH.
2
For a detailed discussion on consumption goods and new luxury items spreading from
the East, see Sidney W. Mintz (1993: 261-273) and Maxine Berg (2004: 85-142).
3
The Empire that England built between 1651 and 1775 was a new kind of empire,
significantly larger than the conglomerate that came to be known as Great Britain. It
was global, combining territory as far east as India and as far West as America. At
the same time, it was commercial, regulated from 1651 onward through a series of
mercantile laws, known as the Navigation Acts, that sought to reassert control over
8 The Lexis of Wealth in Modern English
of significant economic and political development in Britain, marked [...]

by a rise in personal well-being, [...] the growth of urban communities, [...]
and an expansion in consumerism, as well as the spread of beliefs that the
country was increasingly acquisitive and materialistic, and the society
increasingly commercialized. (Hancock 1994: 679)
The widespread business activity was led by the middling classes who,
based in the expansion of commerce, also associated commerce with
refining the passions and civilizing the people (Berg 2005: 232) and
identified the source of such refinement in ownership and display of
possessions.
The need to give a name to new incoming values and new incoming
realities, that is to new social identities and new social rituals, triggers off
the emergence of new terms and concepts, and the need to popularize
them. One of the principal means to achieve this goal but also the result
of this intra/inter-cultural climate is the inclusion of the linguistic stock
in dictionaries and encyclopaedias:
In the realm of vocabulary and meaning, the influence of social and
cultural change is obvious. As society changes, there are new things that
need new names; physical objects, institutions, sets of attitudes, values,
concepts. (Barber et al. 2009: 46)
Starting from 18th-century encyclopaedic works, either universal

dictionaries or universal/specialized encyclopaedias, (and in particular,
starting from the definition that Dr. Johnson gives of WEALTH in 1755)
this study discusses a sample of lexemes concerning wealth and its
multifarious conceptual/lexical representation(s), to identify what this
wealth actually is (or is considered to be) in the second half of the 18th-
century.
First, the discussion is held at a theoretical level, that is analyzing those
key terms which introduce new values or, rather, re-edit and re-
contextualize, transform, existing values, thus establishing the conceptual
framework for further debate.
Secondly, the discussion considers those new economic values but
even modern social virtues underpinning deep changes in sociability and
taste (in Great Britain and across the Atlantic): That is the interplay of
different factors in the construction of an essentially middling and urban
reality.
trade with English America [...]. (Hancock 2000: 3-34).

Elisabetta Lonati 9
Thirdly, an appendix collects a series of encyclopaedic entries which,

at a practical level, exemplify-objectify and lexicalize as well those
general principles discussed in the previous sections, thus exhibiting
concrete evidence of such theoretical-ideal-discursive wealth (both 18th-
century wealthy Britishness and wealthy American Britishness, later
wealthy American socio-cultural identity).
In particular, their cultural hue is emphasized: that is, the way the new
socio-economic issues (at different levels) are included in dictionaries and
are able to build up a linguistic scaffold that can reflect, represent and
satisfy (and, may be, justify) British cultural needs, from eastern countries
to western colonies.
2. Discussing wealth: From lexicographic treatment

to lexicological evidence
Among the manifold reference works issued around the middle of the
century, only two of them stand out as the main source for the present
discussion: these are Rolts A New Dictionary of Trade and Commerce
(1756, prefaced by Johnson) and Postlethwayts The Universal Dictionary
of Trade and Commerce (1757 [1751-55]), which is a translation and
adaptation of the French de Bruslonss Dictionnaire du Commerce
(published posthumously in 1723). However, some others are particularly
relevant for this study, such as Chamberss Cyclopaedia (1728), Barrows
A New and Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences (1751), along with
Johnsons Dictionary of the English Language (1755).
In all of these works, but particularly in Postlethwayts (1757 [1751-
55]), the conceptual-lexical framework for wealth is first provided by a
set of all-inclusive terms such as COMMERCE, LABOUR, MANUFACTURE(R),
MONEY (under MANURE of land), but also by the entry GREAT BRITAIN.
The semantic, pragmatic, intra/inter-cultural load the ideational load
provided by these lexical items, is extremely interesting because they
include a long series of cognate-lexicalized principles, as in a kind of
push-pull chain.
Commerce is the business activity par excellence in 18th-century
England, and British Empire. This economic activity strongly defines both
domestic and foreign Britishness. As such, it is also the primary source of
both wealth and power and, arguably, it may be considered as wealth
itself, a kind of industrious plenty. This is a well established truth or,
rather, common belief declared by any encyclopaedist. Under
COMMERCE, it is stated that
As the opulence and potency of every state are dependant on the industry
of the people, and the extension or compass of their foreign trade by a
continual exchange of all kinds of commodities, [...] whereby each
individual is enabled to preserve from decay, and increase his own
particular share of property and wealth. [...] Commerce is the only thing
that can draw gold and silver, the main springs of action, into any state;
(Rolt 1756, under COMMERCE)
and, again
Commerce is the most solid foundation of civil society, and the most
necessary principle to unite all men of whatever country or condition. It is
the bank of plenty to every part of the world: By it the mercantile people of
all nations seem to be one body incorporated; and the riches of every
trading town and place circulate into the hands of the poor, industrious, and
distant traders. (Barrow 1751, under COMMERCE)
Wealth, which is primarily associated with and lexicalized as

generic abundance, that is opulence (Rolt 1756, under COMMERCE) and
plenty (Barrow 1751, under COMMERCE), is guaranteed first and
foremost by the industrious activities of the British people; of those people
involved in the production (manufacturing processes) and circulation
(trading activities) of all kinds of commodities and of the riches of
every trading town and place (Postlethwayt 1757 [1751-55], under
LABOUR). In other words, the circulation of all the commodities which
depend upon the mechanical and manufactural arts affect[s] trade in
general (Postlethwayt 1757 [1751-55], under LABOUR).4
Commerce is the main source of wealth and the main business
underpinning any transformation, in any society: it enables distant
traders (Barrow 1751, under COMMERCE) and distant peoples to build
up both economic and socio-cultural relationships, that is communicative
relationships which stimulate the merging, and differentiation as well, of
habits, rituals and customs and, ultimately, words and meanings. By way
of commerce, wealth can be considered as the output of this multilayered
mechanism of exchange, but also the principle underlying this intra/inter-
4
3. Wares; merchandise; goods for traffick. [...] Commodities are moveables,
valuable by money, the common measure. Locke. Under CONVENIENCE/
CONVENIENCY: 2. Commodiousness; ease; freedom from difficulties. [...] every
man must want something for the conveniency of his life, [...]. Calamy. (Johnson
1755, under COMMODITY).
Elisabetta Lonati 11
cultural and linguistic exchange.5 Wealth is the way to the construction

of powerful social identities, both in Great Britain and in the British
colonies across the Atlantic:
The British Identity acquired by the new products was, to be sure, a part
of that wider development of Britishness in the eighteenth century, [...].
The goods taken out to other parts of the world represented the power of
the nation; they also provided a defining material identity to those trading,
travelling, and living far from their homes. [...] the image of Britannia [...]
represented liberty and commerce. (Berg 2005: 7-9)
This means that a commercial unifying principle, that is the most

necessary principle to unite all men of whatever country or condition
(Barrow 1751, under COMMERCE) or, in other words, a defining material
identity (Berg 2005: 8), acts at different levels: on the one hand, it may
be considered as a tool strengthening British identity in the mother country
and across the ocean. On the other hand, it acts as a bridge connecting
different realities with common interests: that is commercial-(political)
transactions. In the course of the 18th century, this systematic network is
gradually substituted by a process of identity differentiation through
anglicization, in particular concerning the American colonies. As far as
this study is concerned, this means that the lexical items analyzed
(pointing to rituals, habits, customs, goods, values, etc.) are first (re)-
contextualized and lexicalized in Great Britain, then re-contextualized and
lexicalized in the American colonies. The main process being represented
by the Far East goods/values spreading to Great Britain and being
transformed into new goods/values/identity and, from Great Britain to
the new American society/cultural identity: that is, the construction of
identities through gradual overlapping and differentiation. This phenomenon
obviously also acts at a linguistic-lexical level: behind a single lexeme
5
At this point of the discussion, it is necessary to define the meaning of the
expressions intra- and inter-cultural and the realities they refer to in this context.
The relationships established by way of British commerce and the values entailed
by them may be considered: 1. intra-cultural (domestic) because they are dealt
with by British people/traders a. across Great Britain, b. across an extended
geographical area under the British political power (essentially from Great Britain
towards the American colonies, from Europe to the West Indies); 2. inter-cultural
(foreign) because they are dealt with by British people/traders a. across Europe b.
across an extended geographical area from Great Britain towards the far East
(essentially India, China, Japan), c. towards some African ports (African Trade);
however, this branch of British commerce is not the focus of this study.
different values or different shades of the same original cultural value(s)

may be represented, or inferred.
Hence, according to what has been exposed so far, wealth may be
identified with and lexicalized as
1. individual property, that is private wealth;
2. public wealth/revenue, that is the increase of gold and silver into any
state, and as a consequence with its national potency/political power;
3. gold and silver, that is, the main springs of action in a state (Rolt,
1756, under COMMERCE);
4. civil advancement, social advancement and socio-cultural identity/-ies
(Commerce is [...] the foundation of civil society, Barrow, 1751,
under COMMERCE) and, not least, with;
5. the industry of the people and their working activities, that is with their
labour.
Labour human labour is, in fact, the intrinsic value of anything

(Postlethwayt 1757 [1751-55], under LABOUR) and
Wherefore the more labour there is in a state, the richer it is esteemed; and,
if that labour is well applied, the richer is reality, and the more powerful, a
state is. [...] rather than have a person idle in the state, we would
recommend the working of toys and trinkets, that have a shew of ornament,
though little of real use. (Postlethwayt 1757 [1751-55], under LABOUR)
It may be argued that labour itself is an aspect of wealth: the

industrious dynamism is the pivotal lexicalized principle able to make
practical issues possible, that is to transform everyday reality/life either
public or private into a richer reality-wealth.6 Indeed, people worked
harder [...] to gain more cash income so that they could buy these things
(Berg 2005: 11): that is toys and trinkets (Postlethwayt 1757 [1751-55],
under LABOUR, see above), ornaments and unnecessary items.
Consumption changes its essential characteristics, from necessity to desire,
a kind of conceptual-lexical extension from the one to the other, and
extension towards personal satisfaction and social repute, towards
6
What makes a commonwealth healthy? [...] national strength had to be
consolidated, through prosperity and populousness. [...] Wealth was the life-blood,
the vital spirits, of the incorporated nation. Hence its office was to flow. [...] true
wealth sprang from money in motion, stimulating labour, industry and exchange.
[...] opulence grew out of the velocity of commercial transactions, providing
employment and exercise for the members of the social organism. (Porter 1993: 58
wealthy consumption or, rather, wealthy consumption as social

experience.
Such new things-riches whichever their nature, or denomination-
lexicalization, that is commodities, desires, ornaments, toys, trinkets,
manufacturing processes, exchanging activities, labour, etc. should
primarily be associated to gold and silver: The quantity of gold and silver
seems to determine the comparative wealth and power of states; for those
are permanent and lasting riches, (Postlethwayt 1757 [1751-55], under
LABOUR), and
For this purpose, all the civilised nations in the world have agreed to put an
estimate on such goods as they have occasion to exchange in trade, equal
to some portion of silver or gold [...] which is called the value of a
commodity; [...] in money; [...] (Postlethwayt 1757 [1751-55], under
COMMERCE)
and, again
I. Money, i.e. gold and silver, being [...] the means by which commodities
of all kind are procured and transferred from one to another, is hence
become the sole medium of trade. (Postlethwayt 1757 [1751-55], Money,
under MANURE OF LAND)
But as money is the medium, which finds out the proportion of all values,
it is also the best medium to fix the proportion of land and labour, in
relation to all goods and commodities. [...] Money, for the facility and
convenience of commerce, being the medium of all values, the more hard
money there is in circulation, the dearer the price of labour, and
consequently all commodities in general, will be in a state. See articles
BARTER, CASH, CIRCULATION, MONEY. (Postlethwayt 1757 [1751-55],
under LABOUR)
In contemporary discourse, money is both identified-lexicalized first

and foremost with a measure of value, a durable precious good able to
measure other goods, and represented by gold and silver, specifically in
reference to coins.7 It is the preferred medium which comparatively
attributes value to anything and, for this reason, it is itself a (concrete)
form of wealth and, as a consequence, one of the manifold lexicalization
of wealth. In Smiths words, money is considered
7
For a detailed discussion on money, cash and credit in Early Modern and Modern
England, see Muldrew (2001: 78-120).
first as the measure of value and then as the medium of permutation or

exchange [...] a common standard with which they [people] compare all the
rest. This will naturally at first be the commodity with which they are best
acquainted. [...] / [...] Since, then, there must of necessity be a common
standard of which equal quantities should be of equal values, mettals in
general seemed best to answer this purpose, and of these the value of gold
and silver could best be ascertained. The temper of steel cannot be
precisely known, but what degree of alloy is in gold and silver can be
exactly found out. (Smith 1982: 499-500)
However, even though mainly associated with coins-cash, money also

lexicalizes another important concept: that is credit. This form of
exchange, and its complex social load as well, was particularly relevant in
the American colonies, where long distances favoured this kind of
financial transaction. In this case, the money-credit lexicalization of
wealth perform a fundamental social role as one of the key factors at the
basis of anglicized-American social economy.8 It became a unifying socio-
economic-political practice among the colonists, based on mutual trust and
entailing public respectability. Money, and its multifarious representations
and interpretations, acts thus as a kind of intra/inter-cultural currency
(Muldrew 2001: 83) in the way the complex idea of wealth was differently
engendered, contextualized, lexicalized and dealt with.9
However, to make money-wealth effective (that is, not a static load of
precious mettals, see above, Smiths Lectures) and to make it
productive, money must necessarily circulate and be extensive, because it
8
According to Breen (1986: 495) The mid-eighteenth century also witnessed a
spectacular expansion of credit. Indeed, the entire chain of merchandising from
British manufacturers to rural American consumers depended on liberal credit
arrangements. Without such a system, the colonists could not have participated in
the Atlantic economy.
9
For this specific concept, that is the way money helps the construction of the
clustered idea of wealth, see Muldrew (2001: 79-99). In his work, Muldrew
maintains that Wealth was determined by a large number of factors, which
included reputation, status, land and moveable goods, as well as money all of
which were culturally interpreted [...] wealth was not so much a state of ownership
or inclusion in a privileged group as a continual process of ethical judgment about
credit. (2001: 98).
The entry CREDIT in Johnsons dictionary (1755) is also relevant for the discussion.
Credit is 1. Belief. [...] 2. Honour; reputation. [...] 3. Esteem: good opinion. [...] 4.
Faith; testimony. [...] 5. Trust reposed. Credit is nothing but the expectation of
money, within some limited time. Locke. 6. Promise given. [...] 7. Influence; power
not compulsive; interest. [...]
is of no consequence, whether any nation hath a vast deal of gold and

silver, or very little money amongst them, if sufficient care be taken to
make the plenty of everything great enough, [...] which must and will
make them [people] all happy (Postlethwayt 1757 [1751-55], MONEY,
under MANURE OF LAND).
Circulating money, whether cash-coins, or even credit, is thus the
principal lever of relevant changes in 18th-century across-cultural British
attitude towards reality and social habits. Wealth reflected and was
conceptualized as a more complex condition than the mere possession
of large amount of cash or savings (Muldrew 2001: 98), it was also
connected to other factors, such as the amount of spending on family
consumption [...] but Because money measured one aspect of wealth it
was often taken to be wealth (ibid.). Postlethwayts consumer/ing
happiness thus partly overlaps with circulating money-wealth:
Plenty of money never fails to make trade flourish; because, where money
is plentiful, the people in general are thereby enabled, and will not fail to
be as much greater consumers of every thing, [...] and become generally
happy, whence such nations ever grow potent and formidable. This hath
always been found true in fact, and is almost self-evident. [...] and as the
happiness (i.e. the riches) and numbers of the subjects are greater or less,
so will the strength, honour, and revenue of every government be.
(Postlethwayt 1757 [1751-55], Money, under MANURE OF LAND)
That is, money means dynamic wealth and wealth represents the
welfare of the nation and of its citizens. Public-private welfare and/or
private-public welfare (would) assure happiness and the possibility to
consume more commodities, since gold and silver are of little use,
besides procuring the necessaries and conveniences of life, which alone
are real riches, [...] the great plenty of commodities (Postlethwayt 1757
[1751-55], Money, under MANURE OF LAND). The circulation of money
and other goods, by way of commerce, and the new attitudes towards
consumerism produce more riches, more goods and more money
(Johnson 1755, under WEALTH).
3. From eastern luxury objects to western valuable needs

The complex network determined by the multifarious commercial
relationships between East and West and, in particular, the relationships
between eastern luxury goods and western buyers (Berg 2004: 86),
established by Great Britain, contributed to the elaboration of a new idea
of wealth and welfare, that is to the elaboration of new manners of

consumption and production.
Wealth is not primarily different from the basic necessaries and
conveniencies of life. According to Rolt (1756) and Barrow (1751 under
COMMERCE, section 2. of the present study), the fundamental difference is
to be found in their amount or, in other words, wealth is primarily
conceptualized-lexicalized as abundance, opulence and plenty, that is
originally and generically measured in terms of quantity. However,
intra/inter-commercial connections deeply change the nature of the idea of
wealth and the material culture of the western world, the conveniencies of
life become a kind of polysemic need, that is
the wants, natural or artificial, real or imaginary, which the people of
different countries, or the different classes of inhabitants of the same
country, are desirous [...] to supply by mutual intercourse. (Postlethwayt
1757 [1751-55], under COMMERCE)
Even though western buyers (Berg 2004: 86) had long been
acquainted with goods imported from the East, there was a complete
change in the 18th-century outlook on these unreal or imaginary wants:
they were perceived as curiosities, prefabricated images of the East
whose provenance made them into luxuries in Europe, physical distance
from the place of production enhanced their value (Berg 2004: 96, 99).
The term wealth, summarizes thus changeable needs and changeable
values, according to social moulding as well as personal dispositions and
desires. The semantic-pragmatic load undergoes gradual shifts both
because of new physical realities (that is, new precious goods), and
continuous adaptations to psychological expectations (imaginary
representations or perceptions of wealth). What was a standardized,
common, or even widespread habit or commodity in the far East becomes
new wealthy-luxury habit-unreal want in the West and far West, to be re-
conceptualized and then re-lexicalized as new commodity-new necessity,
according to varying contexts of use. Desirability becomes thus another
key point both in the definition of wealth and in the lexicalization of its
modern expression(s).
The same quantitative principle, primarily applied to wealth as
abundance-opulence-plenty, may be also applied to labour, or more
labour (see Postlethwayt 1757, under LABOUR, section 2. of the present
study), as an index of domestic welfare (and repute abroad). And it is to
the entry LABOUR that we need to come back to further refine the
multilayered-clustered idea of wealth or, rather, the multilayered-clustered
lexeme wealth:
If the most part of these [...] [i.e. people-labourers] are employed [...] to
work fine cloth and fine linnen, and to refine, by greater labour, the houses,
the utensils, and other conveniences of life, though they add nothing to the
quantity of food of themselves, nor to the quantity and necessary uses of
the cloathing; yet the state will be esteemed the richer for their labour:
labour adds to the relish of food and drink, and to the ornament and
conveniency of cloathing. The more labour is employed in a suit of cloaths,
the dearer it sells, and the richer it is esteemed. [...] coarse and fine food
and cloathing are equally consumed; but, in the general notion, the state
that consumes fine cloathing is esteemed richer than that which consumes
coarse, etc. (Postlethwayt 1757 [1751-55], under LABOUR)
18th-century (British) wealthy thought also requires and embodies a

qualitative principle, a distinctive principle, a principle of refinement
underpinning cultural, social and civil advancement: that is, a superior
degree of consumption which entails a superior progress (Postlethwayt
1757b: 394, Of Arts and Manufactories) and stimulates the emergence
of individuality and self-differentiation through visual diversity.
Ornament, colour, and finish were, and became, the key parts of variety
(Berg 2005: 87). Refining labour makes the difference because it polishes
the concept of wealth and opens to taste. Definitely, wealth is also
lexicalized as an aesthetic-civilizing principle, a kind of moral and social
reform (Berg 2005: 41):
We have likewise endeavoured to animate our artists of every
denomination with such a spirit of emulation, not only in relation to each
other, but foreigners, as we hope may tend to the advancement of our old,
as well as the invention of new arts and manufactures. [...] we may reap
[...] reasonable satisfaction from all the variety of employments in human
society [...]. (Postlethwayt 1757 [1751-55], under MANUFACTURERS)
The improvements of practical arts and manufactures does greatly depend

on the judgment and ingenuity of artizans and manufacturers themselves; I
mean, chiefly upon those who are at the head of any manufacture; for the
fancies of mankind are soon tired with the same fashion;10 artists and
manufacturers, therefore, must ever be upon the wing of invention: grand
parent of all modes and fashion in dress, furniture, and almost every thing
else. [...] The taste of the world must be pleased, and our artists must
follow that taste. [...] in order constantly to please the taste of foreign
countries in our British manufacturers. (Postlethwayt 1757, under
MANUFACTURERS)
10
For both the definition and the social representation of the 18th-century concept
of fashion, see Appendix.
This multifaceted and wealthy aesthetic-civilizing principle, ultimately

came from the eastern cultures whose products were imported, and the
values they embodied were, consequently, borrowed and transformed
according to a changing western world. New contents for old, well known
and re-usable, words.11
Emulation (and imitation),12 invention, novelty, advancement, fashion,
modes, taste and pleasure, all of them both new added values or, rather,
virtues and different-positive shades of reality lexicalizing an expanding
and a deepening British, and then anglicized-American, conceptual
representation(s) of wealth.
Existing words for new ideas: the actual currency of middle class
wealthy values and changing habits opened to long lists of fashionable
objects and unique collectible items which answering new needs-wants-
desires of the middling and upper classes13 seduced gratification and
delight (see note 11). Some of the captivating and seducing needs are
clearly gathered and exemplified under Rolts MANUFACTURE, here re-
organized and labelled (on the left column):
11
This process is extensively treated by Maxine Berg. The following quotations
represent two key points in the present discussion. Eastern goods retained a sense
of luxury and difference. These Eastern commodities, however, objectified
oriental discourse. They were a construct of the market, seeming to represent the
lives and values of the East, but constructed by their Asian producers to meet
Western preconceptions of Eastern art. [...] / [...] China, Japan and India were long-
standing models of highly urbanized commercial societies making for a flowering
of consumer culture. (Berg 2005: 50-60). Manufacturing consumer goods in
seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Europe was perceived to be about learning
from Asia. Admiration for Asian craftmanship was followed, however, not by a
direct process of copying, but by the more subtle process of imitation. [...] / This
process of making the East in the West generated a whole range of different
consumer products: British new consumer goods. (Berg 2004: 126-141)
12
It certainly cannot be assumed that all consumption is ipso facto emulative in
character as some commentators appear to do. Indeed, it is important to stress that
many goods are likely to be desired for their own sake rather than for any prestige
which may be attached to them [...]. (Colin 1993: 40)
13
by creating new wants provoking new needs, those orchestrators of desire
[that is, producers and traders] were able to create new demand which would not
have become economically operational without the requisite entrepreneurial skills
to conjure it into existence. (Agnew 1993: 24). For a detailed discussion of this
topic see McKendrick et al. (1982).
Metal work: points, pins, scissars, andirons, tongs, fire forks,

gridirons, keys, hinges, hanging candlesticks, holy water
stops, buckles for shoes, bells, buckles, iron candlesticks,
grates, horns for lanthern,
Cutlery: knives, tin and leaden spoons,
Jewellery: beaten gold, silver wrought [...], bits (coins), broches,
bells
Leather work: leather, purses, pouches, boots,
Horse-harness: spurs, saddles, stirrups, buckles
Furniture: cupboard, curtain-rings
Fabric/Cloth: gloves, taylors sheers, painted cloths, laces, sheers,
Tableware: chasing-dishes,
Paper work: painted paper [ex. wallpaper], cards for wool, Roan
cards,
Glass: painted glass
Illustrations: painted images
Painting: silver wrought in paper for painters14
All of them expanding fashionable categories for a great amount of

comfortable everyday objects. Most of these domestic possessions
became consumer goods and were regarded as precious goods
(Johnson 1755, under WEALTH), the superfluous commodities beyond
basic needs, in other words luxuries [...] consumer goods conveying
national identity (Berg 2005: 19). In Ephraim Chamberss words:
14
Here, the original entry is partially transcribed: MANUFACTURE [...] the term
also signifies stuffs, clo[ths] and such like. As this cloth is of a good manufacture,
it is well wrought, or well made. [...] points, le[ather], laces, purses, pouches, pins,
gloves, knives [...], taylors sheers, scissars, andirons, cupboards, tongs, f[ire] forks,
gridirons, stock locks, keys, hinges, and [garments], spurs, painted glass, painted
papers [...], painted images, painted cloths, beaten gold, or silver wrought in paper
for painters, saddles [...], horse-harness, boots, bits, stirrups, buckles, chains [...],
latten nails with iron shanks, turnets, hanging candlesticks, holy water stops,
chasing-dishes, [...] curtain-rings, cards for wool, Roan cards, except [...] for
garnets, sheers, buckles for shoes, broches or [...] bells, hawk-bells, tin, and leaden
spoons, wire of latten and iron, iron candlesticks, grates, horns for lanthern or any
of the said waresmade and wrought pertaining to the crafts of girdlers, point-
makers, pinners, pur[sers], glovers, joiners, painters, card-makers, wire-
[mongrels], weavers, horners, bottle-makers, or copper-smiths, [and] not to be
imported by strangers to be sold, upon forfeiture or the value. (Rolt 1756, under
MANUFACTURE, or MANUFACTORY)
Trade, the Exchange of Commodities; [...] There is no doubt but

Commerce is nearly as antient as the World itself: Necessity set it on foot,
the Desire of Conveniency improvd it, and Vanity, Luxury, and Avarice,
have brought it to the present Pitch. At first it only consisted in the
Exchange of Things necessary for Life: [...]. (Chamberss Cyclopaedia,
1728, under COMMERCE) 15
From a negative connotation which associated luxury and luxury

items to excess and corruption, to the cultural significance of
commodities (Berg 2005: 37). The fact is that, according to 18th-century
political economists, luxury in one context could be necessity in another.
Standards of living could improve. The term comfort [was] increasingly
applied to those standards (Crowley 1999: 751). Luxury items summed
up and displayed quality, invention and novelty, along with comfort and
convenience. Indeed, it is the invention of comfort which played a key role
in lexicalizing wealth, a valueable aspect of wealth, as typically re-
shaped in anglicized-America.
This innovative and intriguing consumer attitude ultimately conveyed
the perception of a national community, both in Great Britain and in
anglicized-America, and gave rise to different socio-cultural identities.
3.1. Comfortable Anglicization (of America)

In the present section the discussion focuses on those aspects
characterizing the conceptualization of wealth in the American colonies: in
other words, the lexicalization of wealth in anglicized-America.
Initially, a sense of belonging to the mother country whether
emulation and/or imitation of habits, rituals, values, and consumption of
precious goods (Johnson 1755, under WEALTH) is the main feature:
anglicization means linguistic-cultural overlapping, intra-cultural
extension; whereas later, a sense of belonging or, rather, membership to a
new community strongly emerges previous emulation opens to the
awareness of common needs and, thence to the awareness of a common
cultural identity different from the original one though apparently
expressed with the same lexical outlook or, rather, the same lexical items.
15
The negative connotation is still present in Chambers and in other lexicographic
works belonging to the first half of the 18th-century. The shift from excess to
neutral representation (if not positive value) occurs towards the middle of the
century, at least among the upper and middling classes.
The source of this transformation goes back to a set of shared values

and attitudes which were transplanted in the West Indies from Great
Britain; all of them express the underlying principles of 18th-century
wealthy thought, ultimately affected by eastern values. The starting point
is the physical displacement of people particularly merchants and
goods as a consequence of that intense commercial activity across a vast
geographical area.
For Great Britain, the American colonies represent a huge safebox,
source of wealth-riches and wealth-riches themselves. Indeed, colonies
means the riches of Great Britain:
A great revenue is raised to the British government by returns made in the
produce of the plantations; [...] Never any people were possessed of so fine
a country, and so happily situated, as that which is subject to the crown of
Great Britain on the other side of the Atlantic ocean; [...]. It should also be
considered, that the riches of the British plantations are the riches of Great
Britain; their forces her forces, and their shipping their shipping; as these
proper, so will their mother country prosper of course; for hither all their
wealth flows in the end. (Rolt 1756, under BRITAIN-GREAT, or Great
Britain)
As a matter of fact, Great Britain is the place where the superfluous

cash, and other riches, acquired in America, must center; which is not one
of the least securities that Great Britain has to keep the colonies always in
due subjection. [...] and furnish them with every thing that contributes to
the support or conveniencies of life (Rolt 1756, under BRITAIN-GREAT, or
Great Britain). Actually, this systematic subjection (which is here
primarily commercial subjection) promotes a re-lexicalization of wealth-
riches-money-precious goods on the other side of the Atlantic. At first, the
relationship with the mother country is based on material experience-
imports, namely precious goods consumption, on those trinkets of all
sorts (Rolt 1756, under BRITAIN-GREAT) coming from abroad:
The luxury of the colonies, which increases daily, consumes great
quantities of English manufactured silk, haberdashery, houshold-furniture,
and trinkets of all sorts; as also a very considerable value in East India
goods. (Rolt 1756, under BRITAIN-GREAT, or Great Britain)
The exportation from England to her American colonies, consist of almost

all the necessaries and conveniences of life, provisions chiefly excepted;
[] colonies are furnished from England, with materials from wearing
apparel, houshold furniture, silk, woollen, and linnen manufactures, iron,
cordage, and sails [...]; in a word, England furnishes them almost with
every thing needful for the luxuries, as well as conveniences, of life, except
of provisions, as before observed. (Postlethwayt 1757, BRITAIN, or GREAT

BRITAIN, or the BRITISH EMPIRE)
Later, this material experience whether necessaries and conveniencies

of life or luxuries (Postlethwayt 1757 [1751-55], under GREAT
BRITAIN) takes on its own American identity: common consumption
joins together those settlers scattered in a vast area, thus creating an ideal,
as well as a real, cultural community. Wealth, those riches and precious
goods (Johnson 1755, under WEALTH), money (especially in the sense of
credit), sociability and rituals (such as tea drinking), display of
possessions, the material as well as the spiritual delight for luxury items
whose moral ambiguity, transform them into conveniencies, desirable
wants, from a semantic, pragmatic and lexical point of view16 are (re-)
lexicalized as comfort. Comfort means physical satisfaction, ease,
something in-between human basic needs and excessive superfluity (that
troublesome luxury of the past). Comfort partially substitutes the idea of
luxury, as well as the word luxury to represent a new community of
consumers,17 a new idea of wealth as pleasure and enjoyment (Martin
1749, under COMFORT), ultimately as civil advancement (see Barrow
1751, under COMMERCE).
16
I. Voluptously; addictedness to pleasure. [...] 4. Delicious fare. [...] (Johnson
1755, under LUXURY). The neutral connotation of the term luxury is seldom
found in 18th-century British dictionaries which usually morally condemn it as a
kind of vicious excess. However, it seems relevant here to put forward the
definition documented in Dyche-Pardons dictionary of English (1737 [1735]): in
this case, the target readership was not the highly educated one of traditional
dictionaries, but those who were not learned in the classical languages. Maybe, the
need to popularize concepts and bridge in an easier way words and things, made
the compilers careful to those significant meaning variations pointing to everyday
life and concepts, both definitely established or in progress. (Dyche-Pardon 1737,
under LUXURY: or LUXURIOUSNESS (S.) living in all Manner of Splendor and
Superfluity of Buildings, Servants, Cloaths, Food, etc.)
17
On this topic, see Crowley (1999: 749-782). In particular, Early eighteenth-
century English writers primarily used convenience to describe physical
satisfaction with their immediate material culture. (Crowley 1999: 761). And As
a predecessor for what would eventually be known as comfort regarding
possessions in a consumer society, convenience had two advanages: it measured
usefulness according to any purpose, and it left the purposes themselves morally
neutral and open-ended. (Crowley 1999: 762). Also relevant is Crowley (2001:
141-170): It made no difference whether a material item was considered a luxury
or a necessity, since the distinction between them broke down when applied to
specific item in specific societies. [...]. (2001: 153)
The common consumer experience triggers off the new American

cultural identity as well as its political liberty: wealth also means and is
conceptualized-lexicalized as both cultural and political independence. If
the original overlapping with the mother country, the original American
emulative attitude towards British custums and rituals, along with a direct
and quite obvious involvement in the production of British wealth
(whether material, civil, social, political, etc.) means that The colonists
either bring their estates over to England, if they meet with success; or
they live in an elegant manner there [i.e. emulation of the mother country],
and import British manufactures (Rolt 1756, under BRITAIN-GREAT, or
Great Britain), later they just live in an elegant-comfortable manner
there.
In Great Britain the middling and upper classes already established
with their set of accepted values had been acquiring new riches and
displaying new rituals, whereas in anglicized-America, these new habits,
social rituals and wealthy possessions are the lever to the constitution of a
new community with its own shared values and beliefs. This reversal of
the cause-effect relationship is at the basis of a new outlook on wealth, of
its function, conceptualization and, consequently, its lexicalization. In
Great Britain wealth defines (that is, consolidates) the upper and middling
classes, in anglicized-America wealth constitutes (that is, sets up) new
well-off social groups.
On either side of the Atlantic, a shared vocabulary for wealth more
and more descriptive, pointing to better quality and wider variety
including goods, principles and tastes complies with multifarious contexts
and situations. The semantic-pragmatic load of wealthy terminology
and the term wealth itself gradually changes its possible reference and
connotation: from intra-cultural emulation to cultural differentiation, from
a shared linguistic experience to conceptual/ized and/or lexical/ized
independence.18
18
Americans began to define social status in relation to commodities. This was,
of course, an expression of a much larger, long-term transformation of the Atlantic
world. And though this process differentiated men and women in new ways, it also
provided them with a common framework of experience, a shared language of
consumption. (Breen 1988: 76). The language of consumption became
increasingly complex, forcing everyone to distinguish with ever greater precision
exactly what they wanted. [...] / Real experiences as consumers sparked the
production of meanings. These meanings were, of course, highly charged with
political implications, for it was through the contest over the meanings of
consumption that colonists challenged or defended the traditional social order.
(Breen 1993: 252-254)
4. Concluding remarks
In the second half of the 18th-century, the term wealth expresses a
multifaceted semantic-pragmatic concept represented by multifarious and
multifaceted worldly riches: that is physical objects, processes and, not
least new/re-newed (re-conceptualized and re-lexicalized) virtues and
values. However, what counts more is both the dynamic principle
underlying the general concept expressed by the term wealth as well as the
dynamic outlook on external social reality/ies, in Great Britain and across
the Atlantic.
The meta-concept wealth is variously lexicalized according to different
levels of analysis. On the one hand, it partially overlaps with commerce,
labour, manufacture and money and, consequently, it may be lexicalized
as such. On the other hand, the activities, the processes and the realities
expressed by these business words also entails two distinctive aspects of
wealth: quantity and quality, which themselves open to countless possible
lexicalizations. If wealth is primarily abundance-plenty of anything, later,
the industrious labour tranforms abundance into a visible refined plenty,
an aesthetic plenty, to be displayed for social/national repute, for
private/public self-differentiation: variety and invention play a key role.
Hence, wealth can be variously lexicalized or, rather, parcelled out in a
great amount of lexical items not completely disentangled the one from the
other:
1. private property (necessaries, conveniences, commodities, circulating

money-credit, display, etc.) and public revenue (gold and silver, cash
and credit, repute, etc.), both of them from a quantitative and
qualitative point of view;
2. private/public and intra/inter-cultural self-differentiation:
a. British identity (and power), either cultural, social, political, etc.;
b. American identity (that is independence-liberty from the mother
country; comfortable consumption);
3. private/public virtues and values, such as refinement, ornament, relish,
taste, emulation, imitation, invention, novelty, advancement, fashion,
modes: that is re-newed luxury/ies, but also pleasure, delight, comfort-
satisfaction-enjoyment (particularly in Anglicized-America and, later,
in American consumer society);
4. private happiness which depends on the amount of spending on family
consumption, and entails public welfare.
Wealth is definitely usage and delight of those riches, money, or

precious goods put forward by Johnson 1755 under WEALTH.
The lexicographic works become the linguistic repository of lexis a

kind of warehouse as well as retailer, but also precious goods themselves,
commodities containing other commodities having a major role in
determining the record, the expansion and the elaboration of new and/or
re-newed ideas. Dictionaries and encyclopaedias handle
learning and knowledge offered by global interconnections, that is,
learning desires for new goods through the experience of importing, and
learning skills and understanding materials in responding to imports.
Imports play their part in transforming knowledge. (Berg 2004: 103)
Moreover, dictionaries and encyclopaedias transform such learning and

knowledge into words, thus promoting the expansion of English
vocabulary in Great Britain but also stimulating the manifold intra/inter-
cultural interpretations, usages and representations across the Atlantic. A
common core of intra-cultural/lexical issues are transformed, through
language, into a powerful vehicle of inter-cultural/lexical distinction.
References
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[...]. London: Printed for the Proprietors, [...].
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Arts and Sciences, [...]. London: Printed for James and John Knapton,
[...].
Dyche, Thomas and William Pardon. 1737 [1735]. A New General English
Dictionary [...]. London: Printed for Richard Ware, [...].
Johnson, Samuel. 1755. A Dictionary of the English Language [...]. London:
Printed by W. Strahan for J. and P. Knapton, T and T. Longman [...].
Martin, Benjamin. 1749. Lingua Britannica Reformata: Or, a New English
Dictionary [...]. London: Printed for J. Hodges, [...].
Postlethwayt, Malachy. 1757 [1751-55]. The Universal Dictionary of Trade
and Commerce, [...]. London: Printed for John Knapton [...].
. 1757b. Britains Commercial Interest Explained and Improved; in a
Series of Dissertations on Several Important Branches of her Trade and
Police: [...]. London: Printed for D. Browne, [...].
Rolt, Richard. 1756. A New Dictionary of Trade and Commerce, [...].
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Smith, Adam. 1982. Lectures on Jurisprudence (Report of 1762-3. Report
dated 1766). R.L. Meek, D.D. Raphael and P.G. Stein (eds.).
Indianapolis: Liberty Fund (This Liberty Fund edition of 1982 is an

exact photographic reproduction of the edition published by Oxford
University Press in 1978).
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Campbell, Colin. 1993. Understanding traditional and modern patterns of
consumption in eighteenth-century England: A character-action
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749-782.
Hancock, David. 2000. A world of business to do: William Freeman and
the Foundation of Englands commercial empire 1645-1707. The
William and Mary Quarterly 57. 3-34.
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individual investment in the funds. The Economic History Review 47.
679-702.
McKendrick, Neil, John Brewer and J.H Plumb. 1982. The Birth of a
Consumer Society: The Commercialization of Eighteenth-Century
England. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Mintz, Sidney W. 1993. The changing roles of food in the study of
consumption. In John Brewer and Roy Porter (eds.), Consumption and
the World of Goods. London: Routledge. 261-273.
Muldrew, Craig. 2001. Hard food for midas: Cash and its social value in
early modern England. Past & Present 170. 78-120.
Porter, Roy. 1993. Consumption: Disease of the consumer society. In John
Brewer and Roy Porter (eds.), Consumption and the World of Goods.
London: Routledge. 59-81.
Appendix: Objectifying eastern culture,

establishing western rituals
This appendix collects some entries objectifying the principles,
values and precious goods (Johnson 1755, under WEALTH) discussed
in the present study. All of them lexicalize the clustered and changing
concept of wealth, and wealth itself, in the second half of the 18th-
century (both in Great Britain and in Anglicized-America). Except for
the headwords, the key words which variously lexicalize wealth in the
body of the entries that is, those words used to describe the positive
qualitites of the objects listed below but also expressing more general
values have been emphasized in bold.
FASHION,
or Mode, is a term used among artificers, for the trouble, time, and
labour employed in a piece of work; particularly any silver or gold
utensil, instrument, toy, or the like; for it is by the fashion that the wages
or salary of the workmen is regulated.
The term fashion is also applicable to the new stuff, which pleasing by
their colour, their design, or their manufacture, are first eagerly sought
for, but give way in their turn to other stuffs that have the charms of
novelty. The word fashion is therefore used with regard to every
particular that enters the commerce of wool, and silk, either for
clothing, ornament, or furniture, or even things in no respect relative
to commerce. Thus, it is said, the colour of this cloth is the fashion; this
damask is a new fashion; this design is new, but the fashion will not
continue long; these points, these laces are now the fashion. A stuff is
said not to be in fashion when there is no call for it.
It is certainly advantageous for a tradesman to invent new fashions of
stuffs, or silks, if he can have a prompt sale for them; but it is dangerous
for him to encumber himself with an abundance of novelties, which may
easily become shop-keepers, or which he is obliged to sell very often at a
considerable loss, either by a sudden change of fashion, or by public
mournings, which sometimes happen least expected. (Rolt 1756)
FAN,
a machine used to raise wind [...] in England, it is more properly a toy,
being more conducive to ornament than utility. The custom now
prevalent among the ladies of wearing fans, was borrowed from the
inhabitants of the eastern countries; where the intemperate heat of the
climate renders the use of fans, and umbrellas, almost indispensable: but
at present, what is called a fan among Europeans, is a thin skin, or piece
of paper, taffety, or other light stuff, cut semi-circularly, and mounted on
several little sticks of wood, ivory, tortoise-shell, or the like; the sticks
being usually provided by the cabinet makers or toymen, and the fan-
painters plait the papers, paint, and mount them. The common painting is
gold leaf, applied on a silvered ground, both prepared by the gold
beaters; though sometimes they paint on a gold ground, but it is rarely,
most true gold being too dear, and false too paltry. (Rolt 1756)
GLOVE,
a habit, or covering, for the hand and [wrist] used both for warmth,
decency, and as a shelter for the weather. Gloves are distinguished , with
respect to [...] into leathern gloves, silk gloves, thread gloves, [...].
There are also gloves of velvet, sattin, taffety, &c. leather gloves are
made of shammy, kid, lamb, [...] and buff skins. There are likewise
perfumed gloves, washed, glazed, waxed gloves; white, black, snuff and
other coloured gloves; single, lined, topped, laced, fringed with gold,
silver, silk, fur, and other things. [...] proverb, That for a glove to be
good, and well made, three kingdoms must contribute to it; Spain to
dress the leather, France to cut it, and England to sew it. [...] The shops
of London are chiefly supplied with gloves for the country; of which the
best are from Scotland. (Rolt 1756)
CALLICOE,
One of the general names for the cotton cloths of India; being a
particular kind of cotton, brought from Calicut, and other places, both
white and coloured; which was formerly much worn in England, for the
garments of women and children; but now prohibited to be worn, printed
or coloured, otherwise than by needlework, upon account of its
prejuducing the woollen and linen manufactures of Great Britain and
Ireland, as also the manufacturing of raw silk imported from Turky and
other countries.
Callicoe printing. The staining, painting, or printing of callicoe; the
perfection of which consists in bright, fixed, and permanent colours,
wherein the English printers now rival those of India. (Rolt 1756)
P APER,
[...]
Paper is of various kind. With regard to colours, they are divided into
white, brown, blue, &c. and to quality, into fine, second, bastard,
superfine, &c. with respect also to use, into writing, printing, pressing,
cap, cartridge, copy, post, &c. With regard to dimensions, into demy,
crown, fools cap, pot, royal, super-royal, imperial, elephant, atlas, &c.
There is also printed, raised, and embossed paper, wherewith to hang
room, and wherein there is a large consumption, and in which our
artists have arrived at a great perfection.
MARBLED PAPER is a sort variously stained with divers colours, made
after the following manner: [...].
To gild paper. [...]
To silver paper, after the Chinese manner, without silver. [...]

To make fine red paper. [...]
Of Japan paper. [...]
Those who would excel in the art of paper-making, should be acquainted
not only with the common methods of making the different kinds of
paper, but enquire into every sort of material wherewith the same may be
made in the cheapest and the best manner. [...] 5. The state of this art
should be well known, as practised in China, France, Holland and
England, in order to advance the manufacture for every use. 6. The ways
of embossing and printing of paper for hangings, should be advanced, the
consumption therein being great. [...] (Postlethwayt 1757 [1751-55])
P ORCELAIN, or PURCELAIN,
a fine kind of earthen ware made in China, and therefore also called
China, or China-ware; but brought into Europe from other parts of the
east, as Japan, Siam, Surat, and Persia. [...]
There is another kind of porcelain, the making of which is very difficult,
and is, therefore, very uncommon. The body of this porcelain is
extremely thin, and its surface very even, both within and without; it has
mouldings, however, in it, groupes of flowers, for example, and other
similar ornaments. [...] The European merchants sometimes desire the
Chinese workmen to give them plates of china for tables, the seats of
chairs, or the frames of pictures; but these cannot be had: the largest and
longest plates are about a foot square; if they are made larger, let them be
as thick as they will, they warp. For this reason, instead of making these
plates thick, they make them with two surfaces, which they unite, leaving
the inside hollow: in the two fields they make two apertures, to enchase
them in joiners works, or in the backs of chairs, where they make an
agreable appearance. [...]
According to the annals of King-te-tching, there were formerly urns sold
at fifty-eight, or fifty-nine taels, which amount to more than eighty
crowns. What an immense sum must these have been worth in Europe?
[...]
The natives of China are almost as curious about glasses and crystals
which come from Europe, as the Europeans are of the Chinese
porcelains; but, whatever esteem the Chinese have for our commodities
of this kind, they do not cross the seas for European glasses, finding their
own porcelain of more use, because it bears hot liquors. [...]
What renders the Oriental porcelain so universally estimable is, not only
its general delicacy, but its general greater cheapness compared to that
of Dresden, or any other nation: [...].
It is certain that the art of of pottery, as well in England as in Holland
and France, has, within these twenty years, arrived to great perfection.
And, if ever this, or any other European nation should advance in the
manufacture of China ware, to the degree of perfection that the Eastern
countries have done, I am inclinable to think it must depend rather upon
art than on the mere productions of nature; for, although, in the Eastern
countries there may be earths of a quality for the purpose, superior to
such as may have yet been discovered in any other parts of the world, yet
the extraordinary beauty of their earth, we apprehend, is owing chiefly
to art: and, if once the Europeans obtain that art, we believe there are
earths enough, even in England, from which as good porcelain may be
made, as from any that it may come from the East-Indies, or from
Dresden, and that it may come as cheap too, as some of our pottery-war.
It was long before we were able to bring the art of blanching linnen to
the delicacy to which we have at present arrived; and the art of earth-
blanching may not require less time, though we are inclined to think
there is little mystery in it. (Postlethwayt 1757)
TEA,
Thea, or as the Japanese call it Teha. The leaf of a tree or shrub, growing
in several provinces of China, Japan, and Siam, whose infusion is in
general used as a drink. [...] The chinese know nothing of the imperial
tea, flower of tea, and many other names, which are used in Europe to
distinguish the goodness, and the price of this fashionable commodity;
[...]. There are two general sorts of tea in Europe: Green TEA, [...]. Bohea
TEA, [...]. The drink tea is made in China, and throughout the greatest
part of the East, after the same manner as in Europe, by infusing the
leaves in boiling water, and drinking the infusion hot. Indeed, with us, it
is usual to temper its bitterness with sugar, of which the orientals use
little or none. However, the Japanese are said to prepare their liquor
somewhat different, by puverising it, and stirring the powder in hot
water, drinkling it as Europeans do coffee. The Chinese are always
making tea, especially at meals, which is the chief treat wherewith they
regale their friends. The most moderate take it at least three times a day,
others ten times, or more; and yet it is computed the consumption of tea
among the English and Dutch is as great in proportion as among the
Orientals; [...].
The smuggling of tea being a great detriment to the public revenue, an
act of parliament was passed in 1745 for reducing this duty to one-half
what it was before, which brought a great increase to the revenue: [...].
(Rolt 1756)
BOHEA,
One of the best kinds of tea that comes from China. [...] There is a great
variety of teas, as they differ in colour, flavour, and in the size of the
leaf. These are, however, all the leaves of the same tree, only differing
according to the seasons at which they are gathered, and the manner of
the dying. [...] If we take tea in a dietetic view, it seems in the general, if
drank moderately, not only harmless, but very useful. [...] Others are no
less severe in their censures, and impute the most pernicious
consequences to it, accounting it no better than a slow, but efficacious
poison. [...] They are so hurried by their prejudices, that they will not
indulge themselves the liberty they would use in other cases, viz. to
consider the difference between the moderate, seasonable, and discreet
use of a proper tea, and the excessive and unreasonable use of an
unsuitable sort. [...] Others are more artful, and will have the virtues of
tea to be industriously magnified for the interest of the importers. But
what profit can private persons have by attempting to put a cheat on the
public? Nor it is supposable that gentlemen of learning and ingenuity do
recommend it from any other motive but that of benevolence towards
their fellow creatures. (Postlethwayt 1757 [1751-55])
LACE-MANUFACTURE,
is a work composed of many threads of gold and silver, fine or
otherwise, or of silk or linnen, interwoven the one with the other, [...].
The fabric of lace has divers varieties and qualities, as that of net-work-
lace, or bone-lace; also some with large, others with small flowers, some
in a loose, others in a compact manner; some high-raised, others lower,
and some very low-raised; one kind all of gold or silver-thread, or part of
gold and part of silver; others of silk of divers colours, and others of
linnen-thread, extremely white.
The common use hereof is for the embellishment of dress, in regard to
linnens, ladies head-dresses, the altar ornament of churches. [...]
The lace manufacture in England has greatly improved within these few
years, and is likely to arrive at as high perfection in this kingdom, as it is
in any part of Europe, [...]. (Postlethwayt 1757 [1751-55])
LAQUERED WARE,
are peculiar sorts of cabinet-work, varnished, in the nature of japan-
work, over with laquer. See LAQUE.
A white laquer, or varnish. [...] This is an excellent laquer, fit to be used
for light colours.
Another laquer to mix with red or dark colours, and to japan the work
over with. [...]
Another laquer varnish. [...]
A fine laquer, or varnish, for blue, and other colours, which will make
them bright like looking-glasses. [...]
A Chinese laquer for all sorts of colours. [...] (Postlethwayt 1757 [1751-
55])
SILK MANUFACTURE of CHINA.

It may be said that China is the country of silk, and seems to be an
inexhaustible source of that commodity. It not only furnishes silk to a
great number of nations in Europe and Asia, but also the emperor, the
princes, the mandarins, the literati, the women, and, in a word, all those
in easy circumstances, wear habits of silk, and are cloathed with sattin or
damask; very few, except the vulgar or country people wear cotton
painted blue. [...]
An ACT of P ARLIAMENT for repealing the DUTIES payable on CHINA RAW

SILK, [...]. Whereas the duties now payable upon raw silk imported from
China are a great discouragement to the importation thereof: and whereas
a constant and plentiful supply of that valuable commodity to be
manufactured in this kingdom, will be a public benefit, and greatly
contribute to the increase and the improvement of the silk manufactures:
therefore we [...] do most humbly beseech your Majesty, [...] That [...]
the several rates, duties, subsidies, and impositions, now payable upon
the importation of raw silk of the growth or produce of China, [...] shall
cease, determine, and be no longer paid. [...]
An ACT of P ARLIAMENT for encouraging the CULTURE of RAW SILK [...]
in AMERICA. Whereas it will greatly tend to the increse and
improvement of the silk manufactures of this kingdom, to encourage
the growth and culture of silk [...] in America, [...] Such has been the
encouragement given by the legislature, to the culture of raw silk in our
AMERICAN colonies. [...]
Silk is a material for a very considerable manufacture; which being
brought from abroad raw, we here twist, dye, and weave into different
goodnesses, both plain, striped, and flowered, either by itself, or mixed
with gold and silver; so richly brocaded, that we are allowed to exceed
those from whom we had the art. Of this material also are made great
quantities of ribbons, silk stockings, and other things; not only to serve
ourselves, but also to export. [...]
All this silk is manufactured in Great-Britain, very little excepted, which
is sometimes re-exported unwrought, chiefly to Ireland. The growth and
increase of the consumption of silk in these kingdoms, has been much
owing [...] more especially to the prohibiting the use and wearing of
EAST-INDIA wrought silks, which were formerly worn in England to an
extraordinary degree; [...]. (Postlethwayt 1757 [1751-55])
PHRASEOLOGY IN TIME:
EXAMPLES OF CULTURE-BOUND EXPRESSIONS
FROM BARETTIS EASY PHRASEOLOGY (1775)
AND FROM DUVERGERS DICTIONARY (1810?)1
STEFANIA NUCCORINI
(ROMA TRE UNIVERSITY)
1. Introduction
This chapter is part of a wider project investigating the use of the word
phraseology and the theoretical approaches it has conveyed, or on which
it has been based, starting from the publication of Barettis Easy
Phraseology (1775) up to the present time. This period has been chosen
because Easy Phraseology (EP) seems to have marked a considerable
change in the use of the word phraseology as attested in the OED. After
its publication there was a significant shift in the use of the word
phraseology over a relatively short time, as shown by Duvergers
Comparison between the Idioms, Genius and Phraseology of the French
and English languages (1810?) (C). The linguistic and cultural differences
between Barettis and Duvergers works and between the concepts of
phraseology underlining, or resulting from them, will be analysed in
Sections 2 and 3 respectively, and will be related to present-day
approaches to the field of phraseology. Some concluding remarks will be
offered in Section 4.
1
The date 1810 followed by the question mark is the date reported in the British
Library Catalogue. For the dates of subsequent editions see Nuccorini 2008.
36 Phraseology in Time
2. Background
Barettis EP (see Appendix for a sample page) and Duvergers C (see
Appendix for a sample page) differ in many formal and substantial
aspects, but they are both bilingual (the former includes Italian and
English, the latter English and French) and share similar backgrounds and
objectives, which will be illustrated in the following paragraphs. A
different view of phraseology and of culture between English and Italian
and English and French will emerge.
EP is a collection of 56 Dialogues, on different topics, of different
length, between different fictitious characters or between the Master of
Italian (Baretti himself) and his real pupil (the addressee of the
Dedicatory Letter). All Dialogues are composed of on-going conversations:
each part is in Italian and in English, though not in a consistent order, for
explicitly acknowledged didactic purposes (see below). Italian is meant to
be the target language and in most cases it is obvious that the English parts
are translations of the Italian ones, though the inverse cannot be excluded
(Martino 2009: 56) and it is indeed sometimes clearly ascertained
(Iamartino 1994: 402). The translational direction is not made explicitly
clear in the Dedicatory Letter, whose function is similar to that of modern
introductions. If EP were a dictionary, the Italian-into-English translation
process would make it a decoding dictionary.
According to the OED the word phraseology was last used in the
since-then obsolete sense a collection or handbook of the phrases or
idioms of a language; a phrasebook exactly in the title of Barettis EP. It
is interesting to notice, though, that the contents of Barettis work, despite
the sense attributed to its title, are not a collection of phrases or idioms,
nor do they look like, for their very nature, a phrasebook, i.e. a small
book containing useful or idiomatic expressions in a foreign language []
with explanations or translations of their meaning (OED s.v. phrasebook,
sense A). In fact, EP amounts to 424 pages and its dialogues, purposefully
compiled to teach Italian, are not meant to illustrate phrases or idioms
specifically, but rather to introduce ten or twelve thousand words
(Baretti 1775: 10), thus lexis in general, alongside a few morpho-syntactic
structures and phonological features. In his Dictionary of the English and
the Italian Languages (1760) Baretti referred to phraseology as un
libro o una collezione di frasi (Iamartino 1994: 388), whereas in Dialogue
50 (Baretti 1775: 323) he illustrates a different meaning of phraseology,
though in a slightly mocking way as typical of his style. The first part of
the Dialogue, between Hettys Master (Baretti) and two elephants, is rich
in very erudite, formal and inappropriate language: after briefly using such
Stefania Nuccorini 37
a language himself the Master asks the elephants: Cant you both tell in
plain language, and without any sesquipedal words, what you have to
say? The elephants oblige and the Master exclaims: This is the
phraseology that I like. Simplicity in speech and in manners []. This
turns the sense of the combination easy phraseology closer to the OED
definition 1a, namely the selection or arrangement of words and phrases
in the expression of ideas; manner or style of expression []. However,
Barettis EP does indeed include explanations and translations of
proverbial, idiomatic and other culture-specific expressions as will be
shown.
Duvergers C is a dictionary proper, though its entry system, arranged
in two columns, is rather sui generis. Unlike many French-English
dictionaries published in the same period it is an English-French
dictionary for encoding purposes (Nuccorini 2008). English expressions
are listed in the left column, equivalent French ones in the right column.
This arrangement might seem typical of phrase books, in the sense above
reported, but unlike them, the nature itself of the expressions included
clearly differentiates this dictionary from superficially similar works. The
expressions which constitute the English entries, though in a rather
peculiar way, are close to examples in modern lexicography: they present
contextualised word combinations and so do their French equivalents.
Most of these expressions include combinations nowadays referred to as
lexical or grammatical collocations, which Duverger considered as
embodying the idioms, genius and phraseology of the French and the
English languages referred to in the title of his Dictionary. The word
idiom at the time was synonymous with genius and with phraseology,
according to the following OED definitions:
idiom: the specific character, property or genius of any language; the
manner of expression which is habitual and peculiar to it;
genius: of a language, law or institution. Prevailing character or
spirit, general drift, characteristic method or procedure;
phraseology: the choice or arrangements of words and phrases in the
expression of ideas; manner or style of expression; the
particular form of speech or diction which characterises a
writer, literary production, language etc.
Quite interestingly, as further evidence of the nature of the expressions

included, as far as I know in the Dictionary there are only two idioms
proper, in the sense of multi-word, lexico-grammatically fixed, non-
compositional and institutionalised expressions, namely to be hand and
glove (sic, not hand in glove) (French tre comme les deux doights de la
main) and to leave no stone unturned (French mettre tout en oeuvre; fair
agir toutes sortes de ressorts: a footnote (see 3.2) adds fig. et fam.
remuer ciel et terre).
Despite these and other differences in their contents and in their lay-
out, Barettis and Duvergers works are comparable, for the purpose of
this investigation, because they are both didactic material and they both
concern the teaching of a foreign language, whose quintessence is
captured by the word phraseology, though in different senses. In
addition they are both rooted in analogous experience-based approaches.
Baretti was a Maestro di Italiano (Iamartino 1994), he taught Italian for
many years and he was Italian tutor to Hester Thrales daughter, Miss
Hetty, the addressee of the Dedicatory Letter, written in English and in
Italian, in which he recommends her (and all the other young ladies who
intend to learn the colloquial part of the Italian Language as clearly stated
on the title page) to read all the Dialogues in their Italian version, since
there is full as regular a series and close a concatenation between them
all (Baretti 1775: xiii). To this end the Dialogues are structured very
ingeniously according to the author: each part is presented in Italian and
then in English or vice-versa, in no pre-established order as already stated,
since the author intends by this deep-laid stratagem to force the readers
eyes to an uninterrupted progression (Baretti 1775: xiii).
Very little is known about Duvergers life and his professional
achievements; the only source, to my knowledge, is what he says about
himself in the ptre ddicatoire of his dictionary, written in French only,
addressed to his colires. He was a Frenchman who had spent most of his
life in England teaching French to upper class demoiselles: he adds that
the compilation of his dictionary was une tude qui a dure la moiti da
la vie. His dedication is addressed to unidentified young ladies; though
these belonged, for social and educational reasons, to the same class as
Miss Hetty Thrale (Barettis addressee), the lack of an explicitly recalled
patron constitutes a departure from the then rhetoric of dedicatory letters
and adds to the characteristics of his dictionary. On the contrary, Miss
Hetty, whose mother was a writer and a friend, among others, of
Johnsons, Boswells and Reynoldss, by virtue of the dedication of EP to
her, became the avowed Patroness to it (Baretti 1775: ix).
One of the main elements the two works have in common is Johnsons
Dictionary, both as a source and because of its influence, explicitly
acknowledged and welcomed by Baretti, indirect and on the whole
objected to by Duverger. Baretti was a personal friend of Johnsons, who
gave decisive evidence in his favour, bearing testimony in court to the
quietness of his general character when Baretti was tried for murder and
subsequently acquitted, as recalled by Hibbert, the editor of Boswells The
Life of Samuel Johnson, (1986: 348). In addition Johnson himself is

credited as having written the Preface to Barettis EP (Iamartino 1994:
388). Dialogue 43 deals with Johnson rather extensively and Barettis
undying devotion to him, both as a man and as a lexicographer, can be
succinctly conveyed by the following: Who would be praised by him that
slanders Johnson? (Baretti 1775: 256-257); the next generation will rank
Johnson among the greatest geniuses that the world has ever seen (Baretti
1775: 266).
All this, however, is strikingly in contrast with Hibberts account
(1986: 347) of Johnsons and Barettis friendship, entirely extinguished
by a most mendacious falsehood that Baretti told Johnson2 years before
the publication of EP. This account is rather consistent with Boswells and
Johnsons criticisms of EP especially because of its oddity (Iamartino
1994: 416), a characteristic EP shared, in their opinion, with Tristram
Shandy, which did not last (!). The typical rhetoric of the time and
Barettis disregard of his own work (Iamartino 1994: 417) might explain
the situation. However, in the Dedicatory Letter Baretti acknowledges the
purposeful thorough nonsensicalness (Baretti 1775: ix) of his Dialogues
since nothing goes to her [Miss Hettys] heart and fastens upon her
imagination so well as stark nonsense (Baretti 1775: vii).
Duverger was aware that he needed an authoritative source for his
English entries: he mentions Johnsons dictionary in his ptre ddicatoire
first (mock)praising le grand dictionnaire dont votre langue se fait gloire,
celui du clbre docteur Johnson in a way which echoes English tongue-
in-cheek understatements, and then clearly saying that lexception de
quelques notes dont jai fait usage, jy ai trouv trs peu de secours
(1810?: iv). As a matter of fact the notes he refers to are almost all against
Johnsons examples, as will be shown.
At first, Duvergers dictionary does not compare favourably with
Barettis work, since, as far as I know, the formers impact factor amounts
to just two brief mentions (Knappe 2006: 211 and Brasseur 1834: vi), and
to one essay on it (Nuccorini 2008), as opposed to the many quotations of,
2
According to Joshua Reynolds sister, as reported by Hibbert (1986: 347), Baretti
told Johnson that he had twice beaten the South Islander, Omai at chess, but
apparently Johnson knew that the very reverse was true. The conversation went as
follows; Baretti: Do you think that I should be conquered at chess by a savage?;
Johnson replied: I know you were. If this is what actually happened during a trip
to France (Hibbert (1986: 348) specifies that Baretti never afterwords spoke of
Johnson with his earlier reverence), it also adds to the notion of culture the two
men shared.
and a few essays on, the latters (among others, Iamartino 1994, Martino
2009), though, remarkably, it is not quoted in Knappes study of English
historical phraseology up to 1800 (2004). It must be added that Duvergers
dictionary was reprinted up to 1875, which means that it was most
probably (effectively) used for a considerable time after its publication.
Independently of the favour or the criticisms Barettis and Duvergers
works attracted, their value for the present investigation lies in their
contribution towards the changing concept of phraseology. Indeed, the
analysis of a few culture-bound expressions used in Barettis Dialogues
and of a few entries from Duvergers dictionary will show that they
represent rather opposing concepts of phraseology.
3. Phraseology and culture-bound expressions

According to Doyle (2007) very little explicit theorizing about proverbs
or other set phrases occurred prior to the late twentieth century. The last
decades of the twentieth century certainly testified to an upsurge in
academic interest in the area of phraseology and in research into the
combined lexico-grammatical, pragmatic and contextual features of
language units especially thanks to corpus linguistics studies: as a
consequence a new area in phraseological studies has emerged. The
concepts of collocation, of semantic prosody and of phrase (among others
Sinclair 2008; Sinclair and Mauranen 2007), their pervasiveness in text
analysis and their both meta-disciplinary and applied objectives have made
it clear that the co-occurrence of words, not necessarily in the form of
institutionalised figurative or metaphorical units such as proverbs or
idioms, is a constitutive element of a language. This process has been
accompanied by considerable theorizing reported in many essays
especially, but by no means exclusively, about English, as witnessed to an
impressive extent in the two volumes of Phraseology. An International
Handbook of Contemporary Research (Burger et al. 2007).
Though unquestionably recent achievements in the area of phraseology
have affected different disciplines, such as lexicology, lexicography, and
English Language teaching, scholars and especially teachers and
lexicographers have long paid attention to proverbs and set phrases in a
practical perspective (in dictionaries and in different types of didactic
material; the very word phraseology was long synonymous with
dictionary) and within theoretical approaches as well. Knappe (2004)
shows that by analysing a large amount of illustrative language material
and ample quotations from the original works, past approaches will be
illuminated by the modern concept of phraseology, yet we still come
across what they were in their time (2004: 46).3 Contrary to Doyle, who
maintains that the history of phraseology in English is largely the history
of paremiology (2007: 1078), Knappe maintains that in English
linguistics phraseology meets with a continuous interest in idioms with
which it partly overlaps (2004: 3). Both scholars pay tribute to the other
categories left aside in their historical reconstructions: Doyle (2007: 1078)
acknowledges that to be sure, lexicographers and other scholars have
long recognised the occurrence of idioms, commonplaces, sententiae, bons
mots, and other non-proverbial expressions, and Knappe recalls the role
of proverbs too as effective vehicles for the transmission of wisdom and
morality (2004: 49), and as cultural and linguistic heritage (2004: 68).
In general, however, proverbs have traditionally been considered as an
inherent part of English, whereas idioms have long been labeled as
anomalies.
Both idiomatic expressions and proverbs are strictly connected with
cultural and linguistic traditions; the relation between culture, in its
various senses, and figurative language, which comprises both categories
alongside many others, is an unquestioned tenet in phraseological
research, whether dealing with conventional figurative units and culture-
based social interaction, or the material culture of a language
community, or intertextual phenomena, conceptual domains, cultural
symbols (Dobrovolskij and Piirainen 2005: 214-215). Many idioms are
widespread across many languages (Piirainen forthcoming) due to their
common origins. In addition to figurative units, however, other phrases
convey, or interpret, or result from, time-specific language and cultural
features, as the analysis of Barettis and especially of Duvergers work
will show.
3.1. Baretti
The cultural features of proverbs, and their relevance to bilingual
lexicography, to foreign language learning, and to the institutionalization
of some proverbs originating in other languages, has long been
acknowledged. The English-Italian tradition in terms of specialised
lexicography dates back to Torriano (1666), a dictionary of Italian
proverbs, with English translations (very few of which were English
proverbs) for the use of Englishmen seeking to learn the language and the
ways of Italians (Doyle 2007: 1084). According to Norrick (2007: 381)
3
The validity of Knappes approach will be confirmed and strengthened by the
present analysis.
because of their imagery, proverbs provide evidence of stereotypes and

standard cultural metaphors. []. Their cultural salience renders proverbs
interesting in cross-cultural comparison as well, including questions of
intercultural transmission and translation. Barettis use of proverbs fits in
perfectly with this dimension, though his work is not a (specialised)
dictionary.
In EP proverbs are often introduced by the caption the proverb says
or remember the proverb and sometimes printed in italics; they are
clearly Italian proverbs translated into English with an equivalent proverb,
whenever possible. Often Italian expressions4 are translated literally, either
because there is no matching English proverb or, hypothetically, because
of didactic reasons. Occasionally the English rendering is semantically
erroneous. For example in Dialogue 14 the translation of the three
proverbs on the same page (p. 49: see Appendix) are all literal, but the
third is erroneous, probably because of the almost antonymic polysemy of
the Italian word capo, which might refer to both the initial and the last part
of something, but which in the proverb analysed clearly refers to the end
and not to the beginning of something (see note 5): Chi va piano va sano e
va lontano, he that goes slowly goes safe and goes far; da cosa nasce
cosa, from a thing comes a thing; cosa fatta capo ha, a thing done
has a beginning5.
In Dialogue 55 the proverb se le saran rose le fioriranno (its canonical
form is se son rose fioriranno) is translated so as to express the meaning
of the expression if thou succedest it will appear (Baretti 1775: 387),
4
The status of the Italian expressions has been checked in Pittano (1992), a
specialised dictionary of idioms and proverbs: most of the expressions quoted are
labelled as proverbs. Da cosa nasce cosa, chi d parola e poi non la mantiene si
sa, lanima sua non va mai bene, and con le unghie e con i denti are not recorded:
fare castelli in aria is an idiom, qui sta il busillis is a saying.
5
Barettis translations are reported next to the Italian expressions. The following
English equivalents have been taken from some contemporary bilingual
dictionaries (Hoepli 1999; Paravia 2001; Sansoni 1988); some expressions are not
recorded in all the dictionaries consulted. Chi va piano va sano e va lontano: slow
and steady wins the race (Paravia, Sansoni), slowly but surely wins the race
(Hoepli). Da cosa nasce cosa: one thing leads to another (Sansoni). Cosa fatta
capo ha, what is done cannot be undone (Hoepli, Sansoni), what is done, is
done (Paravia). Se son rose fioriranno, well have to wait and see (Paravia),
the proof of the pudding is in the eating (Sansoni). Battere il ferro finch
caldo, to strike while the iron is hot (Hoepli, Paravia, Sansoni), to make hay
while the sun shines (Hoepli, Paravia). Qui sta il busilli(s), thats a snag
(Paravia), thats quite a poser (Hoepli), thats the rub (Sansoni).
while chi d parola e poi non la mantiene si sa, lanima sua non va mai
bene is rendered with an English proverb He, who to his promise refuses
to stick, is surely far gone in the road to old Nick (Baretti 1775: 388).
In Dialogue 22, between the Anvil (interestingly humanised as Mrs.
Anvil maybe because the Italian word is feminine) and the Hammer
(humanised as Mr.) the two interlocutors are named after the words
included in the Italian idiom essere/trovarsi tra lincudine e il martello,
English to be caught between the devil and the blue seas, or to be
caught between a rock and a hard place (Paravia). In the same Dialogue
Baretti introduces the proverb battere il ferro finch caldo literally
translated to beat the iron while tis hot and refers it to the studying of a
language, meaning, that, when we have once begun, we must go on with
vigour (Baretti 1775: 83).
Interestingly idioms are only occasionally used and it must be
remembered that Johnson considered them as anomalies and therefore
Baretti most probably decided they were not appropriate. Terminological
problems and the difficulty, sometimes, to ascertain whether an expression
is a proverb or an idiom must also be taken into consideration (see note 4).
However an idiomatic expression is used in the Dedicatory Letter,
difendere co denti e collugne (its modern canonical form is con le unghie
e con i denti) translated as to defend with tooth and nail (p. ix). In
Dialogue 37 Baretti uses a variant form of an idiom: non posso astenermi
dal fare di coltelli castelli in aria, I cannot help building such castles in
the air (Baretti 1775: 194), normally used in the form fare castelli in aria.
Another example is offered in the same Dialogue by the
etymologically interesting qui sta il busilli(s), literally translated there is
the rub. The expression, in its uncorrupted form in diebus illis, is of
Biblical origin. In old times it was probably miscopied and wrongly
divided at the end of a line so that it became the opaque in die-busillis,
from which qui sta il busillis in the sense of something unaccountable for,
therefore very difficult to interpret and understand.6 Given its peculiar
history and despite its origin, the expression does not qualify as a
Biblicism: as a consequence, unlike Biblicisms proper, which are used
both in English and in Italian (as well as in many other languages), it is not
used in English.
6
Pittano (1992) also offers a folk etymology, according to which in times past a
student misread the Latin expression and mistranslated the first part into Italian as
Indie (English Indies, as in West Indies) and as a consequence was left with
busillis which he deemed very difficult to understand.
Other culture-bound words, thus not necessarily multi-word expressions,

are used by Baretti (1775: 39), such as the word maccherone, explained
but left untranslated in English (a maccherone) (Dialogue 11): first
Baretti introduces the word maccheroni, a type of pasta, English
macaroni, then maccherone, used in Italian to refer to (at the time) a
block-head, a fool, a vulgar fellow, while in English it referred to a lover
of affected and showy dress, a dandy according to the OED (now
historical). Miss Hetty says how strange it was that this word has so
much changed of its meaning in coming from Italy to England. Baretti
explains that a group of people always ordered macaroni at the same
restaurant thus affecting to show that they were much travelled: the inn-
keeper started calling them the macaroni club and each member of the
club a macaroni. Still in the area of figurative use of food items and of
differences between English and Italian, Baretti talks about lasagne and a
lasagnone, again a borrowing in English, to refer to a gross, foolish man.
(Dialogue 11).
Another example concerns the word mannaggia, nowadays used either
alone as an exclamation to express regret, or in the phrase mannaggia a
[] as a curse on the person or thing following the preposition a. Baretti
uses mannaggia la pigrizia, a curse, with no preposition, in Dialogue 28
(1775: 127), and translates it into a plague upon idleness: a plague on
is of Shakespearian origin (Romeo and Juliet III.i.91, OED s.v. plague def.
5) and, according to the citations in the OED, it was usually followed by
animate nouns. Interestingly Baretti does not use the more colloquial damn
which would have better rendered the informal and familiar value of the
Italian expression, an example of the careless and airy diction of casual
talkers referred to as the learning objective of EP in the Preface (Baretti
1775: iii). Baretti also uses the expression to introduce a clearly culture-
specific element and the Master adds: Nothing but idleness is an enemy
to learning!, and to this Miss Hetty replies if the thing was feasible, I
would learn as many languages as I have hairs in my head. The Master
goes on yes if you could learn them without undergoing the least labour
and then adds They say that a friar of Bergamo, who was called Calepine,
knew I dont know how many dozens. The friar referred to was
Ambrogio (Giacomo) Calepio, also known as Calepino; he was the author
of a Dictionary in Hebrew, Greek, Latin and Italian and since its
publication a Calepino has become a learned synonym of a good old
dictionary.
Occasional historically loaded words such as guelfo e ghibellino
(Guelphs and Ghibelines) are also introduced and so are politically
and socially connoted words such as Whigs and Tories, which
represent a clear case of translation from English into Italian. However,

other cultural aspects are of more direct linguistic concern, especially
when diverging from English; for example the Italian ways of addressing
people, explained in a rather convoluted way in Dialogue 4, which was
most probably originally written in Italian and then translated into English.
In the same Dialogue Baretti uses the word phraseology in a sense
similar to that already commented on, as equivalent of the Italian
fraseggiare.
As the latest examples show, cultural aspects are usually conveyed not
so much through phraseology, the words and phrases which are
appropriated to trifles, [] of which, as life is made of trifles, there is
frequent use (Baretti 1775: iv), but much more through traditional
references to literature, mythology, history, music, habits. For example,
Dialogue 20 is devoted, in an ironic way, to the manners and habits of
Italy (Baretti also wrote An Account of the Manners and Customs of Italy,
1768), such as eating, drinking and the like.
3.2. Duverger
The lexicographical structure of Duvergers C, as opposed to Barettis
Dialogues, should make it easier to retrieve culture-bound expressions.
However, though quite modern, the arrangement of entries in Duvergers
dictionary is not entirely consistent with the presentation of example
entries according to the alphabetical order of the nouns, verbs, adjectives
and, occasionally, adverbs7 that constitute either the first or the most
relevant full lexical word in the English combinations presented in the left
column. Thus, a few expressions might prove difficult to retrieve. For
example a man who is quite a model, French un homme fait peindre,
fait plaisir, is listed among the examples for model, not man.
The analysis of a few expressions including potentially connoted uses
of words that are often culturally and / or pragmatically marked, such as
man, master, mistress, freedom and a few others did not yield any
significant result. Most expressions are neutral and they illustrate common
linguistic usage, for example to be ones own master, French tre soi;
ne dpendre que de soi, or to be mistress of French, French savoir bien,
possder le Francais (an example which can be interpreted as a homage to
Duvergers colires). On the whole, however, most of the collocative
7
Quite unexpectedly, some entries are based on the alphabetical position of
prepositions, for example the preposition to in the case of from door to door and
from hand to hand.
uses listed are culture-bound for their very nature; some show typical
lexical and grammatical combinations. Examples of lexical combinations
include to plead guilty, French avouer le crime, savouer coupable, to
plead not guilty nier le crime, or to get half in half, French doubler son
argent, gagner cent pour cent, which also shows how differently the same
concept is lexicalised in the two languages. Examples of grammatical
combination include to guess, to make some guess, at a thing, French
former une conjecture sur une chose, or to be taken up with a thing, with
doing a thing, French soccuper de, ou , une chose; soccuper de, ou ,
faire une chose for which a footnote (see below) for the first French
equivalent adds that the French Academy makes this distinction: with the
prep. de, to think of a thing, and how to make it succeed; with the prep.
to be employed about it; but it is not always observed.
However, the presence of footnotes (see Appendix for an example),
which are not excessively numerous but extremely appropriate, constitute
a salient characteristic of the dictionary; they often perform the same
function as language notes in modern pedagogic lexicography. It is in the
footnotes that the links between phraseology, use and culture-boundedness
become evident at different levels. The word comparison, used in the
title of the dictionary with reference to its bilingual structure is also further
enhanced in most footnotes.
As already shown, very few idiomatic expressions are listed in the
dictionary. This looks like a principled decision; just like Baretti, most
probably Duverger too considered idioms as anomalies. Interestingly, for
example, many expressions concerning the use of the noun pain are
listed (a pain in ones head, side, limbs, legs), but not a pain in the
neck.
Proverbs too are hardly ever included (unlike their role in EP), but in
many cases Duverger classifies some expressions as figurative or as
proverbial in footnotes, which usually concern (some of) the French
equivalents, since French is the language to be learned. For example in the
case of to bring ones self into disrepute, the French equivalent se mettre
en mauvaise odeur is labelled as a figurative expression; in the case of to
give one full power to act as he pleases, French donner un plein pouvoir,
ou carte blanche, quelquun, only the latter rendering is considered a
figurative expression. The same applies to the following, in which the
second French equivalent only is a figurative expression: allow me to set
you to rights in this particular, French permettez moi de vous redresser
sur cla; he is the sport of others wherever he goes; il donne la comdie
parrout (sic, corrected in later editions) o il va. Sometimes an alternative
equivalent considered as a figurative expression is offered in the notes as
is mettre le poignard dans le seine quelquun in addition to enfoncer un

poignard dans le sein, dans le coeur, de quelquun for to stab one to the
heart.
In the case of to promise great matters, great things; to make great,
mighty promises, French promettre de grandes choses, faire de
magnifique promesses, promettre monts et merveilles, a note explains this
last is a proverbial expression. To render like for like is translated into
rendre la pareille a quelquun followed by le payer en meme monnaie
which, as the footnote clarifies, is a proverbial expression and as oftener
said of a person who takes revenge of an injury, than of one who returns a
kindness.
Other comments about the French equivalents concern different issues,
as the following illustrate:
to wish one goodnight, French souhaiter le bon soir o une bonne

nuit, quelquun, for which the footnote distinguishes le bon soir,
when people part in the evening; une bonne nuit, when they part to go
to bed;
to shoot at a mark, French tirer au blanc; the footnote adds that it
would be more correct to say tirer un but, as all marks are not
white;
to mourn for or at, French lamenter labsence; the footnote says that
this verb in its active sense is chiefly used in poetry; to be well
satisfied with, tre satisfait ou content, se louer, de, for which the
footnote explains that this verb is used when some approbation has
been expressed by others of our conduct, or when our vanity has been
flattered;
to come upon the stage, to go off the stage, French paratre sur la
scne, quitter la scne; mourir; the footnote explains that the
expression bears this sense [mourir] in a light of ludicrous style;
to say grace, French dire la bndicit, dire graces; the footnote
distinguishes: bndicit is the prayer said before the meal: graces the
prayer said after it.
Other aspects concern issues that would nowadays be referred to as

pertaining to the level of semantic prosody, as in the following examples:
to take pride in a thing, French se faire gloire ou honneur, faire

trophe dune chose; the footnote explains that faire trophe is always
taken in a bad sense; as faire trophe dun crime, dun vice;
to keep company with a person, French hanter, frquenter, voir
quelquun; the footnote about hanter (just like English haunt) says I
think this verb is more properly used with respect to bad than good
company, though the distinction is not made in the dictionary of the

French Academy;
to be very refined in ones language, French avoir une grande puret
dexpression, affecter la purt du langage; the footnote adds that the
first of these expressions does not give that idea of affectation which
the English often does. No footnote is added in those cases in which
expressions are self-explanatory; for example to be much the
gentleman, avoir lair distingu as opposed to he is too much the
gentleman for me, il a de trop belles manires pour moi.
Occasional comments on English are also included in footnotes; they

mostly concern linguistic issues. For example in the case of to whisper a
person in the ear that such a thing is [...], French dire loreille, dire en
tout-bas, quelquun, que telle chose est [...], Duverger comments in the
footnote that the expression is a pleonasm, but it is used. A similar note
saying a pleonasm; but, I think, sanctioned by custom concerns the
English to delude with false hopes, French repatre de chimres,
dillusions.
Also emphatic uses are commented on in notes, as in the case of to tie
up, or down, a persons hands, French lier, attacher les mains
quelquun; the note says that this verb has often the particles up and down
joined to it, which are, for the most part, little more than emphatical. The
expression is listed among the examples of use of the verb to tie and not
of the noun hand most probably because the noun is in the plural;
Duverger did not adopt the arrangement typical of modern dictionaries of
collocations to list the singular and plural form of nouns as separate entries
if they are used in different combinations (for example damage and
damages). Duverger does not comment on the figurative use of the
expression when used in the passive, to have your hands tied.
Other cultural and linguistic comments concern different issues. In the
case of to be in town, French tre la ville, the note says that the
English expression can be used emphatically for the capital. In this case
you should say Londres instead of la ville. For to establish ones
household, French faire sa maison, the footnote says that it is only said
of princes, both in English and in French. This reference to French
nobility is rather revealing, given the period (first decade of the 19th
century) in which the Dictionary was compiled.
Many footnotes concerning English expressions report unfavourable,
yet not impolite but often sarcastic comments on Johnson, thus somehow
revealing Duvergers attitude towards le clbre docteur. For example in
the case of insensible to the delights of honour and praise, French
insensible au plaisir detre lou et estim; insensible aux louanges et la
gloire, Duverger wonders in the footnote: insensible to, in Johnson, is to

be void of emotion or affection; insensible of, void of feeling, either
mental or corporal, but how emotion and affection are to be distinguished
from mental feelings I am at a loss how to understand. For to have a
noble spirit, to have a high spirit, to be high-spirited, French avoir lme
grande, lve, avoir le coeur haut, the footnote says that this word
[high-spirited], in Johnson, is made to correspond with bold, daring,
insolent, in French hardi, insolent, effront. The English, for whom this
work is chiefly written, will be able to determine whether I have mistaken
the sense. Purely linguistic comments include: to concur to or in the
public good (to contribute), French concourir au bien public; the footnote
reports that Johnson has to, but in is more generally used.
From the cultural point of view, not surprisingly the dictionary
abounds in expressions connected with military life, certainly rather
topical at the time of its compilation and publication: examples include so
many regiments are ordered to Spain, French tant de rgiments eut ordre
de passer en Espagne, de sembarquer pour lEspagne; the soldiers
overloaded themselves with booty, les soldats se gorgrent de butin; the
guns go off, on tire le canon.
There are also expressions rooted in everyday life, such as the fire, the
candle goes out, is out, French le feu, la chandelle, steint, est teint ou
teinte, or the butt is out, the coals are out, French le tonneau est vide, il
ny a pas plus de charbon.
Notably Duverger includes phrasal verbs (in this case following
Johnson, who first gave them lexicographic status) in the English column.
The idiomatic nature of most of them and the lack of similar combinations
in French often leads to unidiomatic renderings, as in to put out a word,
French effacer un mot, or his bashfulness put him out, French la honte le
fit manquer.
4. Concluding remarks
Phraseology is a multifaceted word, not just a multifaceted discipline
(Granger and Meunier 2008), highly polysemous, almost idiosyncratic.
One might go as far as saying my phraseology is not your phraseology;
as a case in point Barettis (concept of) phraseology is not Duvergers
(concept of) phraseology. In a sense, though superficially, Duvergers
dictionary is more similar to a phrase book than Barettis EP; it is their
respective contents that clarify the sense in which the word phraseology
is referred to in either work. A clear divide, it seems to me, emerges from
the analysis of the two works. In Barettis EP the word phraseology
refers both to traditional phraseological units represented especially by

proverbs, in the line expounded by Doyle, and to images and reason that
have been chosen as they afford an opportunity of words (Baretti 1775:
iii). Images and reason convey culture-specific matters, be they real (in
the many Dialogues about literature and history) or obviously invented (as
the situations referred to in Dialogue 20) independently of the levity of
subjects and the unimportance of personages (1775: iv), so that Miss
Hetty and other young ladies could learn the colloquial part, the
language of the tongue of Italian as opposed to the written diction, the
language of the pen (1775: iii).
Quite different is the use of the word phraseology in Duvergers
dictionary, not only because it is juxtaposed with the words Idioms and
Genius in the senses reported in section 2, but especially because of the
nature of the expressions included and of the language-specific
characteristics they illustrate, both in English and in French. The culture-
specific issues involved in most of them do not concern literature or
history, but rather the everyday use of the language and how it lexicalises
reality. Duvergers dictionary seems to innovate the concept of
phraseology considerably, with reference both to its contemporary
competitors (Nuccorini 2008) and to Barettis Dialogues. EP and
Duvergers dictionary occupy different places in the developmental line
the present study is drawing, but both provide a benchmark; on the one
hand the contents of EP do represent an obsolete use of the word
phraseology, on the other hand, whether a direct line between
Duvergers innovative approach and modern lexicography, to which his
dictionary has often been linked in these pages, can be traced, is still to be
ascertained. In one case, however, Duverger was no good foreteller: the
entry to rave for music, labelled as a colloquial and improper sense,
French tre fon (sic) de la musique was expunged in the later editions of
his dictionary.
However, as a bilingual, specialised dictionary, specialised because of
its contents, its addressees and its English-French mono-directionality,
Duvergers C is well situated in the line Moon has investigated,
summarized as follows: bilingual English dictionaries have a long
tradition of attention to phraseology of all kinds, and of adeptness with
describing target languages and observing their patterns (2000: 514). In
addition, as the most recent monolingual dictionaries continue to re-
examine practices, they will further reclaim the traditions which,
humblingly, bilingual English dictionaries knew all about nearly 500 years
ago (2000: 515). The concept of phraseology she discusses, alongside
traditional idioms, is based on corpus-linguistic methodology and refers to
the phraseological patterns associated with individual words and

meanings, an approach much close to that adopted by Duverger and
disregarded by Baretti, despite the intentions stated in EP Preface and
Dedicatory Letter. Knappe too, whose approach to phraseology is not
connected with corpus-driven data, maintains that a history of phraseology
is a history of lexicography, especially of bilingual lexicography. As
bilingual works Barettis EP and Duvergers C are certainly quite
revealing in the perspective of reconstructing the use of the word
phraseology in time.
References
Baretti, Joseph. 1775. Easy Phraseology. London: G. Robinson and T.
Cadell.
Baretti, Giuseppe. 1768. An Account of the Manners and Customs of Italy.
London: T. Davies, L. Davies and C. Rymers.
. 1760. A Dictionary of the Italian and the English Language. London:
C. Hitch & L. Hawes.
Brasseur, Isidore. 1834. Practical Exercises on French Phraseology.
London: J. W. Parker.
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Appendices
From: Giuseppe Baretti, Easy Phraseology (1775).

From: William Duverger, Comparison between the Idioms, Genius and

Phraseology of the French and English languages (1810?).
GIVING VOICE TO LOCAL CULTURES:
REFLECTIONS ON THE NOTION OF DIALECT
IN THE ENGLISH DIALECT DICTIONARY
MARTA DEGANI AND ALEXANDER ONYSKO

(UNIVERSITY OF VERONA, UNIVERSITY OF INNSBRUCK)
1. Introduction
The English Dialect Dictionary (henceforth EDD), published in 6 volumes
between 1898 and 1905, can be considered today as the first scholarly
compendium of English dialects (cf. Onysko, Markus and Heuberger
2009; Markus, Upton and Heuberger 2010). If dialectal speech is regarded
as an expression of local culture, the EDD can also be considered as a
major lexicographic achievement that gives voice to local cultures in the
United Kingdom in the late Victorian era. In fact, the EDD is perhaps also
a token of a rising general interest in the description of the local during the
historical period of Victorianism (consider for instance the emphasis on
provincialism and regionalism in Victorian literature; see Duncan 2002).
Furthermore, taking into account the symbiotic relationship between
human language and culture and hence between dialects and the local
cultures of the people who speak them helps us understand the significance
of the EDD as a celebration of intra-cultural differentiation among
speakers of English.
The idea of creating a dictionary that would provide so far as is
possible, the complete vocabulary of all English dialect words (Wright
Vol. 1, 1898) in use during the 18th and 19th centuries was born with the
foundation of the English Dialect Society in 1873. The actual task of
compiling the EDD, however, was taken up by one person in particular,
Joseph Wright. Thus, it was his endeavour and zeal that made the
realization of this ambitious project possible (cf. Holder 2004).
Interest in the philological study of dialects was a newly emerging
field of scholarly research in the second half of the 19th century. This,
arguably, gave some official acknowledgement to the existence of English
56 Giving Voice to Local Cultures: Reflections on the Notion of Dialect
dialects. The question, however, remains of how the notion of dialect was
understood at that time and thus which words and expressions could find
entrance into the EDD. Since the maker of the dictionary did not provide
an explicit definition of dialect, it is important to take a closer look at the
dictionary and try to reconstruct Wrights notion of dialect. A better
understanding of what dialect entails in the EDD will also provide insights
into which aspects of English local cultures are represented.
In order to explore this issue, the chapter will start out with taking a
closer look at some significant events in Wrights life and their connection
to the making of the EDD. In other words, in order to discuss the
lexicographers role as the ultimate authority of deciding on the inclusion
of dialect terms in the dictionary, it is necessary to locate the person of
Joseph Wright in his specific historical period. After sketching this
historical background, the chapter will shift its focus onto the structure of
the dictionary entries. A close analysis of the different entry sections will
be complemented by a detailed description of lexicographic labels and
semantic domains covered by the many headwords.
Altogether, this combined approach touching upon history, lexicographic
strategies, and semantic analysis of the EDD will allow drawing some
conclusions on the scholarly notion of (English) dialect at the turn of the
20th century. In addition, this approach to Wrights vision of dialect will
reveal some of the silenced and the resounding voices of local cultures
represented in the EDD.
2. Joseph Wright the editor of the EDD

Before embarking on a lexicographic journey through the pages of the
EDD, it is important to spend a few words on Joseph Wright (cf. Holder
2004, Wright E. 1932). The dictionary is indeed very strongly tied to the
person of its editor, and Wrights background was probably a strong
stimulus for his concern with English dialects and local cultures.
Joseph Wright was a man of humble origins. He was born near
Bradford in Yorkshire in 1855. Because of hardships in his family, he had
to start working as a donkey boy (a cart driver) at the age of six and
shortly after as a doffer in a mill and a wool sorter. Due to that, he did not
receive any formal schooling until he was 15 years old, but he taught
himself to read and write before that. Soon after, he studied German and
French, and he used these languages to talk with French and German
people in the mills. But his penchant for languages and interest in foreign
cultures did not stop there as he also acquired knowledge in Latin, Greek
and Italian. As a speaker of Yorkshire dialect, he also developed a strong
Marta Degani and Alexander Onysko 57
interest in dialects, and his curiosity attracted him to philology, a passion

he continued to cultivate throughout his life. His interest in language urged
him to travel to Germany and study there in his late twenties. Once in
Heidelberg, Joseph Wright first intended to go into mathematics, but was
soon attracted to the study of comparative philology, and, after completing
his doctorate in this subject, he joined the group of Junggrammatiker led
by his doctoral advisor Professor Osthoff (Holder 2004: 236-237). In
October 1885, Wright moved to Leipzig, enrolled at the university to study
Lithuanian, took up contract work as a translator, and, most importantly
for his academic career, he committed himself to the writing of a Middle
High German Primer (published in 1888) and his first scholarly work on
his English home dialect which would later be published as The Dialect of
Windhill (1892) (Holder 2004: 239). After this productive phase in
Leipzig, Wright returned to England, partly for political reasons, and was
appointed Deputy Professor at Oxford (1891-1901) before he became Full
Professor of Comparative Philology at the same university in 1901.
3. The making of the EDD

The founding of the English Dialect Society in 1870 with its headquarters
in Cambridge and Walter Skeat as its founder and first Honorary Secretary
was essential for the production of the EDD. From the outset the principal
objective of the society was the production of an English dialect dictionary
which could bring together the multiple voices of diverse local
communities. With this in mind, members of the society (e.g. Murray,
Wright, Elworthy) were encouraged to compile dictionaries of their own
native dialects. In this way, the English Dialect Society published a total
of 80 local dialectal glossaries, which later became a goldmine of dialectal
lexis for the EDD.
The most important task to accomplish, however, was compiling one
dictionary that would comprise all English dialects, and Wright followed
Skeats invitation to take on the task of being editor of the EDD. Apart
from being granted a workshop, Wright received no financial support from
Oxford University Press, which was at that time focussing its
lexicographic attention on the publication of what was to become the
Oxford English Dictionary. These unfavourable circumstances
notwithstanding, Wright not only contributed to the project with all of his
own savings but his managerial and business skills also made him a
successful fundraiser receiving money from about 700 subscribers (cf.
Holder 2004: 246-253).
In light of these difficulties, it was amazing how Wright and his team
could rigorously meet any deadlines for publishing instalments of the
dictionary. The short time span for publishing all six volumes of the
dictionary between 1898 and 1905 thus appeared as the most righteous
compensation for his years of dedicated efforts. Such an accomplishment
no doubt galvanized the man besides gratifying the scholar. His fervent
dedication shows in the preface to the first volume where he writes that the
dictionary includes, so far as possible, the complete vocabulary of all
English dialect words which are still in use or are known to have been in
use at any time during the last two hundred years in England, Ireland,
Scotland and Wales (Wright Vol. 1 1898: v.). As this assertion suggests,
Wright presents his work to the public as a major linguistic compendium,
stretching across centuries and regional boundaries. While celebrating the
richness and range of the information provided, however, the very nature
of the dictionary contents remains undefined. Nowhere in the dictionary
does Wright provide a precise definition of the term dialect.
Leaving this concern aside for the moment, one should first do justice
to Wrights huge contribution to lexicography. Truly, if we take some
basic quantitative data, the EDD appears as a massive collection of terms.
Its 6 volumes comprise almost 5,000 pages and contain no less than about
65,000 headwords, not including the great number of additional phrases,
compounds and combinations. Considering the historical period, the
compilation of the dictionary also involved a substantial number of
correspondents and informants, part of whose job it was to respond to
queries on singular terms (questionnaires) and who supplied Wright with
word lists and detailed information on meaning and phonology of dialectal
terms. To give a more precise account of the number of people involved in
the process, suffice it to say that Wright could count on the collaboration
of 271 correspondents and more than 600 informants. Local people,
mostly clergymen and teachers, sent an average of 12,000 questionnaires
back to the editor. Apart from drawing on the linguistic and cultural
knowledge of informants and correspondents, the dictionary is for the
most part a collection of previously published and unpublished dialect
glossaries. More specifically, the EDD brings together 80 dialect
glossaries published by the English Dialect Society and 342 unpublished
dialect glossaries. In addition to this, Wright took great pains to
meticulously trace quotations of dialect terms by consulting a huge
number of diverse reference works and literary sources (his general
bibliography at the end of Volume 6 contains more than 2,000 references).
To give the reader an impression of the bulky classificatory work
involved in compiling the dictionary, Wright provides a detailed count of
the different types of lemmas and sources in the preface to the first
volume:
Figure 1: Wrights count of lexicographical contents in Volume 1 (reproduced

from Wright 1898: vii).
Though these data were solely released for the first volume, they
highlight the massive achievement underlying the production of the EDD.
This remarkable feat was further heightened by the fact that the EDD
emerged as the first dictionary aspiring to map the diverse dialectal
landscape of the English language as spoken during the period of Late
Modern English.
4. The structure of entries in the EDD

Having provided some general information on the making of the EDD, an
understanding of what dialect means and of how it is represented in the
dictionary is, first of all, depended on taking a closer look at the
lexicographic structure of the dictionary entries. In general terms, the
dictionary contains three types of entries: a) entries that cross-reference the
headword to other entries in the dictionary, b) regular monosemous
entries, and c) regular polysemous entries. Examples for each of these
entry types are given below.
Figure 2: Omber as an example of a cross-referencing type of entry (EDD Vol. 4:

342).
Figure 3: Pronack as an example of a regular monosemous entry (EDD Vol. 4:

628).
Figure 4: Oumer as an example of a regular polysemous entry (EDD Vol. 4: 366).

As Figures 3 and 4 show, the information in the dictionary entries is

structured in different sections marked by the use of varying typeface
(basically font size, small caps vs. regular letter, and bold/italics vs.
regular print). In detail, the lemma is set in capital letters and bold print,
and it is followed by grammatical information on the part of speech. In the
examples above, Pronack is labeled as a noun (sb.) while Oumer is
marked as occurring both as a noun and a verb (sb. and v.). Apart from an
occasional usage label (e.g. Tech. for technical use and Obs. for obsolete),
Wright usually provided regional labels immediately after the headword
and its part of speech. While in Figure 3 Sc. designates the use of Pronack
all over Scotland, the term Oumer in Figure 4 is labeled as occurring in
several northern English counties (Northumberland, Cumberland,
Westmoreland, Yorkshire, and so on). In each of these two examples the
indications on the regional distribution of the terms are followed by
several variant forms each of which is regionally bound in their usage to
one or more counties or their subdivisions. In case a phonetic transcription
of the lemma is given, this is provided next in square brackets according to
Wrights conventions, which he described as a simple and plain phonetic
alphabet in the preface of the EDD (Vol. 1). The next element of the
entry structure is the meaning of the lemma, which is given in a
descriptive paraphrase. The meaning of the headword is almost always
supported by one or more usage quotations which appear immediately
below in a smaller font size. Finally, Wright sometimes concluded his
entries with etymological notes that are contained within square brackets
(see Figures 3 and 4). This general structure is basically the same for
monosemous and polysemous entries with the difference that the latter
contain a series of numbered meanings each of which are contextualized in
separate quotations (see Figure 4). Finally, the example of Oumer shows a
further structural element that occurs in some entries. Introduced by
Hence, Wright included derived forms of the main lemma, which form
some kind of mini-lemmas within the superstructure of the main entry. For
instance, the terms Oomert (Owmered) and Owmering in Figure 4 take
their own part of speech labels, distinct meanings, and optionally also their
own usage quotations1.
1
This inclusion of mini-entries within the larger entry is one reason why an automated
parsing of the entry structure proved difficult to implement in the process of creating a
searchable electronic version of the original dictionary. Despite this and a few other
unresolved issues, a first online version of the English Dialect Dictionary is currently
available at http://speed.uibk.ac.at/wright/ default.wright and further development is
expected from 2011-2014. Access to EDD online is available on request.
At this point, the question arises of what the description of the entry
structure can tell us about Wrights conception of dialect. Clearly, Wright
took great pains in describing the actual meaning of his dialectal terms,
and he demonstrated his impressively diligent scholarly work in tracing
quotations for each of these. The efforts Wright made in providing
accurate quotations is particularly telling. Through quotations readers
could have direct access to the diverse contexts of use for the dialectal
words and be informed about cultural practices in use by local
communities. Furthermore, the range of recorded variant forms (in a loose
form of spelling pronunciation) emphasized local variation of speech.
Arguably the most important piece of information, however, remains the
geographical space that a lemma inhabits. Thus, Wright variably marked
the geographical spread of a headword on mainly three levels: 1)
abbreviations denoting terms for nations (e.g. Sc. for Scotland, Ir. for
Ireland), 2) abbreviations indicating regional areas (e.g. n.Cy. for North
Country, i.e. the north of England), and, most frequently, 3) abbreviations
of the traditional English counties (e.g. Yks. for Yorkshire, Sus. for
Sussex). In addition, Wright sometimes reverted to loosely describing the
areal distribution of a term (e.g. in more northern parts).
When looking at the occurrence of the geographical labels throughout
the dictionary, it becomes clear that Wright, while aiming for a complete
coverage of the English dialectal landscape, was confined to focus his
attention on certain areas. This was dependent on the availability of
sources and correspondents. While Wrights selective attention does not
immediately emerge in the use of nation labels (see Table 1), the bias
towards the northern parts of England and some southern counties
becomes evident on the regional and county levels (see Tables 2 and 3).
According to the figures in Table 1, it appears as if Scotland takes the
lions share of dialect entries in the EDD while England trails behind
Ireland as only the third-most represented area. However, the more
frequent usage of the labels Sc. and Ir./Irel. (for Scotland and Ireland) is
due to the fact that, for these areas, Wright often lacked more detailed
geographical information. This is why he had to resort to a more general
attribution. That strategy becomes clear when the level of regional
marking is considered.
Table 1: Reference to national (and continental) geographic areas in the EDD.
Nations / (Continents) Label No. of occurrence2

America Amer. 2553
Australia Aus. 393
Canada Can. 23
England Eng. 4371
Ireland Ir. / Irel. 8333
New Zealand N.Z. 15
Scotland Sc. 45656
United States of America U.S.A. 34
Wales Wal. 134
In Table 2 the leading position of the North Country of England

followed by East Anglia and Lakeland is indicative that dialectal lexis in
England indeed plays the major role in the EDD. The provinces of Ireland,
on the other hand, are barely mentioned explicitly in the dictionary. This
highlights Wrights lack of more precise indications for that area. A bias
towards certain parts of England is substantiated in the frequency of
county labels (also cf. Praxmarer 2010 for a more detailed analysis of the
distribution of county labels in the EDD).
2
In Tables 1, 2, and 3 numbers are counted by Wordsmith Tools 4 using the
electronic text files of the OCR-scans of the original dictionary.
Table 2: The five most frequent regions in the EDD and five of the least
frequent ones.
Regions Region tag No. of occurrence

North Country n.Cy. / N.Cy. 14966
East Anglia e.An. 8514
Lakeland Lakel. 5338

South Scotland s.Sc. 2629
North Scotland n.Sc. 1772
Munster Mun. 61
Leinster Lns. 45
Connaught Con. 32
North Wales n.Wal. 30
East Ireland e.Ir. 6
Table 3: The five most frequent counties in the EDD and five of the least
frequent ones.
County County tag No. of occurrence

Yorkshire Yks. 76661
Lancashire Lan. 27957
Northumberland Nhb. 21307
Lincolnshire Lin. 19948
Cumberland Cum. 19091
Bute (w.Sc.) Bte. 2

Flintshire (midl.) Flt. 2
Kilkenny (Irel.) Klk. 1
Longford (Irel.) Lng. 1
Leitrim (Irel.) Ltr. 1
Among the most frequent counties in the EDD the striking dominance
of Wrights home county, Yorkshire, is notable. In addition, the focus on
the north of England is emphasized by the fact that Lancashire,
Northumberland, and Cumberland also belong to the five most frequently
labeled counties in the dictionary. The few examples of virtually
nonexistent counties in Wrights compendium again underline the scarcity
of precise material for Ireland.
In sum, an analysis of the major entry types in the EDD has shown that
locating the usage of a term on the map of mainly the UK was a primary
concern of Joseph Wright. In this way, Wright implicitly operated with a
notion of dialect that is largely based on regional distribution (i.e.
regionalect). The subtitle of his 6 volume compendium promising to be
the complete vocabulary of all dialect words still in use, or known to
have been in use during the last two hundred years has to be taken with a
pinch of commercial salt in light of the evidence that his sources and
correspondents forced him to bias the representation of dialectal lexis on
certain areas of England, particularly the northern counties.
5. The contents of entries in the EDD

Besides geographical information, Wrights conception of dialectal lexis
also comprised other factors that relate to usage register and to general
semantic fields. To begin with, one aspect that easily strikes the attention
of the reader browsing through the pages of the dictionary is Wrights
interest in folk culture. This is proved by the large number of names
describing games, superstitions, and various local customs (cf. Mller and
Stadelmann 2010). The following figure of the dictionary entries of
Anthony over and Anthony pig illustrates this tendency.
Figure 5: Entries of Anthony over and Anthony pig (EDD Vol. 1: 61).
The first headword in Figure 5, Anthony over, refers to a childrens

game in which a ball is thrown over a building from one group of players
to the other. The second lemma in Figure 5, Anthony pig, stands for a
particular superstition. As reported in Elworthy (1895: 234), the practice
of putting a pig at the feet of St. Anthony in all of his effigies gave rise to
the superstition that the animal was dedicated to him and lived under his
protection.
Another prolific semantic area is that of flora and fauna. Interestingly,

Wright considers regular English terms for certain plants and animals (e.g.
type of fish) as dialectal while the meaning of the term is very often
shrouded in its technical Latin or Greek designations. For example, the
name bull head is recorded for the fish Cottus gobio and the American
lilac is defined by its Latinate plant name of Centranthus ruber.
Unsurprisingly, terms referring to the domain of agriculture pervade the
dictionary as a whole implying that rural life was considered to be the
main usage environment of dialectal speech.
From a more modern lexicographic perspective, Wright also included
specialized terminology such as specific jargons. In particular, terms
relating to seafaring and mining are dispersed across the dictionary (e.g.
Banksman the man who has control of the shaft top, Basset the outcrop
of a seam or stratum of coal, and Composant the luminous appearance, a
form of electrical discharge, seen on the masts and yards of ships at sea).
As yet another form of language use that is closely related to jargons
and specific languages, slang features as a sociolectal variety in many
recent lexicographical works. Wright acknowledged the existence of slang
as well, and applied the usage label slang and partly also colloq. (for
colloquial) to explicitly mark non-standard terms. In total, the label slang
flags 676 lemmas and colloq. adds another 543 lemmas to make up a total
share of merely two percent of all entries in the dictionary. Not only is
slang just marginally evident in the EDD but also the entries that do bear
this label remain strikingly unslangy from a modern point of view. Thus,
the dictionary contains hardly any examples of four letter words and the
vast majority of slang terms are not so much different from other dialectal
terms in the dictionary. The examples in Figures 6 and 7 below illustrate
the inherent tameness of slang words in the EDD.
Figure 6: Entry beau trap as an example of a slang term (EDD Vol. 1: 211).
As Wright explains in its etymological remark at the end of the entry,

the compound consists of the English head trap and the specifier beau
(originally from French), meaning a fop or dandy. It is striking that this
hybrid compound of a French borrowing and an English term is classified
as slang.
Figure 7: Entry Adams ale as an example of a slang term (EDD Vol. 1: 15).
In the same way as in the example of beau trap, it is difficult to infer

why Adams ale appears as a slang term. True, the synthetic compound
involves a metaphorically ironic dysphemism that draws on contents in the
Bible; however, the standard form of the term and its regular referent
make it hard to understand why the dialectal term is actually an instance of
slang. There are many more examples of slang terms that raise similar
doubts (e.g. bemused meaning dazed, stupefied with drink, astonishment,
anger, etc.), and, all in all, slang terms are rarely more explicit than
ballyrag violent or coarse abuse. This tame appearance of slang in the
EDD is probably a cultural mirror of the time when Joseph Wright
embarked on his endeavour to document English dialects. After all, a
concern with dialectal (and by implication improper) speech was a critical
undertaking in itself during the period of Victorianism.
The analysis of some of the slang terms in the EDD calls forth a more
general question that concerns the selection of entries for the dictionary on
the whole: why do many dialect words in the EDD appear very close to
Standard English terms? A partial answer to that can be gleaned from
Wrights Preface to the dictionary in Volume 1:
It is quite evident from the letters daily received at the Workshop that
pure dialect speech is rapidly disappearing from our midst, and that in a
few years it will be almost impossible to get accurate information about
difficult points. Even now it is sometimes found extremely difficult to
ascertain the exact pronunciation and the various shades of meanings,
especially of words which occur both in the literary language and in the
dialects. And in this case it is not always easy to decide what is dialect
and what is literary English: there is no sharp line of demarcation; the
one overlaps the other. In words of this kind I have carefully considered
each case separately, and if I have erred at all, it has been on the side of
inclusion. (Wright Vol. 1 1898: v) [emphasis added in bold]
In this comment, Wright acknowledges the difficulty in establishing

clear-cut boundaries between literary or standard language and dialects.
His strategy of dealing with that problem is being inclusive of standard
forms rather than exclusive. This approach could thus generally explain
why the dictionary contains a sizable amount of lemmas that at first sight
appear as regular Standard English terms. Here are just a few lemmas
among the letter A in the dictionary that, at face level, appear as standard
terms: admire, advance, advised, affordance, affront, afoot, afraid, after,
and so on. However, this conclusion needs to be refined as Wright
crucially emphasizes the primacy of meaning over formal aspects for
deciding whether or not to regard a term as part of dialectal lexis.
All words occurring both in the literary language and in the dialects, but
with some local peculiarity of meaning in the latter, are also included. On
the other hand, words which merely differ from the literary language in
pronunciation, but not in meaning, are generally excluded, as belonging
properly to the province of grammar and not to that of lexicography.
(Wright Vol. 1, 1898: v) [original emphasis in italics; added emphasis in
bold]
This statement clearly shows that Wright considered Standard English

terms as dialectal when their meaning deviated from their literal sense.
Thus, it is not surprising to find an entry such as lake, sb. which features a
variety of senses except for its literal meaning of a large enclosed body of
water. In detail, the meanings of lake in the EDD comprise a small pool
or puddle; a pond formed by damming up a stream, a space in the open
sea where a particular current runs; a sea-cove, a brook, rivulet, or
stream, and a dried-up watercourse in the moors. While not exactly
congruent with its literal definition, all these meanings of lake heavily rely
on similarities to its basic literal conception, particularly drawing on the
aspect of a lake being a bounded body of water.
As another example, the entry for hand includes a range of polysemous
senses all of which are related to its core sense of the particular human
body part: a workman, servant; an employee in a factory or mill, an
adept, clever performer, handwriting; signature, a handling, feel when
handled, business, performance, job, the horse that walks on the left-
hand side in a team, as opposed to the fur or furrow horse, direction;
neighbourhood, a measure for water-cress. In all of these dialectal
meanings, general (cognitive) processes such as metaphor and metonymy
explain the meanings of hand (particularly the metonymies of body part
for person, body part for action performed, action for result (entity), size
of body part for measure; for more on polysemous patterns in selected
body part terms cf. Degani 2010). In light of this, the more qualified
conclusion can be drawn that Wright considered Standard English terms as
dialectal when their meanings involved a semantic shift regularly induced
by conceptual processes of metaphor and metonymy.
6. Conclusion: Towards Joseph Wrights notion of dialect

If we tie the different observations on the structure of the entries in the
EDD and their major content areas together, Wrights understanding of
dialectal lexis and his implicit portrayal of local culture becomes clearer.
First of all, the analysis of the entry structure shows that Wright made
strong efforts to record variant forms of the individual lemmas, hinting at
the rich variation in which terms were used in different parts of England.
This observation, however, should not obscure the fact that in the EDD
local coloring does not simply emerge in the range of different
pronunciations provided for individual words. Local coloring often reflects
the presence of terms belonging to specific semantic domains. As a matter
of fact, a closer look at the contents of the dictionary entries shows that
dialectal lexis is also tied to certain semantic fields which frequently
include a) games, superstitions, and customs, b) agricultural terms, and c)
special jargons such as mining, seafaring, manual work, and handicrafts.
While the inclusion of these particular terms does not come as a surprise,
their presence in the EDD can reliably be taken as an indication of
Wrights own understanding of the cultural content of dialectal speech. In
this respect, many lemmas draw an image in which local culture coincides
with folk culture bearing connotative associations to rural life. This image
is also enriched and elaborated by further connections to some working
class jargons (e.g. mining and seafaring).
Apart from this, the geographical usage space of the individual lemmas
emerges as a primary concern for Wright. Thus, he constructed dialect
mainly as a regional rather than a social phenomenon in contrast to more
current definitions of dialect (cf. Chambers and Trudgill 1998). The
emphasis on dialect as a regional way of speaking actually cohered to the
linguistic and cultural landscape at the time when the dictionary was
compiled. Thus, learned (i.e. Standard) English was geographically
centered in the intellectual triangle between London, Oxford, and
Cambridge and was carried across England by the class of people that had
a boarding school education. As such, local speech was by implication
dialectal and differences were marked on regional grounds.
Despite Wrights efforts to portray local voices, there is evidence in the

dictionary that he was himself culturally bound to the moral norms and the
ethos of that time in his role as the editor of the dictionary. Thus, even
though Wright showed his awareness towards the social side of dialect by
using the labels of slang and colloquial language use, his seeming respect
of Victorian moral imperatives is very likely to have caused a silencing of
explicit and offensive language that would be classified as slang by current
standards. At the same time, terms that do bear the label of slang in the
EDD mostly appear as instances of non-offensive and mildly allusive
forms of expression.
In general, the selection of slang terms draws attention to the larger
issue of how lemmas were chosen as being worthy of inclusion in the
EDD. In this case, Wright explicitly addressed his strategy of giving
meaning primacy over (phonological) form. This has led to the result that
there are a notable number of Standard English terms that are recorded in
the dictionary in their non-literal but figurative meaning extensions. In this
way, Wright implicitly characterized local cultures as the repositories of
non-literal language use. However, since extensions from the literal
meanings of standard terms often follow principled cognitive patterns of
metaphor and metonymy, the severing of form and meaning for the sake of
classifying dialectal lexis in the EDD has actually led to a range of
doubtful dialect terms. From a modern perspective, Wrights decision is a
token of the perennial struggle to delineate the fuzzy boundaries between
dialect and Standard varieties.
Finally, it is important to mention that the act of publishing the
dictionary in itself can be seen as a cultural accomplishment as it
influenced the general perception of dialect at that time. Thus, turning the
fleeting spoken word into a written form widened the horizons of scholarly
research and gave an authoritative voice to what had been confined to
local usage until then. In this sense the publication of the EDD is an act
that empowers dialects and aspects of local cultures since it reduces the
distance between lower social classes and the elite. The dictionary makes
people aware of the importance to preserve dialectal speech as a unique
and rich testimony of local cultures.
References
Chambers, Jack and Peter Trudgill. 1998 [1980]. Dialectology.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Degani, Marta. 2010. A conceptually based analysis of polysemous senses
in the body part terms head, hand and heart. Textus. 23/3. 645-672.
Duncan, Ian. 2002. The provincial or regional novel. In Patrick

Brantlinger and William B. Thesing (eds.), A Companion to the
Victorian Novel. Oxford: Blackwell. 318-334.
EDD Online. http://speed.uibk.ac.at/wright/default.wright (last accessed
12/2010).
Elworthy, Frederick Thomas. 1895. The Evil Eye. An Account of this
Ancient & Widespread Superstition. London: John Murray; reprinted
in 2004 as: The Evil Eye: The Classic Account of an Ancient
Superstition. Mineola / New York: Dover Publications.
Holder, R.W. 2004. The Dictionary Men. Their Lives and Times. Bath:
Bath University Press.
Markus, Manfred, Clive Upton, and Reinhard Heuberger (eds.). 2010.
Joseph Wrights English Dialect Dictionary and Beyond. Frankfurt am
Main: Peter Lang.
Mller, Torsten and Vera Stadelmann. 2010. From cock-throwing to
croquet: Games and sports in Joseph Wrights English Dialect
Dictionary. In Manfred Markus, Clive Upton, and Reinhard Heuberger
(eds.), Joseph Wrights English Dialect Dictionary and Beyond.
Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. 167-186.
Onysko, Alexander, Manfred Markus, and Reinhard Heuberger. 2009.
Joseph Wrights English Dialect Dictionary in electronic form. In
Antoinette Renouf and Andrew Kehoe (eds.), Corpus Linguistics:
Refinements and Reassessments. Amsterdam/New York: Rodopi. 201-
219.
Praxmarer, Christoph. 2010. Joseph Wrights EDD and the geographical
distribution of dialects: A visual approach. In Manfred Markus, Clive
Upton, and Reinhard Heuberger (eds.), Joseph Wrights English
Dialect Dictionary and Beyond. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. 61-76.
Wright, Elizabeth Mary. 1932. The Life of Joseph Wright. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Wright, Joseph. 1898-1905. The English Dialect Dictionary. 6 voll.
Oxford: Henry Frowde.
Wright, Joseph. 1892. A Grammar of the Dialect of Windhill, in the West
Riding of Yorkshire. Published for the English Dialect Society.
London: K. Paul, Trench, Trbner & Co.
Wright, Joseph. 1888. A Middle High German Primer. Oxford: Clarendon
Press.
CULTURE-SPECIFIC LEXIS AND KNOWLEDGE
SHARING IN THE GLOBAL VILLAGE
SUSAN KERMAS
(UNIVERSITY OF SALENTO)
1. Introduction
English is an undeniably lexically-rich language. It has adopted lexemes
from diverse indigenous languages worldwide, many of which are now
fully-fledged English words. Editors of dictionaries such as the OED are
aware of the challenge to include culture-specific lexemes from across the
English-speaking world but largely limit their scope to diatopic variation
from within what has been defined as the inner-circle countries (Kachru
1992), Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and so on.
What I posit in this chapter is that lexicographers should reevaluate the
communicative needs of the average user of English in view of the
rapidly-changing economic scene and the inevitable contact with English
as used in outer and expanding circle countries. While culture-specific
terms acknowledged during the colonial period have entered the OED,
there appears to be very little propensity to assess the cultural dimension
of the language as used in these developing countries today in the third
edition.
2. Aims and methodology
2.1. The changing cultural focus of lexicography

It is undeniable that the role of English has changed enormously
throughout its history and that its versatility is such that it has adapted to
fit the needs of speakers from numerous countries worldwide.
Monolingual dictionaries began to appear in the early 17th century when
English first vied for currency as a suitable medium for scientific and
philosophical research but it was not until the late 20th century that
74 Culture-specific Lexis and Knowledge Sharing in the Global Village
lexicographers began to take its role in international contexts seriously.

The first OED editor to ensure that varieties of world English were
accorded their rightful place in the dictionary was Robert Burchfield
working on the Supplement to the Oxford English Dictionary between
1957 and 1986 (Simpson 2004) but the focus of the second edition (1989)
is prevalently on words currently used in American and British English.
Today there are several Oxford dictionaries specific to world varieties
such as Australian (Ramsom 1988), New Zealand (Orsman 1997), South
African (Branford 1987; Silva 1996) and Caribbean English (Allsopp
1996) yet the ambitious realization of a unique dictionary covering a wider
range of diatopic varieties is still far from the horizon.
Issues regarding the expanding cultural dimension of English is hardly
addressed in the Preface to the third edition of the OED. While it is
undeniable that material from such texts as the Dictionary of American
English and the Dictionary of Americanisms, the Dictionary of Canadianisms,
the Dictionary of South African English, the Australian National Dictionary,
the Dictionary of New Zealand English, and many others, supported by the
Dictionarys own reading programme, has enabled the editors to enhance
the coverage of varieties of English worldwide (Simpson 2009a), the
focus is nonetheless essentially world English. It is not the English
exclusive to the British Isles and America as it was in the second edition
(1989); however, the dictionary does not seem to encompass outer circle
and expanding circle varieties adequately. Simpsons new appeal for
readers to contribute to the OED acknowledges the fact that there is no
longer one English there are many Englishes but the same appeal
suggests that the scope might be limited to the developments in world
English (Simpson 2009b) rather than world Englishes. The third edition
no doubt goes beyond the common core of words of world English and
includes words specific to many of the world varieties but the specific
need to include a second language variety such as Indian English is not
specifically mentioned in the preface, neither is the changing cultural
focus subsequent to the changing role of English.
Certainly the OED reading programme includes Anglo-Indian culture-
specific words. The second edition already includes words such as
brahmin, raja, known prior to British rule in India, as indeed those
borrowed during the expansion of the trading monopoly of the East India
Company from the 17th century to the mid 19th (dhoti, cheetah, pundit,
juggernaut) and during the British Raj (1858-1947) (karma, goonda) but
many of these have been naturalized to such an extent that they have lost
their culture specificity (e.g. bangle, bungalow, khaki, jute, catamaran,
dungaree). Words such as eve-teasing (March 2006), prepone (September
Susan Kermas 75
2009) and bindi (June 2010) have been added to the third edition of the
OED but these too have been largely appropriated by the British and
American users of English and are not strictly speaking culture-specific.
While bindi originally referred to the decorative mark or jewel
traditionally worn on Indian womens foreheads it has now become an
item of fashion outside India. The other two are simply creative
neologisms to be considered Indianisms only in so far as they were first
used on Indian territory. Eve-teasing was coined by the British working in
the services, prepone is a general word based on postpone used by
Indians using English as a lingua franca. Notwithstanding the inclusion of
numerous Anglo-Indian terms, my search for Indian names of trees may
indicate that incoming words qualify for inclusion long after their
relevance in world English has been recognized. It is my intent in this
chapter to illustrate the need to broaden the cultural stance of the OED if it
is to retain its role as the repository of the English language.
It is true that English as an international medium requires a standard
form of English and is generally undergoing homogenization thanks to its
communicative function as a lingua franca. However, if English is to
continue as a truly efficient world lingua franca lexicographers need to
address the culture-specific dimension of knowledge sharing in todays
global village and broaden their cultural viewpoint. The popularity of
English is such that it is being appropriated differently by diverse social
groups of different linguistic backgrounds seeking an international
audience and predictions about the possible fragmentation of English were
already perceived in Websters Dissertations in the English Language in
1789 and partly proven by the creation of his American dictionary. This
possibility is frequently debated today (Crystal 1997; Bragg 2003) and
certainly the updating of the Oxford Caribbean dictionary by the University
of the West Indies Press (Allsopp 2003) rather than the Oxford University
Press and the publication of an ever-increasing number of studies focusing
on varieties such as British Afro-Caribbean English (cf. Patrick 2004),
European legal discourse (Kermas 2010) demonstrate that new forms of
English are emerging in a similar way to what happened to Latin which split
into French, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian, Spanish and so on.
What I purport to do in this chapter is illustrate how a more elaborate
programming of new entries for the OED could be envisaged. If we all
share one planet and are one humanity (Maathai 2009) as we do and have
a language to share, then the cultural dimension of the other must be
addressed if intercultural communication is to be fulfilled. Though
technological advance of the last few decades has allowed dictionaries to
improve immensely from the point of view of usage, the cultural dimension
is not always readily accessible to the outsider nor perceived as such.

Mono-volume dictionaries necessarily limit their data according to
frequency in order to meet the immediate communicative needs of the
average learner of English in international contexts and diatopic variation
is necessarily limited. Specialized dictionaries include lexis specific to any
particular technical field and are of international scope and dictionaries of
cultural interest normally limit their scope to British, American and
Australian lifestyles (Longman 2005). Only a dictionary the size of the
OED can possibly hope to capture the true richness of the English
language and accept the need to change its cultural bias if it is to keep
astride social change and serve as a useful tool in intercultural
communication in todays global village. The necessity to focus on Indian
English, the third largest English-speaking community in the world, is
particularly relevant today, especially in view of its new status as a
growing economic power (Crystal 2002 [1988]).
2.2. Method
A perusal of news articles dealing with environmental issues and global
warming in The Times of India (available at http://timesofindia.india
times.com/) strengthened my conviction of the necessity to reassess the
role of English as a lingua franca in terms of its relevance to intercultural
mediation since the dense culture specific content of the news articles was
such that Indias important role in the Plant for the Planet: Billion Tree
Campaign and its concern for the planet cannot be fully appreciated
without the help of an efficient dictionary or glossary. In order to throw
light on the inaccessibility of culture specific words and the necessity to
update dictionaries we will examine a selection of articles devoted to the
topic published in The Times of India between June and September 2009.
We will first of all try to extrapolate any useful information for the
identification of the plants mentioned in the source texts and then examine
the OED and specific dictionaries and glossaries of Indian English in order
to throw light on their relevance in the disambiguation process.
After this initial examination of the articles and an evaluation of
lexicographic sources we will endeavour to provide descriptions of the
plants mentioned in the news articles. Since botanical terms are privileged
terms compared with other culture specific lexemes we will first of all
attempt to trace their equivalent Latin scientific binomials in specific
catalogues of Indian plants and then search the web as a corpus. A
systematic search of WebCorp will allow us to access news articles,
documentaries and academic reviews from diverse English-speaking
Susan Kermas 77
countries, which prove to be invaluable resources for ascertaining the

relevance of these plants in todays global village on the one hand, and for
providing interesting information for inclusion in dictionaries, on the
other. In the final discussion we will try to assess the utility of including
such words not only in view of disambiguating the three articles examined
but also for maintaining the OEDs role as a repository of words from
different corners of the world.
3. Inaccessibility of Indian news discourse

The examination of the three articles from the Times of India, also
available at http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/, serves to illustrate the
culture specificity of Indian news discourse and convey the difficult
disambiguation process for the foreign reader who is not necessarily
familiar with Indian culture.
3.1. Culture-specific lexis in news discourse

The title of the first article Plantation drive along palkhi route and the
specification in the introduction that it is the road taken by the pilgrims
on the way to Pandharpur during the annual wari certainly point to the
difficulties that might be encountered thanks to the constellation of
culture-specific lexemes. Even though there is sufficient information in the
article to understand the importance of the initiative since the plantation of
the saplings will line the road used for the annual pilgrimage to the holy
town of Pandharpur in June, all we know about the plants is that they are
native variety trees like shirish, peepal, jamun, shisam, karanj, spatodia
and chordia (Times of India, 15/6/09). Certainly, the Indian reader would
be familiar with these trees and would be able to imagine how the drive
might appear in future years just as speakers of other varieties of English
would be familiar with their own species; however, for the foreign reader
this is just a sterile list of names and there is no more information
available elsewhere in the article.
The second article, entitled Bengal govt to chalk out green policy,
gives information about the damage caused by a cyclone to trees like
krishnachura, radhachura, shirish and peepal [...] because they are tall,
with huge canopies and roots which do not go deep. The forest
departments decision to choose varieties that grow slowly, so their roots
can go deep, are relatively shorter in height and have small canopies like
bakul, devdaru, jarul, chhatim, putranjiba, and the garden variety of ficus
trees (Times of India, 6/9/09) make us understand that these plants have
these characteristics but again there are no further details elsewhere in the
article because it is taken for granted that the reader knows these trees.
The third article Community wastelands in UP to be taken for
Jatropha plantation is more informative but the data is technical. Since
the project envisages bio-diesel crop production on gram sabha
wastelands with jatropha and Pongamia Pinnata (locally known as karanj)
we understand that the plants are bio-diesel crops and that Pogamia is the
scientific name of the plant locally known as karanj. We also know that
Jatropha gives synchronous flowering (flowering at the same time) and
hence the seeds are easier to harvest and market. Karanj, on the other
hand, is a TBOS (Tree Born Oil Species) with asynchronous flowering
which are difficult to harvest (Times of India, 18/06/09). Elsewhere in the
article we are informed that as karanj seeds are bitter in taste it can be used
as a bio-fence, even against the dreaded menace of Neelgais (blue bulls).
Notwithstanding the data, however, there are no descriptive details useful
for the purpose of a dictionary definition.
All in all then, with exception of the third article, which supplies
information regarding the technical uses of the plants in agriculture and as a
bio-fuel, information is too scanty for the lay reader to recognize the plants.
3.2. Indian botanical terms in English dictionaries and glossaries

What is needed then is a dictionary of culture specific lexemes or some
sort of lexicographic coverage readily accessible to the public. To my
knowledge the only mono-volume dictionary of Indian English is the
Hobson-Jobson (Yule and Burnell 1996 [1886]), the historical dictionary of
Anglo-Indian words and phrases, the second edition of which (Yule 1903) is
available online at http://dsal.uchicago.edu/dictionaries/hobsonjobson. This
dictionary, though culture specific, is based on the original 1886 edition
and focuses on words acquired from early travel along the Eastern trade
routes from the 16th century to the 19th and only includes three of the 15
botanical terms encountered (peepul, jamun, shisham). A similar search of
the so-called specific dictionaries of Indian English available online at
www.amritt.com/IndianEnglish.html and www.vsubhash.com/Dictionary_
Of_Indian_English.asp was disappointing because of the priority given to
general words that business people might encounter in everyday contexts,
e.g. cess (tax), duplex (a two-level house), good name (real name as
opposed to nickname). Notwithstanding the specificity of these glossaries,
it is obvious that Indias important role in green economics is not taken
into account since none of the tree names encountered in The Times of
India are included in the lists.
Susan Kermas 79
From a lexicographic point of view, therefore, we are totally dependent

on the OED, which provides definitions for only four of the 15 botanical
terms jamun, jarul, jatropha and peepul, seven if we take into
consideration the three which could not be found in an initial search
because of the orthographic forms (spatodia, shisam and chordia) used in
the articles. For these it was only possible to find the relative OED entries
after discovering the forms spathodea, shisham and cordia in a broader
search of the internet. The remaining eight could not be found in any other
lexicographic works. A search of the sixth edition of the unabridged
Collins English Dictionary (Butterfield 2003) was also carried out because
of its relevance to lexicography and because the important role of English
as a world language transpires in its preface. Nonetheless, the same focus
on inner circle varieties of the British Isles, the United States, Australia,
New Zealand, Canada and South Africa along with the additional strict
selection of words necessary for a mono-volume dictionary with a primary
focus on fields where language change is particularly rapid and
significant (Butterfield 2003: vi) unsurprisingly produced only one
botanical term the peepul or pipal a tree already noted for its important
symbolic value in Indian culture prior to the Raj.
3.3. Data required for improving dictionaries

If we examine the information relating to botanical terms usually included
in the OED and Collins we will find that the data is often encyclopedic in
nature. Besides the information relating to pronunciation, variant
orthographic forms, and etymology that is normally supplied for all the
lemmas, we find scientific binomials, synonyms, details about the
provenance, folklore and myths, in addition to salient features useful for
the purpose of identification. For the purpose of this chapter pronunciation
will not be broached and etymology will only be treated in so far as it
supplies useful information relating to the origin of the plant and its
folklore. As our main concern is to identify the plants priority will be
given to descriptive detail and alternative names.
With this premise then we will notice that the two dictionary entries for
peepul:
Peepul, n.
Also peepul tree. A kind of fig tree, Ficus religiosa, native to India, China,
and South East Asia, and regarded as sacred by Hindus and Buddhists.
Also called bo-tree. (OED draft revision Dec. 2009)
and
Peepul [...] or pipal. NOUN an Indian moraceous tree, Ficus religiosa,

resembling the banyan: regarded as sacred by Buddhists. Also called: bo
tree. (Butterfield 2003)
do not fully meet the needs of the foreign reader of the Times of India
news articles. Though it is undeniable that he/she might recognize the
scientific binomial or any of the alternative popular names and knowledge
of the geographic distribution might aid identification, the lay reader is
more likely to appreciate descriptive details. The sacred associations are
undoubtedly of cultural interest but the more immediate needs for the
purpose of identification are hardly met. The comparison of the peepul
with a fig tree in the OED and with the banyan in Collins is totally
dependent on the readers familiarity with these trees. Apart from these
references there is no further description in either dictionary.
By contrast, the actual description of the banyan as a remarkable East
Indian tree, the branches of which drop shoots to the ground, that take root
and support their parent branches; extending in this way, one tree will
often cover a large expanse of ground (OED) as indeed the description of
the branches as aerial roots that grow down into the soil forming
additional trunks in Collins are extremely useful for the purpose of
identification. The details described are certainly the most distinctive
features of the tree which would allow the reader either to recognize the
plant on Indian territory or imagine its appearance. Striking features such
as the shape of the tree or its leaves, its size and colour of flowers are
important. As a mere example the New Zealand tree, the pohutukawa, is
defined as an evergreen tree [...] which in December and January bears
clusters of red flowers with projecting stamens (OED draft revision
September 2006) and as a myrtaceous New Zealand tree [...] with red
flowers and hard red wood (Butterfield 2003). These entries also contain
the popular alternative names and scientific binomials as indeed the
geographic distribution but what allows the average reader to identify the
plant is in effect the description of its main features.
The alternative scientific binomials and popular names are important
for the lexicographer. The fact that banian is the headword and banyan the
alternative in the OED while Collins gives priority to banyan is not
particularly important but the inconsistency of the scientific binomials
Ficus religiosa or indica in the OED, Ficus benghalensis in Collins should
make us wary of botanical nomenclature1. Linnaeus introduced modern
1
According to a fairly reliable Indian plant catalogue at http://flowersofindia.net
the scientific name is Ficus benghalensis.
Susan Kermas 81
Latin names for plants as a universal means of facilitating identification

because of confusion caused by the numerous popular names available for
each plant. Today confusion still arises because botany is not a static
discipline. Thanks to scientific advance some plants have had to be
reclassified, hence the sometimes discordant nomenclature even of the
scientific binomials. Nonetheless, the Latin binomial (sometimes followed
by the name of the classifier) remains an extremely useful medium for the
recognition of popular names from across cultures and gives access to
alternative names in different languages.
4. Data retrieval for lexicographers
4.1. Plant catalogues

Modern technology has a fundamental role in updating dictionaries. While
in the past lexicographers collected slips of paper from a limited number
of texts (usually literary), surfing the net today is equally as difficult
because of an every-increasing availability of texts in electronic format.
The most useful texts available online for the plants concerned are the
Flowers of India catalogue at http://flowersofindia.net and the nursery
catalogue from Florida at http://toptropicals.com which supply the Latin
scientific binomials, alternative popular names and descriptions
accompanied by photographs which by far surpass the illustrations
sometimes encountered in encyclopedic dictionaries.
4.2. WebCorp
WebCorp is a particularly useful suite of tools for academic research made
available by the Corpus Linguistic Research Group at Birmingham City
University which allows access to the World Wide Web as a corpus. A
keyword search of the different sections of news discourse from the UK,
the US and other English-speaking areas in addition to British and
American academic websites allow us to see whether the culture-specific
lexemes under analysis are actually known to other users of English
worldwide and also for gaining insight into the importance of these words
both at a local and glocal level. For each plant we will search the British
and American news discourse sections, the relative academic sections and
other reliable websites from Britain and America and other English-
speaking countries.
4.3. Updating existing data

4.3.1. Botanical terms native to India
The first words we will examine are those already in the OED but which
need revising. The first word the peepul is one of the most well known
of Indian trees already included in Yule (1903) thanks to its association
with Buddhism yet the actual description is very basic. The December
2009 draft revision of the OED describes it as a kind of fig tree, Ficus
religiosa, native to India, China, and South East Asia, and regarded as
sacred by Hindus and Buddhists (OED draft revision Dec. 2009) and is
all in all a very slight improvement to the second editions description an
Indian species of fig-tree (Ficus religiosa), regarded as sacred (1989). All
it has done is extend the geographic area and state who considers the tree
to be sacred. A search of the two catalogues on the other hand provides
ample descriptive details. It is a long-living large deciduous tree under
which Buddha received enlightenment and under which village meetings
are often conducted in the shade. It has a pale stem often appearing fluted
on account of the numerous roots which have fused with the stem (cf.
Flowers of India, hereinafter FOI) and its tiny flowers turn into purple figs
(cf. Tropical Plants, hereinafter TROP). These two catalogues also
provide further popular names (sacred ficus, holy tree, bodhi and sacred
fig.).
A search of WebCorp is invaluable for detecting further alternative
names and for illustrating western interest in this sacred tree. A website
devoted to teaching Buddhism in American universities states that bo is an
abbreviation of bodhi (enlightenment) and we find bodhi and bodhi tree in
articles in the Telegraph (11/5/07) and Independent (5/11/98) as well as in
a UK website devoted to alternative medicine where we are informed that
the leaves have been used for curing wounds and treating a variety of
conditions for hundreds of years. Ashwatha another alternative name
from the original Sanskrit was encountered in the American academic
section, more precisely, in Manoa an academic journal (vol. 22, 1, 2010).
WebCorp also gives access to definitions in electronic dictionaries and
encyclopedias where we find confirmation of usage of all these alternative
names in addition to pipal that the OED seems to want to eliminate in the
third edition and other alternative orthographic forms (peepal and pipul)
all frequently encountered in news and academic discourse. Information
regarding the description of the Bo Tree that rained red blossoms that
full-mooned May night (at http://brian.hoffert.faculty.noctrl.edu/REL
265/04.NaraBuddhism.html) has not been confirmed in the literature.
Susan Kermas 83
All in all, this particular tree has a great deal of coverage because of
the annual pilgrimages to the tree under which Buddha gained enlightenment
but three additional events caught the attention of journalists. A fasting
teenager sitting under a peepul tree in meditation, said to be Buddha
reincarnate (cf. BBC, 30/11/05), the mysterious ailment that caused the
Bodhi tree outside Mahabodhi shrine to shed its leaves (The Telegraph,
11/5/07) and finally the important event involving Aishwarya, the famous
actress, who went through the traditional Hindu ceremony of marrying a
peepul tree before joining wedlock (cf. Times Online, 16/01/07). There is
also a lot of information regarding the sacred tree it resembles the
banyan. Since the OED attributes the same scientific name to both plants it
would be possible to correct this error and compare the two trees in the
definition. It would be interesting however for the lay reader to know that
the peepul does not have the prop roots of the banyan.
All we know about the jamun on the other hand is that the fruit of
Eugenia Jambolana [is] sometimes confused with the rose apple (Eugenia
Jambos) (OED). The catalogues describe the jamun as an evergreen
tropical tree originally from Southern Asia, with smooth, glossy oblong
leaves. It has branched clusters of fragrant white flowers from March to
April and purplish-black oval edible berries (FOI) in June. Interestingly, it
was introduced to places such as Florida in the early 20th century and in
Hawaii it has even become invasive. It is used as a fruit producer, an
ornamental and also for its strong, water resistant wood. In Goa and the
Philippines it is also an important source of wine and is used for making
liquors and the flowers are used in perfumery (TROP). Besides the OED
names (jamun, jambolan) these catalogues give Indian allspice and a
popular Indonesian name (Java plum).
A WebCorp search for jamun confirms all the information regarding its
alternative scientific names and the preference for Syzygium cumunii in the
scientific community today as indeed the descriptive details of the tree and
its fruit. We learn from British and American documentaries and travel
guides that this beautiful evergreen is a slow-growing, long living
flowering tree which gives a juicy purple fruit, also known as jamun
plum, in May and June. We also discover that the colour of the fruit
gradually changes from green to pink and black as it ripens and that it is
good for the digestive system so there is certainly more than sufficient
information to go beyond the strict definition of the tree and its alternative
names. The British broadsheet section also provides extra information
about its taste which is a cross between a persimmon and a blackcurrant
(The Independent, 3/08/1998) and academic research into the medicinal
value of parts of the tree and its fruit demonstrates that scientific interest
goes beyond India. However, what is also particularly striking is the

frequency with which jamun collocates with gulab as in the syrupy gulab
jamun (The Guardian, 19/02/05). In effect, interest in this extremely
popular doughnut-like dessert served in Indian restaurants worldwide by
far exceeds the general interest in either the fruit or the tree. The only
connection with the fruit is the shape and size of the fried doughnut-like
jamuns which are drenched in a sweet syrup, yet gulab jamun are such
strong collocates in all sections of WebCorp that the OED editors should
not miss the opportunity to add this dish to the numerous Indian foodstuffs
already included in the dictionary (e.g. curry, ghee, basmati, chutney). In
sum, search for this particular item has proved particularly important not
only for the possibility to add a description to the OED definition of jamun
but also for throwing light on scientific research into therapeutic uses of
various parts of the tree and fruit especially in countries where the plant is
grown (e.g. India, United States and Brazil) and the enormous spread of
Indian cuisine that goes well beyond the confines of English-speaking
communities.
The only detail that could be added to the OED definition of jarul on
the other hand concerns the colour of the flowers. The slow growing tree
with small canopy we find in the second article is depicted as a deciduous
tree, Lagerstroemia speciosa, of the family Lythraceae, which is native to
tropical Asia and bears large panicles of purple flowers; also, the wood of
this tree except that mention of a wider range of colours from pink to
violet and purple would be more precise. The only additional information
from the catalogues regards the alternative scientific binomial
(Lagerstroemia flos regineae) and popular names (Queen(s) crape myrtle,
Queensflower, Pride of India and Banaba) and its medicinal use within
India. Indeed, this particular plant is little known outside India and
information is restricted to that found in lists of pentagrams compiled for
the benefit of players of Jotto (a word game similar to Mastermind) and in
a list for British Scrabble players where we have: Jarool, jarul a
deciduous tree of the purple loosestrife family. The only extra information
from a WebCorp search regards the alternative name the Indian
bloodwood which confirms that the wood is known elsewhere.
For the last of this group the OED already gives several alternative
names including shishim, sheeshum, shisham, sissoo, seesu, sissu in
addition to its scientific name Dalbergia sissoo but not the form we found
in the first article. Indeed, without knowing the scientific name or the
shisam spelling neither catalogue produced any results and it was only
after a Google search that suggested shisham that I became aware of the
OED entry and could search the catalogues. In effect, the OED description
Susan Kermas 85
a valuable Indian timber-tree, Dalbergia Sissoo (1989) refers to the

trees importance for its timber and is confirmed in the catalogues which
suggest that it makes first class furniture, musical instruments and sports
equipment (TROP). However, what is missing is a description of this
deciduous tree with leathery green leaves and whitish flowers which is
often planted on roadsides in India and as a shade tree for tea plantations
(FOI). What is also missing is its provenance (India, Pakistan and
Afghanistan) and the alternative popular name (Indian rosewood).
There is plenty of information in both the British and American
academic sections of WebCorp, UK websites and in other sources to
understand that this extraordinary tree is used in shipbuilding, in making
flooring, furniture, sports equipment, musical instruments and in
decorative art outside India. The numerous concordances for quality
shisham wood, finely carved shisham wood, finest hardwearing
shisham wood and ivory and ebony inlaid shisham mirror frame in UK
websites are practical examples of its enormous commercial value and
certainly would deserve fuller coverage in the OED. Information such as
It is native to India, Pakistan and Nepal and has been introduced to Sri
Lanka, Kenya, Nigeria and many other countries certainly proves the
interest in planting this tree elsewhere. The fact that the catalogue prepared
in Florida describes it as a small tree when other sources suggests that it is
a moderately fast growing deciduous tree depends entirely on the
environment (FOI). What is important is the inclusion of the variant
orthographic form encountered in the Times of India article and in
numerous United Kingdom websites devoted to shisam furniture.
4.3.2. Botanical terms from across cultures

Two other plant names spatodia and chordia present the same difficulty
since the orthographic forms used in Indian news discourse are not
included in the OED and only the Florida catalogue directs the searcher to
the forms found in the dictionary. However, these lexemes are problematic
from another point of view. Though they are scientific names known
worldwide they are the genus names which can refer to a variety of species
of flowering trees or shrubs. In the case of the spathodea, grown as an
ornamental throughout the tropics for its clusters of tulip-shaped orange
and scarlet flowers (OED, additional series 1993) the reference is to the
Spathodea campanulata species, one specific tree, also known as the
African tulip tree, native to Uganda (TROP). The fact that the Indian
catalogue mentions three other plants of the spathodea genus likewise
grown in India makes it possible that the spatodia in question could be one
of the three species with white bell-shaped flowers.
The OED definition of the cordia as any plant of the tropical and
subtropical genus Cordia, [...], comprising evergreen and deciduous shrubs
and trees grown as ornamentals for their showy flowers and in the tropics
for timber (OED, additional series 1993) certainly illustrates the
difficulty of using an internationally known botanical term because the
term in question is used to define more than 10 species originating from
places as far apart as Peru, Texas, South Africa and Asia. The only
common feature of the ten species encountered in the two catalogues is
that they are all ornamental trees grown throughout the tropics and
subtropics; the shape, size and colour of the leaves and flowers vary
notably. The fact that many of them have local names in Indian languages
(e.g. Hindi, Tamil) certainly does not help with the identification since the
tree mentioned could be anything from the scarlet cordia to the Indian
cherry and sea trumpet. The OED definitions are precise in both cases.
The problem is that the same international name can refer to many plants
and the Times of India article provides no extra details for the purpose of
identification.
By contrast, there can be no doubt about the contemporary use of
Jatropha. While this too is another generic name that can be applied to
any of various shrubs, trees, and succulent plants (OED draft revision,
June 2010) there can be no doubt that the species referred to in the article
is the Jatrophas curcas native to Central America and the Caribbean
which has been introduced to India and Africa in the worldwide quest for
eco-sustainable sources of fuel. Though the OED gives the scientific
names (Jatropha curcas) and the popular name physic nut it fails to
provide a description for the species in spite of the thorough
documentation in catalogues, news discourse and academic research
articles. Certainly, the fact that huge extensions of this particular species
the Jatropha curcas is cultivated in India and other parts of the world
since 2007 would justify the description of this particular species
especially in view of its success. From the catalogues we have
confirmation that it is also called the physic nut and that it is also called
the purging nut. More importantly, we discover its use as a nice landscape
plant with greenish yellow flowers. The synchronous flowering shrub of
the third article is so well documented in news discourse and scholarly
work of the past three years that this scrubby tree deserves a description
in a dictionary. Useful information for descriptive purpose includes its size
(up to 6 meters) and its yellowish bell-shaped flowers and much
encyclopedic information about the medicinal components of the seeds
which can be extracted before being converted into energy fuel and its
capacity of restoring degraded soil is also available.
Susan Kermas 87
4.4. Data retrieval for new culture-specific entries

In the following section I will demonstrate on the other hand how to
identify culture-specific lexemes and how to provide sufficient
information for each of the eight remaining plants to create new OED
entries.
A search for bakul in the Indian catalogue took me to two different
plants the Manikara hexandra, a tree native to Sri Lanka, and Mimusops
elengi, native to the Indian subcontinent thanks to the indigenous names of
the plant Kannada bakula and Bengali bakul. Certainly the information
regarding the slow growth and small canopy in the news article was too
scarce for the purpose of identification but the place of publication of the
article was pivotal since Kolkata is in West Bengal where Bengali is
spoken. The Kannada word was therefore dismissed because that word is
used in Southern India to refer to a Sri Lankan tree. The fact that the
Mimusops elengi is also called the Spanish cherry is due to the orangey-
coloured fruits rather than its origin and may have been so named by early
foreign travelers to India.
The actual description of this lovely evergreen tree with tiny creamy
star-shaped flowers and small shiny pointed leaves is supplied by the two
catalogues as indeed their use as fragrant garlands worn by women and
used in oral hygiene. A search of the academic section of WebCorp takes
us to another American plant catalogue available at http:www.astro.
caltech.edu/vam/abadtrees.html which confirms all the information
hitherto supplied besides the English name Indian Medaller. Though most
of the information is supplied by the two plant catalogues its spread to
Northern Australia perhaps warrants its inclusion in the OED.
For the identification of the tall krishnachura tree with huge canopy
and shallow roots of the same article I heavily rely on the Indian flower
catalogue because the name is used to describe four different plants with
the same bright red showy flowers. Though the weed-like plant and treelet
certainly do not fit the description, the choice between the Caesalpina
pulcherrima and the Delonix regia, both called krishnachura in Bengali,
relies entirely on the description of the trees in the two catalogues and
confirmed by data in other catalogues. Both trees have been introduced to
India, the former originating in the West Indies and tropical America, the
latter from Madagascar but the latter seems to be more appropriate
because it is cultivated as a street tree and its elegant wide-spreading
umbrella-like canopy can be wider than its height (FOI). The other is less
likely to be uprooted because it can only be grown as a short tree or a
shrub. For the purpose of description useful data include the beauty of the
exuberant clusters of flame-red flowers and its fern-like leaves (FOI).

Alternative names include flame tree, gulmohar and Royal poinciana.
Identification of radhachura was likewise difficult in spite of its
popularity as an ornamental. This tree is only mentioned in Indian
newspapers and it was only an open source search of WebCorp that
produced the scientific binomial which allowed me to find descriptive
details in the catalogues. The popular name radhachura is not included in
these catalogues but identification is ascertained because the information
corresponds with the information obtained from a discussion group and
FAO website. Indeed the alternative name yellow flame tree is often used
thanks to the resemblance of its fern-like leaves to that of Gulmohar
(FOI) and because the two trees are often planted alternately for their
bright yellow and scarlet colours complementing each other. No
concordances were generated in the separate sections of WebCorp so it is
safe to conclude that the tree is little known outside India in spite of its
cultivation in tropical Africa. Other popular names such as the copper pod,
rusty shield bearer, sogabark, golden flamboyant and yellow poinciana are
used to denote the tree as indeed its scientific names (Peltophorum
pterocarpum, peltophorum ferrugineum and peltophorum roxburghii). The
link to the FAO website also gives precious information relating to the
description of the inflorescences in panicles of terminal spikes of yellow
flowers opening in August, the height of the tree which can reach up to
24 meters as indeed the commercial use of the tannin and its medicinal
properties.
Information relating to shirish, the other tall tree, is extremely
scarce. With exception of the catalogue available at http://www.
astro.caltech.edu/vam/adadtrees.html, which supplies the scientific
name (Albizia lebbeck), all the concordances generated by WebCorp refer
to a persons name. The two catalogues supply the same information with
some additional common names (Womans tongue, Siris-tree, rain tree,
East Indian Walnut, Kokko, Soros-tree, Raom tree) besides another
scientific name (Mimosa lebbeck). They also confirm that it is native to
India and its description as a fast-growing tree, susceptible to wind
damage certainly fits the description in the news article. Other details
include its pale green leaves and cream-coloured, hemispheric pompon-
like flowers and its commercial use in making soap and in tanning. There
is also some curious information regarding the common names womans
tongue and rattle pod which derive from the noise of pods shaking in the
wind.
A search for chhatim in the catalogues produced no results without
knowing the scientific binomial Alstonia scholaris in spite of the similarity
Susan Kermas 89
of its Bengali name chattim. We learn from the catalogues that it is an

elegant evergreen with leathery dark green leaves and clusters of small
greenish white fragrant flowers. It is also called the blackboard tree (since
its wood provides schoolchildrens slates), dita bark and devil tree. An
American Home Remedies Guide at http://www.home-remedies-
guide.com/herbs/devils-tree.htm supplied the scientific binomial and
informs us that the bark is used for treating bowel complaints. The
scientific name is confirmed in documentation relating to an application
for recognition as a World Heritage Site (http://whc.unesco.org/en/
tentativelists/5495/) for the town of Santiniketan (abode of peace) in West
Bengal where the chhatim tree grows.
Putranjiba is another plant little known outside India. It is found in
plant catalogues and in the British Nature and Herbs shop catalogue at
http://www.natureandherbs.co.uk. From the catalogues we learn that it is
native to Indo-China and that its scientific names are Putranjiva
roxburghii, Drypetes roxburghii and Nageia putranjiva. We are also
informed that it is a medium-sized evergreen tree with pendant branches,
long dark green leaves and white velvety fruit. The flowers are yellowish
green and the leaves, bark and fruit are used in medicine. The alternative
names include the lucky bean tree and child life tree (FOI, TROP) and the
native names include Putranjivah in Sanskrit and Putranjiva in Bengali.
From a website devoted to the forest flora of Hyderabad State we have
some folklore. We are informed that putranjiva means life of the child
because the white nuts are strung as necklaces and worn as amulets for
keeping them in good health. Melbourne University confirms the
information regarding the scientific names and to the list of popular names
adds childs amulet tree, Hong Kong lucky bean tree among others. The
fact that scientific research articles also compare putranjiva with other
sources of bio-diesel fuel may suggest that it should be included in a
dictionary.
Devdaru, the slow growing tree with small canopy and roots that go
deep in the second article, is problematic. The Indian catalogue suggests
either the tall Himalayan Cedrus deodara which certainly does not fit the
description or the Polyalthia longifolia. While the latter is a tree used to
line avenues in most parts of India there is no way of being sure because in
Bengali devdaru denotes another small tree equally suitable for lining
streets, the Saraca indica. Both of them are described as evergreen but
while the former has minute pale green star-like flowers the latter has
bright red flowers. Certainly, the popularity of the devdaru would justify
its inclusion in the OED but the fact that it refers to at least three different
plants, all three used in medicine, makes identification imperative.
The final term is different because the two articles from the Times of
India supply sufficient information for creating a new OED entry and
along with the results from a WebCorp search also information suitable for
an encyclopedia. Indeed, the concordances confirm the industrial use of
karanj as indeed further details of ongoing research into its use in the
rehabilitation of red mud bauxite wasteland in India (cf. Ecological
Restoration, vol. 28, n. 1, Mar 2010) and its uses in pest control, disease
management and dermatology as well as the possibility of using processed
karanj oil seed cake as an animal feed. The Indian Green Energy
Awareness Center also provides useful details for its description. It
describes the trunk as short with thick branches, its dark green pinnate
leaves and the colour of the flowers that can range from pink, light purple
to white (http://www.svele.com/karanj.htm). The Indian catalogue
confirms the description and provides useful information regarding both
its scientific synonyms Pongamia pinnata, millettia pinnata, pongamia
glabra and popular names pongam tree, Indian beech tree and pongam oil
tree. It also provides information about the widespread use of the word
karanj in various Indian languages including Hindi, Marathi and Bengali
and the Marathi tendency to use it also in reference to the Derris trifoliata,
which has very similar wisteria-like flowers of a light pinkish colour but
which is not used industrially.
5. Final discussion
If we now go back to the articles we should be able to read them with the
knowledgeable eyes of an Indian. We know from the first article that the
trees will be planted along an important road the road taken by pilgrims
on the way to Pandharpur during the annual wari and that the Indian
reader will therefore be extremely interested in the choice of trees. We can
now more or less understand what the planting of shirish, peepal, jamun,
shisam, karanj, spatodia and cordia along the drive will mean to the
pilgrims. The peepul, the fig-like tree held sacred by Hindus and
Buddhists will be particularly appreciated also because its huge canopy
provides shade. The others are renowned for their beautiful flowers. We
know that shirish is another shade-giving tree with cream-coloured
hemispheric pompon-like flowers, and curious seed pods which rattle in
the wind; shisam has fragrant white to pink flowers growing in clusters
and karanj has flowers that can range from white to pink and light purple.
The only uncertainty lies in the colour of the flowers of the spatodia and
chordia. A knowledgeable reader would also realize that the authorities
Susan Kermas 91
have not taken into account that both the peepul and shirish are
susceptible to wind damage.
In effect, the second article follows cyclone Aila and focuses on
Bengal governments decision to prioritize planting trees that are more
likely to survive in such weather conditions. Now that we have a better
knowledge of the plants we can appreciate that the ornamental value of the
trees has been taken into consideration. While no doubt the local residents
will miss the noble peepal tree for its sacred associations, the
krishnachura and radhachura for their alternate displays of red and
yellow, and the shirish for its creamy pompom flowers, the proposal to
plant bakul, devdaru, jarul, chhatim, putranjiba, and the garden variety of
ficus trees in their place (Times of India, 6/9/09) will no doubt be
appreciated. Chhatim is a particularly good substitute for the peepul as it
too is a sacred tree with the additional value of having scented flowers and
all the trees are ornamentals. Jarul, also known as Pride of India has
large panicles of purple flowers; bakul has creamy scented flowers that
can be made into garlands and worn in the hair and putranjiba, the lucky
bean tree will certainly be an attraction to children picking its white nuts
for making necklaces. Even though we have not got a precise description
of devdaru we know that it is an ornamental used for lining avenues
throughout India and Sri Lanka and can therefore conclude that the local
government has paid attention both to the residents aesthetic needs and
safety.
The proposal to plant jatropha and karanj on community wasteland in
the third article can go unchallenged. The Jatropha with its yellowish bell-
shaped flowers and karanj with its flowers ranging from pink, light purple
to white cannot fail to embellish the area and have the additional
advantage of producing bio-diesel fuel. Jatropha has moreover medicinal
components and its economic value can now be fully appreciated.
Certainly our search demonstrates that Indian English news discourse
is heavily laden with culture-specific words and that dictionaries can be
updated. While general interest in the botanical world transpires from the
seven words included in the second edition of the OED, the ever-
increasing importance of Indian plants has not been given due attention.
While the plants known during the Raj are included in the OED, the others
have not been included in spite of their commercial value and ongoing
research into their therapeutic properties and in some cases their possible
use as bio-fuels.
6. Conclusion
Searching the names of trees found in the three news articles in The Times
of India was like unraveling the mysteries of a hitherto unknown world.
On the one hand it illustrates that there is still room for discovery in our
global village, on the other it throws light on the utility of surfing the net
both for making these discoveries and for improving our dictionaries.
Ambiguity arising from botanical nomenclature has always been
problematic for authors and scientists alike because of the numerous
dialectal names available and lack of information in dictionaries. Today
there is so much information available that our exploration of the botanical
world has thrown light not only on the possibility to gain knowledge of
plants specific to any particular area but also in some cases to find
equivalent terms used on different continents. It has also demonstrated that
botany no longer pertains uniquely to medicine, today it has become a
complementary science to environmentalists and green economists
searching for eco-sustainable fuel in the hope of improving the quality of
life on a global scale. Today, more than ever, knowledge sharing has
become imperative. It is hardly likely that the Latin scientific names will
ever completely replace those common culture-specific names. Though
shared knowledge of the nomenclature used within the scientific
community certainly allows us to unlock hitherto unknown realms the
binomials are too cumbersome to replace the culture-specific lexeme and
the generic name is too vague. Likewise, English cannot maintain its
lingua franca status without embracing the cultural dimension and the
dictionary has to meet this challenge if the language is to continue as a
medium for intercultural exchange.
References
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http://dsal.uchicago.edu/dictionaries/hobsonjobson
BRAND CULTURE MIRRORED
IN DICTIONARIES:
GENERIC TRADEMARKS
IN ENGLISH AND ITALIAN
CRISTIANO FURIASSI
(UNIVERSITY OF TURIN)
1. Introduction
This study consists in retrieving instances of trademarks attested in the
English language and at the same time used as generics in Italian
through a dictionary-based analysis in order to assess their influence on
the Italian vocabulary.
Owing to the well-known phenomena of internationalization and
globalization, British and American trademarks have spread throughout
the world since the late 1940s in an ever-increasing quest to own and
control culture (Bollier 2005). This notable event immediately had an
impact on the English language, by adding to its vocabulary. It later
affected the languages of the countries to which products often
associated with a specific trademark have been exported. Italy was also
involved, thus showing that the exportation of products and inventions, i.e.
a cultural process, is tied to the borrowing of trademarks, i.e. a linguistic
process.
Trademarks embody ideas and imply cultural models which in turn
shape (and are shaped by) language: since all uses of language entail some
cultural dimension, it must be noted that what starts out as a trademark
in connection with the sale of goods and services may be used as an
everyday expression and become a stable element of language. Indeed,
over the years, in both the English and the Italian language some famous
trademarks, that are [] so frequent in occurrence and central to the
ordinary speakers knowledge of the language that they belong in every
dictionary as a matter of record [] (Butters 2008: 509), have come to be
used as generics, at least from what is attested in dictionaries and corpora.
96 Brand Culture Mirrored in Dictionaries
Generic (or genericized) trademarks belong to a rather neglected area

of lexicon and have only received fragmentary attention from linguists and
lexicographers, both English (Shuy 2002; Adams 2005; Butters 2008) and
Italian (Zardo 1996; Furiassi 2006; Riolo 2007; Coletti 2010).1 In fact, the
study of trademarks contributes to shed light on the relationship between
vocabulary and cultural heritage.
Starting from the multifaceted nature of trademarks, their impact on
the vocabulary of the English and as a consequence of borrowing of
the Italian language is measured through a meta-lexicographic analysis. As
recognized by Butters (2008: 511-512):
When dictionary makers find, in the objective data of everyday speech and
published writing, widespread use of well-known brand names in a fashion
that has technical earmarks of genericness, they may incorporate their
findings in their dictionary entries [].
Accordingly, dictionaries are viewed not only as mere records of

words but also as inventories of culture-bound (Hartmann and James
2001) lexical items, which are witnesses of the (supposed) prestige of
brand culture (Schroeder and Salzer-Mrling 2006) or trademark
culture (Beebe 2008).
2. Terminological issues
Graphically, trademarks are often though not always recognizable in
dictionaries since they are followed by either or in superscript style
(Zardo 1996: 373-374). With regard to texts, Ephratt (2003: 402) advises
writers [] to add the sign in every mention of a registered trademark
and the sign for an unregistered trademark.. The symbol indicates
that the preceding word is a trademark which has been registered with a
national trademark office whereas the symbol identifies trademarks
1
Butters and Westerhaus (2004: 111) lament the fact that [a]lthough trademarks
abound in the lexicon of modern and postmodern life, they are treated by linguists
(among whom we count lexicographers and other philologists) as something of an
embarrassment. In particular, dictionaries even unabridged ones have entries
for only the very most frequent of trademarks; trademarks are seldom discussed in
the methodological and theoretical literature of lexicography and lexicology; and
linguists have until quite recently ignored the contribution of this vast word stock
to the history of twentieth-century English [].
Cristiano Furiassi 97
which are not registered.2

It is also important to acknowledge that terminology is not univocal:
trademarks (Merriam-Webster) are also referred to as brand names
(Moss 1995: 135), proprietary names (OED), proprietary terms
(OCEL), trade names (OCEL), trade terms (OED), word marks
(Ephratt 2003: 393), and proprietary brands (Oxford-Paravia).3
2.1. Uniqueness
Trademarks are symbols. Traditionally, the prototypical trademark is
composed of three elements: a signifier, i.e. the form of the trademark, a
signified, i.e. the meaning of the trademark, and a referent, i.e. the product,
distinguished from other products of the same kind made by competitors
(Beebe 2008: 44). This threefold structure leads to the identification of
uniqueness, which should characterize any trademark: [a] sign or name
that is secured by legal registration or (in some cases) by established use,
and serves to distinguish one product from similar brands sold by
competitors [] (OCEL) or [] a symbol or name used by a maker of a
product to distinguish the product from others of its kind. (Landau 2001
[1984]: 405).
2.2. Genericness
The structure of generic trademarks is only twofold: a signifier and a
signified. The referent, i.e. the physical product, is reduced to a nullity
(Beebe 2008: 51), in the sense that it becomes undistinguished from other
products of the same kind made by competitors. The fact that the specific
referent identified by the trademark is somehow overlooked leads to the
recognition of genericness: [] the use of the trademark not as a mark
but as a descriptive word []. (Ephratt 2003: 404).4
As far as dictionaries are concerned, Adams (2005: 4) states that [t]o
2
The omission of the labels and should not be regarded as affecting the legal status
of any trademark or any company owner of the trademarks mentioned in this article.
3
Also in Italian there is variability in the use of the terms nomi di marchio
(Zardo 1996), nomi commerciali (Riolo 2007), and marchionimi (Riolo 2007,
Coletti 2010).
4
As explained in a previous study (Furiassi 2010: 39), [] trademarks which
have acquired a generic meaning [] undergo a particular kind of metonymic
shift, i.e. a type of semantic shift, which consists in downgrading the proper noun
to a common noun and in applying [] trademarks to common items..
a trademark owner, a dictionary entry for the trademark looks like a gross
and irreversible symptom of decaying distinctiveness, a warning that the
trademarks lease on life has all too short a date..5 As regards the use of
generic trademarks in everyday language, Solly (2002: 227-228)
acknowledges that [t]his is not necessarily good news for a company: the
entry of these words into common use in the language might testify to the
commercial success of its advertising and market; on the other, it brings
the risk of genericide and thus the serious loss of revenue to the
business..
Undoubtedly, genericness reduces the uniqueness of a trademark: []
a trademark loses its specific referential features and is used with a more
general reference. (Furiassi 2006: 200).6 However, notwithstanding the
legal implications associated with this phenomenon, the inclusion of a
trademark in a dictionary is still a way of promoting the product behind
the trademark: dictionary users may even prefer to buy the product which
has become so famous as to be included in the dictionary because they
recognize it as established by authority.7
3. Generic trademarks in dictionaries

To start with, a list of trademarks was automatically extracted from the
latest electronic editions of two large general-purpose English dictionaries,
5
Adams (2005: 4) states that [e]ven if a corporation could keep a dictionary from
recording its trademark, it couldnt keep people from using it and extending it.
Dictionaries are responsible to the public for entering, defining, and illustrating
words and should do so in the public interest regardless of the harm it may do to a
corporations profit or trademark ownership. A corporation can establish a right to
use a word commercially, but it cannot own the word itself: the languages users
own the language; dictionaries simply register the deed..
6
In English legal terminology dilution (Butters 2008) is preferred over
genericness. The Italian corresponding term, in both legal and linguistic
contexts, is volgarizzazione (Coletti 2010).
7
Trademarks have been an editorial issue for lexicographers since the early days
of modern dictionary-making, especially in the 20th and 21st century. Indeed, most
users guides include articulated disclaimers which deny that the definitions
provided constitute legal claims on words, especially trademarks, in order to avoid
legal controversy. It is crucial to bear in mind that, unlike copyrights and patents,
trademarks, after being registered, must be protected and actively used. In addition,
in legal disputes, if a trademark is judged to have become so famous that the
average speaker is not aware that it is a trademark anymore, it may be ruled
indefensible.
i.e. Merriam-Webster and OED.8 Then, the way in which American and
British trademarks have affected the Italian vocabulary was verified by
analyzing the latest electronic editions of the following Italian dictionaries:
De Mauro, Treccani, and Zingarelli.9
Despite terminological ambiguity, trademark is the only label
consistently used in the Merriam-Webster. However, the label trademark
appears in both the etymology section (15 entries) and the function section
(461 entries) of each entry.
As for the OED, although proprietary name (1,101 entries) is the
preferred choice, several labels are used in order to identify trademarks:
brandname (1 entry), brand name (39 entries), proprietary term (90
entries), trademark (80 entries), trade mark (100 entries), tradename
(224 entries), trade name (5 entries), and trade term (35 entries). What
made it slightly more complicated to automatically extract trademarks
from the OED is the fact that some labels had to be looked up both as solid
compounds, e.g. trademark, and as two-word compounds, e.g. trade
mark.
The potential generic use of the trademarks found in the Merriam-
Webster and the OED was verified by checking the definitions provided
by the Italian dictionaries consulted. For instance, the Treccani uses
abbreviations such as fig. for figurato and also periphrases such as
Nelluso corrente, si d il nome di [] anche ad altri prodotti simili.,
Con sign. generico, il termine usato talora [], [] il termine
usato [] per indicare [], Nel linguaggio corrente il termine indica
pi genericam. un qualsiasi tipo di [], Nome con cui viene comunem.
indicato [], and Nome commerciale [] usato spesso come nome
comune e generico []. The Zingarelli uses abbreviations such as est.
for esteso, fig. for figurato, and iron. for ironico; it also
includes periphrases such as Nome commerciale frequentemente usato
8
Part of the data displayed in this article were gathered thanks to the resources
available at the Centre for Translation and Intercultural Studies (CTIS) of the
University of Manchester, UK. The stay at CTIS from February 2010 to July
2010 was sponsored by the World Wide Style (WWS) fellowship, funded by the
Universit degli Studi di Torino, Italy, and the Fondazione CRT.
9
The following dictionaries were consulted on line: the Merriam-Webster at
unabridged.merriam-webster.com, the OED at www.oed.com, the Treccani at
www.treccani.it, and the Zingarelli at www.dizionari.zanichelli.it. As regards the
De Mauro, since the CD-ROM edition was published in 2000, results were
integrated by referring to De Mauro and Mancini (2003 [2001]).
come sinonimo di []. The De Mauro seems to only use abbreviations

such as estens. for estensione and fig. for figurato.10
Table 1 below lists in alphabetical order the 40 items registered as
trademarks in the Merriam-Webster and the OED which are used as
generics in Italian. English synonyms (recorded in the Merriam-Webster
or the OED) and Italian translation equivalents (retrieved from the De
Mauro, the Treccani, or the Zingarelli) are included. In cases where no
English synonym or Italian translation equivalent is recorded or the
trademark is rendered with a periphrasis and not lexicalized in either
English or Italian the empty-set symbol is used.
Trademarks listed as entries in both the Merriam-Webster and the OED
are 14, i.e. Biro, Caterpillar, Formica, Frisbee, Jacuzzi, Kleenex,
Ping-Pong, Plexiglas, Polaroid, Scotch, Spam, Thermos, Velcro,
and Wi-Fi.11 Trademarks recorded in the Merriam-Webster only are 7,
i.e. Go-Kart (Kart), Hula-Hoop, Identi-Kit, Jeep, Klaxon, LP, and
Oscar. Trademarks found in the OED only are 19, i.e. Barbie, BMX,
Cellophane, iPod, Liberty, Minivan, Moon Boot, Moviola, Nylon,
Post-it, Rollerblade, Spinning, Tabloid, Tampax, Telefax, Tetra
Pak, Walkman, Webcam, and Yo-Yo.
Table 1: Generic trademarks used in Italian extracted from the
Merriam-Webster and the OED.
trademark English Italian English Italian

dictionary dictionary synonym equivalent
Barbie OED De Mauro
Treccani
Zingarelli
Biro Merriam- De Mauro (ballpoint) penna (a sfera)
Webster Treccani pen
OED Zingarelli
BMX OED De Mauro
Zingarelli
10
Vice versa, with reference to the AHD, Butters (2008: 513) states that []
lexicographers understand the legal concept of genericness, but they avoid
explicitly labeling listed terms as generic so as to exempt themselves form what
might be construed as the drawing of legal conclusions (thus avoiding the threat of
legal action from the trademark owners)..
11
Wi-Fi is labeled by the Merriam-Webster as a certification mark, not
properly as a trademark.

Caterpillar Merriam- De Mauro tractor cingolato,
Webster Treccani schiacciasassi
OED Zingarelli
Cellophane OED De Mauro
Treccani
Zingarelli
Formica Merriam- De Mauro laminated laminato
Webster Treccani plastic plastico
OED Zingarelli
Frisbee Merriam- De Mauro
Webster Treccani
OED Zingarelli
Go-Kart Merriam- De Mauro
(Kart) Webster Treccani
Zingarelli
Hula-Hoop Merriam- De Mauro
Webster Treccani
Zingarelli
Identi-Kit Merriam- De Mauro
Webster Treccani
Zingarelli
iPod OED Treccani portable lettore portatile
Zingarelli media player di musica
Jacuzzi Merriam- De Mauro whirlpool (vasca per)
Webster Treccani bath idromassaggio
OED Zingarelli
Jeep Merriam- De Mauro multipurpose (vettura)
Webster Treccani motor fuoristrada
Zingarelli vehicle
Klaxon Merriam- De Mauro horn, avvisatore
Webster Treccani warning acustico
Zingarelli signal
Kleenex Merriam- De Mauro cleansing fazzoletto (di
Webster Zingarelli tissue, paper carta)
OED handkerchief
Liberty OED De Mauro art nouveau art nouveau,
Treccani stile floreale
Zingarelli

LP Merriam- De Mauro long-playing (disco)
Webster Treccani (record) trentatr giri
Zingarelli
Minivan OED Treccani
Moon Boot OED De Mauro doposc
Treccani
Zingarelli
Moviola OED De Mauro slow motion rallentatore
Treccani
Zingarelli
Nylon OED De Mauro
Treccani
Zingarelli
Oscar Merriam- De Mauro award premio,
Webster Treccani riconoscimento
Zingarelli
Ping-Pong Merriam- De Mauro table tennis tennis (da)
Webster Treccani tavolo
OED Zingarelli
Plexiglas Merriam- De Mauro
Webster Treccani
OED Zingarelli
Polaroid Merriam- De Mauro
Webster Treccani
OED Zingarelli
Post-it OED De Mauro sticky
Treccani
Zingarelli
Rollerblade OED De Mauro in-line pattini in linea
Treccani skates
Zingarelli
Scotch Merriam- De Mauro (transparent) nastro adesivo
Webster Treccani adhesive (trasparente)
OED Zingarelli tape
Spam Merriam- De Mauro
Webster Treccani
OED Zingarelli

Spinning OED De Mauro
Treccani
Zingarelli
Tabloid OED De Mauro
Treccani
Zingarelli
Tampax OED De Mauro tampon assorbente
interno
Telefax OED De Mauro facsimile, facsimile, fax
Treccani fax
Zingarelli
Tetra Pak OED De Mauro cardboard (contenitore
Treccani container di) cartone
Thermos Merriam- De Mauro vacuum
Webster Treccani bottle
OED Zingarelli
Velcro Merriam- De Mauro chiusura rapida
Webster Treccani
OED Zingarelli
Walkman OED De Mauro portable riproduttore
Treccani audio player portatile
Zingarelli
Webcam OED De Mauro
Treccani
Zingarelli
Wi-Fi Merriam- De Mauro wireless collegamento
Webster Treccani networking senza fili
OED Zingarelli
Yo-Yo OED De Mauro
Treccani
Zingarelli
As shown in Table 1, for 16 entries, neither English synonyms nor

Italian translation equivalents are provided, i.e. Barbie, BMX,
Cellophane, Frisbee, Go-Kart (Kart), Hula-Hoop, Identi-Kit,
Minivan, Nylon, Plexiglas, Polaroid, Spam, Spinning, Tabloid,
Webcam, and Yo-Yo. In two cases, i.e. Post-it and Thermos, only
English synonyms are found (sticky and vacuum bottle) and in two other
cases, i.e. Moon Boot and Velcro, only Italian translation equivalents are
provided (doposc and chiusura rapida).
In fact, such abundance of empty-set symbols may help explain the
reason for genericizing trademarks: very often, in both English and Italian,
trademarks do not have a corresponding hyperonym, i.e. a common noun,
therefore they cannot be lexicalized otherwise.12 Since a long, tortuous
periphrasis is needed to explain what would be much more economically
achieved and most effectively communicated by using the trademark itself,
language users prefer to use the trademark generically.
4. Case studies
In order to explain the process of genericness, some prototypical case
studies, i.e. Frisbee, Oscar, Post-it, and Spam, are analyzed in detail
considering the information provided by English and Italian dictionaries.13
4.1. Frisbee
Within the entry Frisbee (1957), the OED also includes the spelling
variants frisbee and frisby. The noun Frisbee is defined as [t]he
proprietary name of a concave plastic disc which spins when thrown into
the air and is used in a catching game. Similarly, the Merriam-Webster
records Frisbee as a trademark used for a plastic disk several inches in
diameter that is sailed between players by a flip of the wrist.
The De Mauro records frisbee (1971) and defines it as disco di
plastica che si lancia in aria con effetto rotatorio e si afferra al volo con le
mani and as gioco che si fa con tale disco. In the etymology section of
the entry, it is specified that frisbee is a nome commerciale, dallingl.
12
Since the focus of this research is on the genericness of trademarks in Italian, it
must be stressed that not all items included in Table 1 are used as generics also in
English. For instance, iPod is defined by the OED as a brand of portable media
player, by the LDOCE, at www.ldoceonline.com/dictionary, as a small piece of
electronic equipment for playing music, made by the Apple computer company,
and by the CALD, at dictionary.cambridge.org, as a type of small MP3 player.
Although it is not attested in any of the Italian dictionaries analyzed, lettore MP3 is
a plausible lexicalization of iPod in Italian (Furiassi 2006: 211). However, the
issue of trademark genericness in English would deserve separate treatment and is
not dealt with here.
13
In the following lines, the date of first attestation, if available, is indicated in
brackets after each entry.
frisbee, forse alteraz. di Frisbie, nome dellindustriale americano J.P.

Frisbie, titolare di una ditta di prodotti dolciari i cui vassoi di cartone,
lanciati per divertimento dagli studenti, ispirarono la creazione di tale
gioco.
The Zingarelli defines the noun Frisbee (1971) as [l]eggero disco di
plastica che si lancia o ci si lancia in giochi singoli o a squadre and as
[i]l gioco stesso. Its origin is explained as follows: n. dato da F.
Morrison alloggetto, che assomigliava al vassoio di cartone delle torte
prodotte dalla pasticceria Frisbie, di cui ha alterato il n. per evitare
controversie giudiziarie.
Also the Treccani includes frisbee and provides the following
definition: [g]ioco allaperto, diffusosi (anche come competizione
sportiva) dagli Stati Uniti dAmerica: consiste nel lanciare alla maggiore
distanza possibile, e imprimendogli nellaria un particolare effetto, un
leggero disco di plastica (chiamato anchesso, con nome brevettato,
frisbee), che viene preso al volo da un compagno o avversario di gioco, o
anche dallo stesso lanciatore dopo una corsa veloce e acrobatica. Pare che
il termine sia lalterazione di Frisbie, nome (dal suo fondatore) di una ditta
di prodotti dolciari, perch in origine il gioco veniva praticato da militari e
studenti americani con i vassoi di cartone entro cui la ditta metteva in
vendita le proprie torte.
More details about the etymology of Frisbee are provided by Freeman
(1997: 98):
One historian maintained that the game began on a Yale campus in 1827
[]. A story that has better credentials cites the drivers of the Frisbie Pie
Company of Bridgeport, Connecticut, who, during their lunch breaks,
amused themselves by throwing around tin pie plates. With time, this fun
activity took hold at Yale University, and then spread to other campuses
around the country. [] The name of the pie company was later
emblazoned onto the saucer, which then became known as Frisbee, and the
saucers material changed to plastic. Just about 1950 a certain Fred
Morrison introduced on the West Coast a product he called the original
Flyin Saucer and hawked his product for seven years. At that time two
ingenious entrepreneurs began the manufacture of plastic circular plates
and kept the name Frisbee to honor the Frisbie Pie Company.
4.2. Oscar
In spite of the fact that Oscar (1934) is not recognized as a trademark by
the OED, which warns the reader that it may be found also with lower-
case initial, it is defined as either [a]ny of the statuettes awarded
annually since 1928 in Hollywood, United States, by the Academy of
Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for excellence in film acting, directing,
and other aspects of film-making or [a]ny award for outstanding
performance or achievement. Within the former definition, it is also
specified that the plural preceded by the definite article, i.e. the Oscars,
means the ceremony at which these awards are presented. As for its
etymology, the OED states the following: [o]rigin uncertain; perhaps the
name of Oscar Pierce, 20th-cent. U.S. wheat and fruit grower. In 1931
Margaret Herrick, librarian (and later executive director) of the Academy
of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is said to have remarked that the
statuette reminded her of her Uncle Oscar, the name by which she called
her cousin Oscar Pierce. The name was first used officially by the
Academy in 1939.
The Merriam-Webster records Oscar as a trademark used especially
for any of a number of golden statuettes awarded annually by a
professional organization for notable achievement in motion pictures.
The De Mauro provides the following definitions of oscar (1950):
spec. con iniz. maiusc., statuetta di bronzo dorato, concessa ogni anno
dalla statunitense Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science quale
premio al miglior film e ai migliori attori, registi, sceneggiatori,
costumisti, ecc., estens., spec. con iniz. maiusc., il film, lattore, il
regista, ecc. che ha ricevuto tale premio, and estens., riconoscimento
attribuito nellambito di una determinata attivit o manifestazione.
Also the Zingarelli lists Oscar (1950) as [s]tatuetta annualmente
assegnata come premio dallAccademia statunitense delle arti e delle
scienze cinematografiche ai migliori attori, registi, sceneggiatori, fotografi,
ecc., (fig.) [i]l primo premio di una qualunque manifestazione, culturale
o non, and (fig., anche scherz.) [i]l massimo. Its etymology is disputed:
da un equivoco: il segretario dellAccademia, vedendo luomo che
portava la statuetta, lo scambi per il proprio zio, di nome Oscar, che egli
in quel momento stava aspettando: un giornalista, sentendolo dire ecco
Oscar, annunci che i premi si chiamavano cos.
The Treccani records the noun oscar but advises the user that Oscar is
more common. It defines it as [p]ropr., nome della statuetta di bronzo
dorato, alta circa 25 cm e raffigurante un cavaliere appoggiato allelsa
della spada, che lAccademia statunitense delle arti e delle scienze
cinematografiche conferisce ogni anno, dal 1928, come premio al miglior
film, al miglior attore e alla migliore attrice, al miglior regista, alla
migliore sceneggiatura, ecc., per metonimia, il termine indica anche il
film, lattore, lattrice, il regista, ecc. premiati con lOscar, and [p]er
estens., premio o riconoscimento che sancisce un successo in una
determinata attivit, manifestazione e sim.. Its etymology seems uncertain:
der., sembra, dallesclamazione di una segretaria dellAccade-mia sotto

citata che not una straordinaria rassomiglianza fra la statuetta e un suo
zio, di nome appunto Oscar.
It is worth noticing that one of the meanings provided by both the De
Mauro and the Treccani, that is the personification of Oscar, makes it a
false Anglicism in Italian, whose proper English equivalents are Oscar
winner or Oscar-winning actor/actress.
Freeman (1997: 187) exhaustively explains why the golden trophy was
eventually named Oscar:
The statuette was first presented in 1927, but it was nameless until 1931. In
that year, a new librarian, Mrs. Margaret Herrick, was employed by the
Academy. When shown one of the trophies, she noted its resemblance to
her uncle. A newspaper reporter sitting nearby overheard the comment,
liked it, published it, and thus initiated a permanent name for the prized
trophy. Her remark was, He reminds me of my Uncle Oscar.. Uncle
Oscar has been a somewhat shadowy figure. He was supposed to be Oscar
Pierce, a wealthy Texan, but that fact has never been satisfactorily
established.
4.3. Post-it
While absent in the Merriam-Webster, Post-it is recorded in the OED
(1975) as [a] proprietary name for: a small piece of notepaper (often
yellow) with a lightly adhesive strip along one edge of the reverse side,
enabling it to be stuck to a surface as a marker or for messages, comments,
or reminders, and to be easily removed when necessary; (hence more
widely) any note of this type.
The De Mauro records post-it (1993), specifying that it is a nome
commerciale, and defines it as foglietto autoadesivo rimovibile sul quale
si pu scrivere un messaggio, un promemoria e sim.. The Zingarelli lists
Post-it (1990) as marchio registrato and provides the following
definition: [f]oglietto autoadesivo rimovibile, sul quale si pu scrivere un
promemoria o un messaggio e che pu essere attaccato in evidenza su
qualsiasi superficie.
The Treccani also includes post-it as marchio registrato and explains
that it is the [d]enominazione con la quale sono indicati i foglietti gialli (o
di altro colore), di formati diversi, venduti in blocchetti, che hanno la
propriet di poter essere incollati pi volte lungo uno dei bordi e poi
staccati, usati per prendere appunti e lasciare messaggi.
It is curious to notice that Giovanardi et al. (2008: 334) suggest
giallino as the Italian equivalent of post-it. Although Ayto (1999: 495)
acknowledges the existence of yellow sticky in English, the chances of

giallino taking root in the vocabulary of Italian speakers do not seem high.
4.4. Spam
As regards English dictionaries, the OED includes Spam (1937) as a
noun: [t]he proprietary name of a type of tinned meat consisting chiefly
of pork; also (with lower-case initial) applied loosely to other types of
tinned luncheon meat.. The adjective spammy (1959) is also included as
a sub-entry with the following meaning: consisting or tasting chiefly of
(bland) luncheon meat; also fig., commonplace, mediocre, unexciting..
The noun spam (1993) is listed as a separate entry: [o]riginally:
irrelevant or inappropriate postings to an Internet newsgroup, esp.
messages sent to a large number of newsgroups simultaneously, often for
advertising purposes; an act or instance of sending such messages. Now
chiefly: similar unsolicited electronic mail, esp. when sent to individuals
as part of a mass-mailing.. The verb spam (1991) is also recorded with
different meanings: transitive, [t]o give (a person) an unpleasant task
and [t]o flood (a network, esp. the Internet, a newsgroup, or individuals)
with a large number of unsolicited postings, or multiple copies of the same
posting, and also intransitive, to send large numbers of unsolicited
messages or advertisements. In addition, the following information about
etymology is mentioned: [] probably with specific reference to a 1971
sketch from the British television comedy series Monty Pythons Flying
Circus, set in a caf where Spam was served as the main ingredient of
every dish, and featuring a nonsense song whose lyrics consist chiefly of
the word Spam repeated many times over, at times interrupting or
drowning out other conversation [].
The Merriam-Webster records the trademark Spam by defining it as
used for a canned meat consisting primarily of pork products. There are
also two separate entries for spam as a noun, defined as unsolicited
usually commercial e-mail sent to a large number of addresses [] from a
skit on the British television series Monty Pythons Flying Circus in which
chanting of the word Spam (trademark for a canned meat product)
overrides the other dialogue, and spam as a verb: the transitive meaning
is to send spam to and the intransitive meaning is to send spam. Also
the derived noun spammer is recorded as a sub-entry of the verb.
As far as Italian dictionaries are concerned, the De Mauro includes the
noun spam (1998) as messaggio di posta elettronica o articolo che viene
inviato contemporaneamente a molti destinatari e newsgroup che non
hanno alcun interesse a riceverlo [] da Spam, nome di una canzone dei
Monty Python, che riprendeva il nome commerciale di una pasta a base di

carne di consistenza gelatinosa e sapore sgradevole, utilizzato come
sostituto meno volgare di shit merda in espressioni quali dont spam on
fan non tirare lo spam sul ventilatore. Separate entries are assigned to
the noun spammer (1998), chi invia spam, and the noun spamming
(1999), lo spedire indiscriminatamente nella posta elettronica di altri o in
newsgroup messaggi inutili e non richiesti.
The Zingarelli records three related nouns: spam (1997), messaggio
non richiesto, spec. di contenuto pubblicitario, inviato tramite posta
elettronica, spamming (1996), diffusione tramite posta elettronica di
messaggi pubblicitari o di altra natura non richiesti dai destinatari [] da
Spam prosciutto in scatola, parola ricorrente nel popolarissimo show
della tv ingl. Monty Pythons Flying Circus, iniziato nel 1969, and
spammer (1997), chi invia abitualmente messaggi non richiesti tramite
posta elettronica.
In the Treccani, the noun spam is defined as messaggio indesiderato
di posta elettronica, spec. di natura pubblicitaria [] contrazione di
sp(iced) (h)am, che indica la carne suina in scatola, nome depositato; la
parola fu adoperata nello show televisivo inglese Monty Pythons Flying
Circus, messo in onda nel 1969 and the noun spamming is defined as
invio di spam.14
Although no source unambiguously explains whether spam is an
acronym or a blend, i.e. a conflation of spiced ham (Ayto 1999: 240),
the evolution of its meaning from canned, precooked meat consisting
primarily of pork to inappropriate, irrelevant, unsolicited electronic mail,
through the classic jingle by the Monty Python is clarified at
www.spam.com, the official website of the trademark SPAM.15 The
following quotation confirms and summarizes what the dictionary-based
investigation has highlighted:
14
Giovanardi et al. (2008: 370) propose spazzatura as the Italian equivalent of
spam.
15
The maker of SPAM and the owner of the trademark is the Hormel Foods
Corporation. More details about SPAM are available at www.spam.com: The
first can of SPAM Classic was produced in 1937 in Austin, Minnesota. [] A
man named Kenneth Daigneau, an actor from New York, was crowned the official
namer of SPAM Classic. Jay Hormel, the father of SPAM, held a contest to help
find a name of this tender, sweet meat in a can. The name SPAM was selected
and Ken Mr Daigneau received a $ 100 dollar prize which was a lot of money,
considering it was 1936..
Youve probably seen, heard or even used the term spamming to refer to
the act of sending unsolicited commercial email (UCE), or spam to refer
to the UCE itself. Following is our position on the relationship between
UCE and our trademark SPAM. Use of the term spam was adopted as a
result of the Monty Python skit in which our SPAM canned meat product
was featured. In this skit, a group of Vikings sang a chorus of spam,
spam, spam [...] in an increasing crescendo, drowning out other
conversation. Hence, the analogy applied because UCE was drowning out
normal discourse on the Internet. We do not object to use of this slang term
to describe UCE, although we do object to the use of the word spam as a
trademark and to the use of our product image in association with that
term. Also, if the term is to be used, it should be used in all lower-case
letters to distinguish it from our trademark SPAM, which should be used
with all uppercase letters. This slang term, which generically describes
UCE, does not affect the strength of our trademark SPAM. [] It is only
when someone attempts to trademark the word spam that we object to
such use, in order to protect our rights in our famous trademark SPAM. We
coined this term in 1937 and it has become a famous trademark. Thus, we
dont appreciate it when someone else tries to make money on the goodwill
that we created in our trademark or product image, or takes away from the
unique and distinctive nature of our famous trademark SPAM.
5. Genericness as a continuum
As a consequence of the international fame granted to them by
globalization, the presence of trademarks in culture and their generic use
in everyday language have become so pervasive that speakers are often
unaware that some words they use are (or at least were) trademarks.
Indeed, as Ephratt (2003: 404) puts it: [] the first stage of genericness
is the use of the trademark by innocent, yet unauthorized, speakers..16
Genericness is not a direct process since it usually takes some time for
a trademark to become generic. Also the evolution of the meaning and the
change in the graphic form of a trademark are often lost in time and no
clear etymology can be easily reconstructed. However, as witnessed by the
case studies examined above, it seems that the process through which a
16
Contrary to Ephratts claim, Butters and Westerhaus (2004: 121) believe that
[] the public at large is in fact highly aware that brand names are indeed brand
names [].. Butters (2008: 514) also adds that [i]t thus seems reasonable to
conclude that [] extraordinarily famous brands [] which (as the dictionaries
report) sometimes exhibit in print overt features of genericness, have not in fact
undergone genericide assuming that the relevant public still recognizes them as
brand names. Such trademarks have recently been termed pseudogenerics..
trademark starts out as such and then may become generic develops along
a continuum made up of three phases: orthographic, morphological, and
semantic.
The orthographic phase shows how, in writing, genericness starts with
the failure to comply with the graphic conventions established by the
trademark owner. In the specific case of spam, it begins with the omission
of (and/or in other cases), e.g. from SPAM to SPAM, and ends with
the loss of capitalization, e.g. from Spam to spam. As for frisbee, besides
decapitalization, the word may be respelled as frisby. Oscar and Post-it are
simply decapitalized, becoming oscar and post-it respectively.
The morphological phase is evident when a trademark, i.e. a noun by
definition, is used as a base to form other nouns, e.g. spammer, spamming,
adjectives, e.g. spammy, or verbs, e.g. to spam. Whereas in English verbs
may be obtained from trademarks through zero derivation, in Italian the
addition of the verbal morpheme (usually -are) is obligatory. It is curious
to notice that, despite the fact that it is commonly used in Italian, the verb
spammare, which is not present in any of the general-purpose monolingual
dictionaries examined, is only found in the Italian-English bilingual
dictionary Sansoni as the translation equivalent of the verb to spam. To
conclude, also the formation of the plural is decisive to state that a
trademark has come to be used generically, e.g. frisbees, oscars. However,
this is likely to appear evident only in English since in Italian borrowed
trademarks tend to behave as Anglicisms, that is the singular form is
normally used in contexts which would require the plural.
Finally, the semantic phase implies that a trademark be used
synecdochially (Butters and Westerhaus 2004: 121) or figuratively
(Butters 2008: 513). When this last event occurs, genericide is complete.17
6. Open cases and desiderata

However complex and variegated the examination of trademarks may
appear, there are still some open questions worth asking and possibly
answering with the aid of future research.
17
Butters and Westerhaus (2004: 112) provide the following definition of
genericide: Lexicographers and law-school professors cite such words as
aspirin, shredded wheat, thermos, and escalator as words that once were
trademarks but now are generics; lawyers term this process of historical linguistic
change genericide..
First of all, there exist trademarks, untraceable in the Merriam-Webster

and the OED, which are used as generics in Italian, e.g. Canadair,
meaning water-dropping airplane, Pony Express or Pony, referring to a
motorcycle courier, Rimmel, used in place of mascara, and VibraCall,
indicating the vibrating alert of a cellphone. There are also trademarks,
only recorded in the OED, e.g. Tupperware, referring to a plastic
container, and Wonderbra, meaning push-up bra, that are sometimes
used as generics in Italian but that were not found in the Italian
dictionaries consulted.
Further, some trademarks, now widely used generically, are coined in
Italian by means of English lexical items, thus originating false
Anglicisms, e.g. Autogrill, referring to a motorway service station, and
Ticket Restaurant, meaning meal ticket. Even the French trademark K-
Way, whose English equivalent may be cagoule, Pac-a-Mac,
Windbreaker, or windcheater, must be considered a false Anglicism in
Italian (Furiassi 2006: 210; Furiassi 2010: 175).
Finally, in order to test what speakers themselves know and believe
about the words in question (Butters and Westerhaus 2004: 118) and to
weigh up the publics frequent use of brand names in speech and writing
(Adams 2005: 1), a quantification of generic trademarks in Italian is
needed. Although the presence of generic trademarks in dictionaries is
quantitatively limited the impact of generic trademarks on the Italian
vocabulary can be estimated to be less than 0.2, i.e. 40 out of roughly
251,000 entries included in the GDU a thorough examination of Italian
language corpora would be crucial to establish their usage frequency.
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CULTURE-SPECIFIC LEXICAL ITEMS,
CONCEPTS AND WORD-LEVEL
COMMUNICATIVE STRATEGIES
IN ENGLISH-BULGARIAN/
BULGARIAN-ENGLISH LEXICOGRAPHY
ALEXANDRA BAGASHEVA
(UNIVERSITY OF SOFIA)
1. The lexicography of culture

vs. the culture of lexicography
1.1. Culture in lexicography
Culture has been defined as the whole way of life of a distinct people, its
total set of beliefs, attitudes, customs, behaviour, social habits (Williams
1981: 210), which includes the negotiation and the fixation of the
exchange value of words. A prominent means for achieving the latter are
dictionaries, whose compilation for the purposes of defining and
presenting the meanings of words has been an integral feature of European
culture. But dictionaries are not simply means; they are agents of
sustaining and recording snapshots in the complex dynamics of a culture
(in the case of monolingual dictionaries) or cultures (in the case of bi- and
multilingual dictionaries). As a cultural artifact, a bilingual dictionary is a
critically salient space in which the commensurability of cultural identities
is engendered, as the former both constructs and invites the construction of
cultural identities, which are encoded not only in the specialized
vocabularies associated with different cultural domains, constituting a
promising pursuit in linguistic anthropology or ethnosemantics, but
permeate any single entry as an instance of symbolic articulation. Thus a
bilingual dictionary engenders a usable, albeit implicit, model of
intercultural interaction and captures the hidden agencies of interaction
116 English-Bulgarian/Bulgarian-English Lexicography
stemming from the presumed function and ability of linguistic data to

directly illuminate (inter-)cultural phenomena.
Unfortunately, many traits of intercultural interaction remain implicit
in lexicographical tools, for in lexicography one major variable of
intercultural communication is missing context of use bound up with a
type of communicative activity. Despite the extensive research in cross-
cultural communication (Asante et al. 1989; Gudykunst and Mody 2001;
Kim 1984, 2001, among others), the problems of representing, encoding
and transcending cultural identities in lexicographical practice are still
poorly dealt with, with the realities of intercultural communication in
bilingual lexicographical products posing a significant challenge.
Each bilingual dictionary inevitably and unobtrusively executes a
conceived model of intercultural communication which has been
engendered (non-intentionally) by the dictionary designers through their
choices and establishes regimes of presumed equivalences of the
communicative contribution of lexical concepts and lexical items. These
complex, hidden agendas of cultural projections in lexicographical
products are available to highly competent and trained users such as
metalexicographers and linguists. Such people are able to isolate and study
the linguistic and cultural isoglosses which constitute the linguistic and
cultural stereotypes characterizing a communitys mentality as represented
in the communitys lexicon. Within the cultural practices of lexicography
similar ideals are attainable exclusively in monolingual systematic
lexicography (Apresjan 2000, 2008), i.e. we can read exhaustively the
nave (as opposed to the scientific or mythological) picture of the world of
a culture encoded in its language only in a monolingual dictionary where
semantic networks, pragmatic articulations and value systems are made
obvious in detailed definitions and examples of use.
1.2. The culture of lexicography

In general purpose bilingual dictionaries, the avoidance of circumlocutions
and the search for the translational/functional/ communicative equivalent
already interpret and institutionalize cultural discrepancies. A major
source of cultural discrepancies is the culture of lexicography itself. Being
fully aware of the influence of the intensity, nature and directionality of
the contact between the two cultural systems (as defined by Hartmann
2007: 121), at least the following facts have to be taken into account when
discussing the culture of Bulgarian-English and English-Bulgarian
bilingual lexicography:
Alexandra Bagasheva 117
a. bilingual English-Bulgarian/Bulgarian-English dictionaries are written

and published exclusively in Bulgaria and are traditionally non-corpus
based;
b. the interaction between the two cultures is heavily marked by
misbalanced, unidirectional influence, where the Bulgarian culture acts
mostly as a receptacle of the ripples of globalization (new
technologies, new trends in music, entertainment, movies, electronic
media, life-styles, etc.);
c. intensive lexical borrowing on the part of Bulgarian at all levels and in
all spheres of life and registers of language, including the borrowing of
word formation patterns which violate the syntactic rules of adjective
noun agreement1;
d. intensive translation and interpreting practiced exclusively by
Bulgarian professionals.
Such realities impose on the Bulgarian learner/user of English a

tradition with few innovations and even less diversity of local
lexicographical tools. The layout, the labeling techniques and the general
framework of the dictionaries remain the same, thus creating a false
impression of cultural unity and stability which are untenable in the
postmodern times of highly stratified, distributed and situated knowledge
and identities.
Even if it is emergent, constructed and situated, culture permeates
language as language is an essential instrument and component of
culture, whose reflection in linguistic structures is pervasive and quite
significant (Langacker 1999: 16). It has become received wisdom that
bilingual dictionaries are indispensable for the enhancement of
intercultural communicative competence as the DNA of a culture is found
within its language and communicative practices. The lexicon is a salient
core that is transmitted through joint attentional acts in the process of
socialization and enculturation ostensibly/inferentially from generation to
generation. It contains the consensual conventional meanings that frame
the interaction between conventional and emergent meanings in novel
situations in which the habits of thinking for speaking (Slobin 1996: 70;
1
The characteristic inflectional grammatical morphology of Bulgarian leads to: a)
overt marking of part-of-speech membership of lexical items and b) clear
distinction between form-formative and word-formative affixes (Nitsolova 2009:
33-46). Thus compounding is uncharacteristic and conversion virtually unattested.
However, nowadays - (biznes- business-) has become a productive
compound constituent.
2003: 158) of a speech community construct ever novel meanings encoded

in words.
2. Lexicon-engendered cultural identities

(conception (in)commensurability)
2.1. Lexical concepts vs. lexical items

Words as cultural forms are affordances: they afford opportunities for
individuals to experience the meaning of things and situations and events
(de Oliveira and de Souza Bittencourt 2008: 25). Words are symbolic
mappings between concepts and established forms which sanction the
semantic contribution of a lexeme token in language use. The versatility of
meaning of lexical concepts arises out of the nature of chaining (Evans
2009: 203-204) of the conceptual system made up of embodied cognitive
models and frames and the characteristics of lexical concepts as linguistic
representations.
As Evans (2007: 11) insists, lexical concepts are semantic units
conventionally associated with linguistic forms and are an essential part
of a users mental grammar. They are relativized with respect to
conceptual knowledge structures (cognitive models). Besides its encoded
content2, each lexical concept evokes the execution of well-entrenched
mental routines of accessing external knowledge structures with different
degrees of entrenchment, which constitutes the lexical concepts unique
profile. In situated use the lexical concept acquires contextually induced
informational characterization. Thus a lexical concept can be routinely
associated with particular cognitive models which can enter a coordinated
amalgamation held together by the profile of a lexical concept. Defined in
this way, lexemes become instantiations of lexical concepts, functioning as
prompts that lead to conceptual content and are perceived as attentional
instructions (Marchetti 2006) for approaching conceptual content from a
certain point of access. Thus words perform the function of perspectivizers
on content they are intentional highways to sites of the intersection
between personal, social and cultural histories.
Of great significance in attempting to analyze the mutual implications
of culture and communal lexicons is the recognition of a distinction
2
This understanding of the nature of lexemes is based on the outlines of lexical
semantics in the hybrid theory of metaphor as defined by Tendahl (Tendahl 2009:
197-210).
between culture-specific conceptions (the amalgamated congregation of

routinized or entrenched relations of knowledge structures primed by a
lexical concept) and culture-specific lexical items. We would suggest the
distinction can be formulated as a difference between lexical concepts
the semantic pole of linguistic representations and lexical items the
actual form which a lexical concept has been associated with in the
symbolic inventory of the lexicon. The former reveal culture-specific
experiential complexes, the latter conventionally adopted communicative
strategies at the level of the lexicon.
2.2. Sites of bilingual equivalence revisited

In this understanding of the nature of words, we can conceive of the
following sites of bilingual equivalence of lexicons, never forgetting
Snell-Hornbys scale of equivalence delineated by the extremes of total
equivalence and nil coverage (Snell-Hornby 1983): (A) total
equivalence of lexical concepts; (B) equivalence at the level of the
encoded content of the lexical concept, i.e. where the coordinating
cognitive models correspond (to the exception of the entrenched but
external knowledge structures and the lexical items), (C) equivalence at
the level of conceptual regions but difference in the profiling cognitive
model; and (D) Lowies (Lowie 2000) morphological translation
equivalence at the level of lexical items. In (A) to (C) there are always two
possibilities the convergence/divergence between lexical concepts can be
paralleled by a correspondence between the lexical items or by a
discrepancy. In (D) a high degree of equivalence is presumed between the
lexical concepts and the focus is on convergence between the specific
lexical items.
2.2.1. Total equivalence (A)

Total equivalence is hard to obtain because
[t]he key to understanding the nature of linguistic competence and its
acquisition [] lies in the dialectical relationship between bodily
dispositions and activities on the one hand, and sociocultural practices on
the other. (Zlatev 1997: 1-2).
Notwithstanding, it is possible for total equivalence to obtain in cases

in which universal natural experiences are lexicalized in different cultures.
(1) can be used as a telling example:
(1) z=``? earthquake.

The two lexemes are equivalent on all counts: (i) they name the same
extralinguistic referent; (ii) utilize the same cognitive profiling [EARTH
SHAKE] where via metonymy the sanctioning cognitive model describes
a state of the earth (which has been personified); (iii) both are compound
nouns whose constituents are identical in terms of form3, meaning
contribution and overall resultant meaning of the construction.
Such full correspondence is the exception, rather than the rule in
general purpose bilingual lexicography. More typically total equivalence is
reduced to approximate equivalence of the evoked conceptual region(s)
accompanied by discrepancies between entrenched and highly primed
external knowledge structures (chained cognitive content) and a difference
in the encoding lexical items.
2.2.2. Equivalence at the level of entrenched cognitive content of lexical

concepts (B)
This type of equivalence can be illustrated by the following bilingual
dictionary entries:
(2) =`? - old boy network, cronyism
The monolingual definitions of these lexical concepts reveal that the

associated, chained cognitive models sanctioned by the coinciding matrix
one favouritism are quite divergent4. In the Bulgarian picture of the
world this phenomenon is associated with kinship relations and is
perceived as the moral obligation of the doer towards their dependants,
which is directly designated in the constituents of the compound (two
kinship terms which name two different types of relations by marriage to
be rendered in English as brothers-in-law). In the English-speaking culture
3
In Bulgarian there is a morphophonemic alternation in the first constituent and
the second one appears in a compound-special form in which it cannot be freely
used outside the compound. In deriving the nominal lexeme from the verb
() (tresa se, shake), the typical suffix is [], while in the compound a form
with the suffix - [-ie] is used.
4
These divergences can be correlated with large scale cultural studies of cultural
dimensions based on the latest wave of World Values Survey (Minkov 2007:
vii). According to Minkov, the Anglo world has the lowest scores on exclusionism
and highest on flexumility, which correlates with deeming nepotism immoral and
distributing privilege on the basis of individual merit, while Eastern Europe has the
highest scores on exclusionism and the lowest on flexumility, which correlates
with preferential treatment of in-group members and a treatment of nepotism as a
moral requirement (Minkov 2007: viii).
the phenomenon has a negative evaluative marking and is based on social

relations and stratification.
The respective monolingual definitions of the two lexemes reveal the
cultural specificities which remain latent in the lexicographically
engendered equivalence:
(2Bulgarian lexical concept)
,
,
.
,
[naznachavaneto na dohodonosni
dlazhnosti na litsa, koito sa v blizki rodninski ili priyatelski vrazki s
naznachavashtiya ili drugi chlenove na negovoto semeystvo, bez ogled na
tehnite kachestva za dadenata dlazhnost. Samata duma e tipichno balgarski
idiom, no v mnogo drugi darzhavi se otkrivat primeri za sashtoto pod
nazvanieto neputizam; the appointment to lucrative and high profile
positions of people who either are close relatives or friends of the assigner
or other members of the latters family, without any consideration of their
personal merits or suitability for the post. The word itself is perceived as
an idiosyncratic Bulgarian idiom, but in many other countries, the same
phenomenon is described under nepotism] (wiktionary).
(2English lexical concept) the appointment of friends to government posts
without proper regard to their qualifications (OED).
(2English lexical concept: old boys network) an exclusive informal network linking
members of a social class or profession or organization in order to provide
connections and information and favours (especially in business or
politics).
In Bulgarian the lexical item combines compounding and affixation, in
English the two translation equivalents have distributed the labour into a
compound and a derived word resulting from affixation.
2.2.3. Equivalence at the level of conceptual regions (C)

At this level the profiling of the converging conceptual regions projects
incommensurability at the experiential level and the chained conceptual
associations. In (3), there is equivalence only in the conceptual region to
be accessed via the respective lexical complexes but differences at the
level of profiling cognitive model (CM). The sanctioning cognitive models
are distinctly different and situate the experiential complex in divergent
cultural frameworks engendering the practice of political party/faction-
hopping. In Bulgarian the lexical concept perspectivizes the experiential
complex from the point of view of the colour attributes associated with the
respective factions (colour of election bulletin, colour of campaign

materials, etc.). The lexical item is an agent noun, derived through
affixation. The metaphoric view on the experiential complex is derived
from the field of house decorating and is associated with the painting of
walls. In English the conceptual metaphoric complex is related to the skin
of different species and is also associated with a proverb a leopard cannot
change its spots, which relates to the coat constituent of the compound.
The compound as a construction with lexicalized meaning is sanctioned
through metonymy:
(3) =``? (house-) painter; turncoat .
Another telling example, frequently used in the media, illustrates

seeming symmetrical equivalence at the level of intended referent
(experiential complex) between:
(4) footballers wife /./ n /f7tbnlz wa+f/ /./.

(5) . . [~a, ~] moll, doxy /. . ./ footballers
wife /. . ./.
A closer look reveals how incommensurable the two lexemes are. The
contrasts between them can be summarized in the following:
(i) marked difference in the register status of the associated lexical items;
(ii) divergent cultural and social attitudes inherent in the two concepts
admiration or envy for a glorious life style (English) vs. mobsters
associations, illegal gains, profanity, bad tastes in dressing and choice
of entertainment (Bulgarian);
(iii) incommensurability of the cognitive models associated with
footballers wife an item originally describing the wives and
girlfriends of high profile football players whose closest functional
equivalent (if we are to preserve the value and attitudinal ranking of the
source lexical concept) that comes closest to the Bulgarian concept of
fashion model. The latter is best approximated by (6) n., f., sg.
[modelka, a model] which is associated with a particular physical
appearance, classy dressing style and posh partying. Bulgarian fashion
models are not married to footballers but to rich businessmen or are the
intimate friends of people in power. Switching directionality, the
Bulgarian (5) is closest to the concept of the slang lexical
item moll, even though some of the paraphernalia surrounding the
concept corresponds to some of the attributes of the concept of
footballers wife; (iv) a compound as opposed to an item derived
through suffixation. This last area of divergence brings us to the most
underprivileged site of equivalence discussed in the next part.
2.2.4. Morphological translation equivalence (D)

Morphological translation equivalence (illustrated in (9) and discussed
below) is rarely sought for and considered for representation in bilingual
lexicography, unlike the first three sites of equivalence, which are always
represented with different degrees of success. The focus in bilingual
dictionaries traditionally falls on efforts for establishing sense equivalence,
since this is intuitively the natural thing to do, as even linguists-cum-
lexicographers (Bjoint 2010: 268) consider lexical morphological
information beyond the point. Their attitude is justified in view of the
numerous structural discrepancies established between English and
Bulgarian which necessitates the explication of grammatical
morphological points of difference that will aid the user in encoding. In
many cases morphological equivalence accompanies sense equivalence,
but there are cases in which formal morphological translational
equivalence (at the level of the lexical item only) might create encoding
problems. The (7) -talk-family in English (small-talk, smooth-talk, fast-
talk, sweet-talk, etc.) corresponds to the Bulgarian / one
( [slavoslovya, praise eloquently], [zloslovya,
asperse, badmouth], [blagoslavyam, bless]) in terms of
second compound constituent. But this is where the correspondence ends,
as on the surface both elaborate the following schema: [MANNER V(talk)],
but the meaning contribution of the constituents differs and the resultant
meanings deviate to different degrees from the generalized schema.
Despite the correspondences between the intra-compound constituents in
terms of lexical input (seeming morphological equivalence) and the
seeming similarities between the executed construction schemas, they do
not actually correspond. Three of the verbs in English name persuasive
communicative strategies, while all three Bulgarian ones designate within
the compound structure what the speaker says about someone or how they
say it. The word-formation family that corresponds to the -/
one at the level of the lexical concept is the (8) -mouth family, whose
members are metonymically constructed (e.g. bad-mouth, poor-mouth,
etc.). The semantic component of speaking/talking is not morphologically
represented in the compound complex, but the metonymic transfer
INSTRUMENT FOR PROCESS motivates the semantics of the lexical
concept. Thus we get the following bilingual entry:
(9) . =` ? slander, calumniate,

vilify, backbite, badmouth, slur, defame, malign, *speak ill/evil of,
*fling/sling/*throw dirt/mud (about, at sb), dish the dirt; dirty mouth
/. . .
2.2.5.&KTGEVKQPCNCU[OOGVTKGU
No matter what site of equivalence we are looking at, equivalence is not
necessarily a symmetrical relation. Convergences and divergences are
influenced by the directionality of switching between source and target
languages. Directionality-sensitive non-equivalence is a rich ground for
research which reveals the elusive fluttering of words which can be
experienced but is hard to define or analyze with a suitable heuristic, for
example, the entries from two recent dictionaries reveals the directionality-
induced non-equivalence:
(10) approach (approaches, approaching, approached) vb /pT7V5/ 1.

, , ; 2.
, .
(11) =` `?
CRRTQCEJ (sb/sth).
Although it has been much abused, the concept of equivalence remains

a useful operationalizing term which aids translators, users, lexicographers
and linguists in their joint efforts to capture the flutter of words. For
adequate representation of culture-specific lexical items, traditional
practices in bilingual lexicography have to be supplemented with
information about the preferred name-creating strategies which have
special significance for the culture(s) they characterize.
3. The lexicon across culture-specific lexical items

(strategies for word building): The grammar of the lexicon
3.1. Compounding in English and Bulgarian

Grammar contains in a crystallized form the accumulated and accumulating
experience, the Weltanschauung of a people (Lee 1938: 89, quoted in
Lucy 1992: 71). The grammar of the lexicon is the systematicity that can
be detected in the fluttering5 of words. The difference between culture-
specific concepts and culture-specific lexical items is captured in the
distinction between concepts and typical word formation patterns
representing culture-specific communicative strategies. These hardly yield
to direct representation in straightforward manner in bilingual lexicographic
5
Word meanings cannot be pinned down as if they were dead insects. Instead
they flutter around elusively like butterflies. (Aitchison 1994 [1987]: 39-40)
tools but can be accommodated if accompanied by descriptions or

definitions, not necessarily by translational equivalents. Indeed, as pointed
out by Wierzbicka,
we need definitions as a tool for understanding other cultures (and for
making ourselves understood). Words are a societys most basic cultural
artifacts, and they provide the best key to a cultures values and
assumptions - on condition that they are properly understood (Wierzbicka
1992: 150).
The two basic areas of divergence between English and Bulgarian in

terms of culture-specific lexical items are compounds (English) and
diminutives (Bulgarian). If their cultural investment is to be adequately
represented, specific lexicographical approaches have to be adopted, such
as description and definition in the case of diminutive suffixes and
compromise with the solid concept of the head word or lemma in the case
of compounds.
Most Bulgarian linguists agree that native suffixless compounds do not
exist in the language. They recognize the existence of a N-N coordinate
model in Bulgarian which can be illustrated by very few examples such as
(12) - [kandidat-student6, applicant-student] and (13)
-7 [strani-chlenki, memberS-stateS], which is most
probably a calque from member-states. They are referred to as either
composites or syntactic collocations of an agglutinative type (GMB 1993:
81). Linguists studying word formation in Bulgarian acknowledge that it is
an extremely novel word formation pattern for Standard Bulgarian
(Murdarov 1983, Radeva 1991, 2007), even though some, like Radeva,
recognize its mildly rising productivity with a pronounced influence from
English (Radeva 1991: 192-193), which renders compounding atypical
for Bulgarian. The naming units that result from compounding in
Bulgarian reveal the latters restricted productivity and the scarcity of
individuated word formation types that can be recognized and analyzed
and in Murdarovs opinion (1983: 97) correspond to foreign word
formation patterns and are termed ugly, distorting, unnecessary by lay
people and language professionals alike. That is why the acclaimed rising
6
Throughout the chapter examples in Bulgarian are transliterated in keeping with
the rules formulated in the Law of Transliteration published in Official Gazette 19
of 13 March 2009, available at http://slovored.com/transliteration/rules.html
7
The compound is in the plural and unlike in English, both members of the
compound are marked for the respective grammatical feature, indicated here by
capitalizing the plural marker in both the Bulgarian and the English forms.
productivity of the phrasal modifier pattern is highly restricted in terms of

genre and usage frequency, which even proponents of the view that such
occurrences are indicative of syntactic borrowing from English, define as
new and atypical, appearing only in the Bulgarian rendition of popular
magazines in the form of word-for-word translations as can be seen from
the example taken from Boyadzhieva (2007: 233):
(14) - (Cosmopolitan, BG, March 2005: 113),
Take down (imp., 2nd p. sg.) him (3rd p.sg. masc. pro.) advice (masc.,
sg., indef.)
which roughly translates as chat-him-up advice.
3.1.1. Compound verbs (the dynamicity of culture)

Despite the acclaimed typological similarities8, English and Bulgarian
display strikingly divergent properties in relation to compounding.
Compounding is extremely active in English, and highly restricted in
Bulgarian. This holds water for compound verbs (CVs) in the two
languages as well: CVs are notably active in English (irrespective of their
derivation composition, back-formation or conversion), while in
Bulgarian they are not actively created via back-formation or conversion
and the entrenched CVs are register-marked.
In contrast, the rich system of compounds in English includes a large
array of compound verbs as well which constitute well-established
families or word formation niches. The (15) -dry family: tumble-dry,
sundry, kilndry, spin-dry, drip-dry, blow-dry, rough-dry, freeze-dry, air-
dry, smoke-dry, and spray-dry constitutes and established and well
elaborated word-formation schema. The schema [MANNER/INSTRU-
MENT V(DRY)] is unified by the common semantics of to process clothes.
The same applies to the (16) -fry family: deep-fry, stir-fry, etc., for which a
[MANNER/INSTRUMENT V(FRY)] construction schema unified by the
common semantics of to process food to a certain effect can be
identified. These can all be classified as endocentric subordinate verbs,
though another interpretation is also possible.
The -dry schema in English has been so developed that it tolerates
extensions. Some of the verbs (roughdry, freeze-dry and smoke-dry) do
not name the manner (which includes what type of instrument is used) of
8
They differ significantly in the degree of analyticity, which has direct influence
on the productivity and activity of compounding. English is far more analytical
than Bulgarian.
drying clothes but either extend the meaning to the overall treatment of
clothes after washing (roughdry) or altogether refer to the processing of an
entirely different entity, i.e. food (freeze-dry). Onomasiologically
speaking, none of these has received morphological realization in
Bulgarian. Corresponding to this schema in Bulgarian we have syntactic
phrases. To both sanctioned elaborations and extensions in Bulgarian we
find syntactic constructions: (17) [susha v sushilnya,
tumbledry], (18) [ostavyam da se iztsedi, leave to
dry, drip-dry], (19) [opushvam meso, smoke-dry].
The same lack of correspondence between the typical lexical items is
observed for the -feed schema. It is likewise onomatologically realized by
syntactic expressions in Bulgarian (20) [hranya
izkustveno, force-feed], (21) [hranya s biberon, bottle-
feed], (22) [hranya s lazhichka, spoon-feed). Rather
revealing is the fact that the same conceptual space to provide (another)
with knowledge or information in an oversimplified way is expressed in
Bulgarian with the activation of the same domain matrixes and the same
ontological metaphor KNOWLEDGE IS FOOD as the one in English but
the symbolic inventories of the two languages participate in distinct
sanctioned construction schemas: a compound verb in English (23) spoon-
feed and an idiomatic syntactic complex in Bulgarian (24)
[davam na chas po lazhichka, give s.o. spoonfuls by the
hour). The two symbolic complexes are also axiologically distinct, since
(24) is prototypically associated in the Bulgarian mentality with the
administration of medicine, while in English the prototype of food
consumption has been retained to a more salient degree as the food
component is morphologically present in (23), while in Bulgarian a verb
with a rather general and underspecified semantics is utilized
[davam, give].
3.1.2. Schematicity and Marchands genuine compound verbs

Another area of marked lack of morphological equivalence is the highly
productive schema for single scope CVS in English Marchands genuine
compound verbs9. The degree of schematicity in these verbs is much
9
The compound status of such verbs is often contested on grounds of the dubious
status of the non-verbal constituent in them as an affixoid or as a potential lexeme.
Within the context of current debates on grammaticalization the schemas in the
two languages differ in terms of semantic bleaching and degree of schematicity.
Falling prey to the fallacy of confusing regularity and productivity with signals of
higher than the one of other CVs in English and involves the re-
interpretation of the first (non-verbal constituent). It projects a feature
which profiles or specifies the conceptual space evoked by the verbal
component. The non-verbal constituent, which invariably appears first in
the compound, has the function of specifier of the profile determinant.
This leads to asymmetrical conceptual blending in which one of the
outputs projected as a feature is blended as a default value in the meaning
construction of the resultant CV. What makes this type of CVs extremely
interesting is the metaphthonymic nature of the non-verbal constituent
itself. Being cognitively related to the homonymous preposition, these
non-verbal constituents in compound verbs, just as the more abstract non-
spatial meanings of prepositions, tend to be derived from concrete, spatial
senses by means of generalization or specialization of meaning or by
metonymic or metaphoric transfer (Cuyckens and Radden, 2002: xiii). In
(25) outnumber the input space of out projects the feature [BEYOND
CERTAIN LIMITS], which is derived from [LEAVING A CONTAINER] into the
composition in the generic space which combines with the meaning of [TO
MAKE A TOTAL; REACH AN AMOUNT] as a default. Through completion, it
also projects the constructional requirement that the blended space contain
a counterpart to the agent that performs the verbal activity in the
conceptual space in the verbal input so that the [LIMIT] meaning
component can be set up by the emergent contrast between the
counterparts in the running of the blend.
From lexicographical products and translation studies it becomes
obvious that the systematic translational equivalents to these CVs in
Bulgarian are prefixed verbs, most commonly appearing with the prefixes:
(26) - [na-, on], (27) - [nad-, above, over], (28) - [iz-, from], (29)
- [pre-, across, over]. As symbolic elements involved in the
elaboration of construction schemas, they have schematic meaning closely
related to the meaning of the homonymous prepositions out, over, above,
but are far more highly schematized, i.e. almost irrevocably removed from
Tyler and Evanss (2003: 95 and 2004: 264) proto-scene. The
active grammaticalization might lead to interpreting the first non-verbal constituent

of a CV as having semi-affixal or affixoid nature. This does not have any
detrimental effects on recognizing the high analogical potential of the pattern
which is based on a well-established cognitive template. The fact that most
linguists are not committed to the purely affixal status of these constituents and
recognize features of both lexical and affixal nature allows for a compound
interpretation. Further support in applying such an interpretation can be found in
Marchands identification of such verbs as the only genuine compound ones.
construction schemas underlying [SPATIAL SPECIFIER V] in English and

prefixed verbs in Bulgarian differ in terms of degree of schematicity
(Tuggy 2005a and b) and abstraction from the protoscene. The basic
contrast between the English particle compounds and their translation
equivalents in Bulgarian, the set of prefixed verbs, lies in the different
partitioning of the [CONTAINER] spatio-physical schema which underlies
metaphthonymic extensions in the networks of the prepositions (in
English) and the more fully schematized prefixes (in Bulgarian). The
proto-scene associated with out contains the following scene specifics
a bounded region, a moving landmark that leaves the bounded region,
movement, with the chained senses of completion and getting a result
naturally relate to the idea of the change of position of the landmark. Out
being less schematized than the Bulgarian prefixes10 is underspecified as
to which of the specifics it names. The Bulgarian prefixes specify different
localized features of the proto-scene, which are different from the ones
profiled in the English compounds, e.g.:
(28) - profiles the container as source; outward, or centrifugal movement
from the center
(27) - profiles a landmark above the container
(29) - is associated with overcoming of a spatial boundary or passing
through space (Radeva 2007: 171).
What is more, in Bulgarian the choice of a prefix is not saliently

motivated for the lay speaker and the various meanings contributed by a
prefix are not grouped in a chained gestalt. In the English compounds,
however, the meaning contribution of the spatial particles into the
compound lexical concepts is not an arbitrary fact.
[T]hat English has the compounds overseer, but not *aboveseer, and
underdog but not *belowdog is based on the principle of experiential
correlation. [T]his distribution of compounds involving prepositions
follows from a constrained set of principles (Evans and Tyler 2005: 10),
which govern the creation of interrelated polysemy networks. Thus, from

the proto-scene via conceptual extensions, the distinct senses of the
prepositions are established, which undergo further processes of
conceptual interaction with the verb meanings they combine with.
10
It can be assumed that such prefixes might be interpreted as fully
grammaticalized or fully schematized prepositions.
The [PREPOSITION VERB] schema is non-extant in Bulgarian, rather

prefixed verbs directly instantiate the [SPATIAL INDEX VERB] variant of the
general or rather shared [SPATIAL SPECIFIER VERB] schema. Admittedly, it
might be assumed that the prefixes have been grammaticalized from
prepositions and it is quite possible to establish the links among the
different senses of the prefixes as they are used in the derivation of various
lexemes with different part-of-speech membership. The semantic
complexity of the established semantic networks which account for the
physical and elaborated meanings of the prefixes will be no less intriguing
than that of the radial networks postulated for English prepositions but the
degree of schematicity and distance from the proto-scene profile
significant differences for users of the languages. For this reason, the
corresponding symbolic complexes in Bulgarian are systematically
recognized as derived prefixed verbs in which it is extremely difficult to
specify the exact semantic contribution of the constituents in the
construction of the verb and the meaning contribution of prefixes can only
be found in specialized morphological dictionaries or linguistic books.
3.2. CVs and lexicography

As becomes obvious from the discussion in the preceding paragraph the
set of genuine CVs (in the Marchandian sense) do not pose challenging
problems for practical lexicography as both particle (preposition) verb and
prefixed verbs will be separately listed as lemmas in the respective source
languages. The more serious challenge stems from the asymmetry between
the rich potency for analogical CV-creation in English and in Bulgarian.
For practical lexicographic purposes, the recognition of the analogical
potency of CV construction schemas in English should naturally enrich the
number of lemmas or head words. In English-Bulgarian dictionaries
compounds (especially CVs) should be listed as separate entries, not only
as run-ons in the explication of a headword, on at least two counts: a) as
foreign speakers of English, Bulgarians traditionally lack the routinized
abilities of identifying and elaborating niches that can become the loci of
analogical extensions of schemas in the L2 target language and b), due to
the high activity of conversion in English, which is virtually lacking in
Bulgarian, there is always the risk of Bulgarian speakers creating through
consciously learned conversion non-existent compound verbs, based on
non-sanctioned schemas.
4. Size matters lexicographical problems of Bulgarian

diminution
4.1. The essence of diminution as an appraisal resource

Diminutives abound in Slavonic languages but are, in contrast, remarkably
scarce in English. Received wisdom holds that most instances of
diminutive usage are pragmatically restricted or determined. Diminution
as the key of a speech act cannot for practical purposes be represented in
a user-friendly manner in general-purpose bilingual dictionaries, because
dictionaries lack context (or rather have too comprehensive context) and
cannot in a faithful manner represent pragmatic effects. Only fully
lexicalized diminutives of the (30) n., sg., f., dim. [vanichka, small
bathtub, developing trayphotography] or (31) n., sg., n., dim. [borche,
small wrestler, a member of the novo riche class] type will necessarily
find their place in the bilingual dictionary, but the richness of the system
of diminution exploited in actual communication and recognized as an
evaluatively marked communicative strategy has not been adequately
lexicographically represented.
Both the diminutive affixes and the resultant derivative diminutive
lexemes belong to the appraisal resources of Slavonic languages.
Diminutives seem to have specialized in expressing in a complex manner
the affective dimension of the appraisal system of language. They have
been extensively studied and their semantico-pragmatic effects have been
described in numerous works (Nitsolova 2009, 2010; Zidarova 2005,
2008; Dressler and Merlini-Barbaresi 1994; Wierzbicka 1991; Volek
1987, among others) in theoretical linguistics, but they have traditionally
been left out in lexicographic products and metalexicographic research.
There seems to exist a shared belief in the prototypicality of the
positive connotations of diminutive affixes stemming from the invariant
core denotative meaning of diminutives small, which is in keeping
with the evoked positive associations relating to child. This agreement is
best summarized by Wierzbicka,
The central place of warmth, of affection, in Slavic as well as in
Mediterranean cultures, is reflected, among other things, in the rich system
of expressive derivation, and in particular in the highly developed system
of diminutives. (Wierzbicka 1991: 50)
The natural expectation in this context of understanding diminutives

and their semantico-pragmatic functions is for diminutives to be slop-sided
towards euphemisation. Due to the complexity of the interplay between
semantic core and emergent semantic results within diminutive affixes and
how these interact with the meaning components of bases or other
suffixes, it is not exactly clear how diminution relates to the cline enclosed
between orthophemism and X-phemism. What is more, X-phemisation
within diminution can be detected only when there is a switch in
markedness, i.e. when the social sensitivities of interactants predispose
them towards the use of diminutives likely to evoke or express positive
attitudes to something that need not be positively marked in the emotional
brain, e.g. (32) . [Tya e istinska kuklichka. She
is a real doll-DIM] or the reverse, a denotatum not necessarily negatively
marked is framed or named by linguistic resources evoking or expressing
negative attitudes (33) n., sg., m., dim. [edin zhivotes, one
life-DIM].
Within the Bulgarian linguistic tradition, Zidarova (2008) claims that
in Bulgarian nominal diminution is generally associated with
predominantly denotative semantic contribution on the part of diminutive
affixes, while in the derivative diminutives from bases that belong to other
lexical classes the emotive-evaluative predominates due to the specific
nature of their denotative character (Zidarova 2008: 1). In our opinion,
nominal diminution is just as powerful in its X-phemistic pragmatic
effects as diminution from any other lexical category. The semantic areas
in which nominal diminutive affixes in Bulgarian have predominantly
connotative semantic effects of X-phemisation are the names of
professions, activities of the authorities, criminal activities, the names of
alcoholic drinks, the stock of adjectives for describing human characteristics,
etc.
A possible explanation for the X-phemistic function of diminutives
with names of professions stems from the impossibility to associate
smallness with the denotatum. The names of professions themselves can
be associated with positively or negatively valued professions, but
attitudes associated with the denotatum are not necessarily directly
reflected in linguistic resources (orthophemisms), which, however, does
not have direct relevance for the use of dysphemistic diminutives. When
using diminutives with names of professions, the semantic effect is the
predication of inadequate or insufficient professional qualities of the
specific referent. When describing someone as (34) n., sg., n., dim.
[doktorche, doctor-DIM], (35) n., sg., n., dim. [pisatelche, writer-
DIM], (36) n., sg., n., dim. [zhurnalistche, journalist-DIM],
(37) n., sg., n., dim. [daskalche, teacher-DIM], (38)
n., sg., n., dim. [profesorche, professor-DIM], etc. a speaker does not mean
that someone of young age is practicing the profession. Rather the
dysphemistic meaning is to express disregard, low esteem or a slighting

attitude to the practitioner of the profession. This interpretation is
harmonious with Dressler and Merlini Barbaresis formulation of the basic
morphopragmatic meaning of diminutives,
[T]he general morphopragmatic meaning of diminutives is the feature
[non-serious]. [...] If we relate the invariant morphopragmatic feature [non-
serious]to the morphosemantic feature [non-important], then we can relate
it via metaphor to the morphosemantic denotation [small], in its alloseme
with relatively little importance (Dressler and Merlini Barbaresi 1994:
144).http://www.questiaschool.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=114471437
Although the two linguists rightfully identify the centrality of

morphopragmatic meaning for diminutives, they associate it via
metaphoric extension with playfulness, meiosis, love, sympathy and
empathy (Dressler and Merlini Barbaresi 1994: 326-328). In Bulgarian
profession lexis, diminutives preserve the feature [non-important], but it is
exploited for the expression of lack of or low level of professionalism on
the part of the referent, not the prototypical positive emotive-evaluative
associations. Profession diminutives are used to express the speakers
negative attitude to the professional conduct or achievements of the
referent by direct application of the feature [non-serious] to the referent. It
bears the implication that the referent is either incapable to practice their
profession at the required standards or the performance is exceptionally
poor.
4.2. Diminution and social stratification

Diminutives have explicit X-phemistic properties when used by or in
speaking about a special group of speakers in Bulgarian - the stratum of
novo riches associated with criminal activities or in comments of their
activities and life style as discussed in the media. In the daily newspaper
24 Hours of 13 October 2010, the title of an article discussing illegally
erected houses reads (39) [Ne korab vilichka,
not a ship a villa-DIM]. The effect is far from euphemistic, as the article
describes the efforts of fiscal and criminal authorities to establish the
possessions of novo riche and the villa-DIM occupies 2000 square meters
and is shaped like a ship. The dysphemistic associations are not
necessarily matched up with the extra-linguistic denotatum as part of the
coded content of the lexical concept, rather with the entrenched knowledge
structures associated with it in the sensitivities of the community. There is
nothing dysphemistic in a small villa, but the use of the diminutive is
highly ironic and targets a markedness switch intended to evoke disgust in

the readers, and thus disapproval is aroused. The use of the noun villa
would not have evoked any of the negative associations. Admittedly, this
speaker-dependent X-phemistic function is a specific socio-cultural
phenomenon associated with the newly emergent stratum of novo riche
whose assets are associated with criminal activities. This possibility of
nominal diminutives to X-phemistically express appraisal stances towards
entities directly or exclusively associated with the referent derives from
the function of diminutive affixes as the key in communication (Spitzer
1921: 201-202, quoted in Dressler and Merlini Barbaresi 1994: 86). The
meanings of diminutives, as Volek argues, can relate to two distinct
variables of a communicative situation: a) an emotive attitude [...] toward
the phenomenon named in the base of the diminutive derivative and b) an
emotive attitude [...] toward a phenomenon not named in it. (Volek
1987: 149-175, quoted in Dressler and Merlini Barbaresi 1994: 89,
emphasis added). Among the phenomena not named we can identify
interactants, recognition of the denotata as attributes (including
possession) of the speakers, typical behavioral patterns of the referent,
routinely entrenched features of the referent relating it to negatively
marked entities not included in the lexical concepts, etc. In (39) the
phenomenon not named in the diminutive is the social status of the
possessor and the stereotypical negative stigma associated with the group.
Closely associated in both its dysphemistic effects and its chained
cognitive content with (39) is the connotatively lexicalized diminutive
(31). The dysphemism is derived from the noun which names a
professional sportsman. The diminutive suffix in itself is usually exploited
for denotative diminution associated with actual smallness of denotata or
with lexis used in communication with children and is usually associated
with positive connotations: (40) n., sg., n., dim. [krache, leg-DIM],
(41) n., sg., n., dim. [stolche, chair-DIM], (42) n., sg., n., dim.
[palche, thumb-DIM], etc. The resultant lexical item of diminution is fully
lexicalized and names a new social group of novo riche whose main
occupation is bodyguard functions for criminal bosses. Paradoxically, the
typical referents of this lexicalized diminutive are robust, strong and
thickly built men.
4.3. The diversity of diminution

Another connotatively lexicalized diminutive with exceptionally high
frequency of use is the euphemistic diminutive (43) n., sg., f.,
dim. [choveshtinka, human trait-DIM], which is commonly used to denote
human infirmities and foibles. This euphemism is usually used to excuse

unacceptable social behaviour or minor blunders (farting, burping, even
metalinguistically commenting on ones own inappropriate use of
language, swearing, etc.). After publicly displaying certain infirmities, a
person exclaiming (44) E [E choveshtinka si e, Well, it
is only human-DIM] is trying through a linguistic euphemism to diminish
the negative effects of the blunder.
Dysphemistic nominal diminutives can be produced from positive or
neutral abstract nominal bases e.g. (45) n., sg., n., dim.
[shtastiytse, happiness-DIM] and (33) , respectively. Both
dysphemisms denote ironically negative attitudes and more importantly
ascribe negative features to the denotatum. (45) implies that the feeling of
happiness is so miserable that it cannot be named with the neutral, non-
diminutive lexeme n., sg., n., [shtastie, happiness], or by ironic
implication it is used to name an actual experience of unhappiness. (33) is
restricted to the first dysphemistic interpretation only, in which the way of
living is of such low quality that it cant possibly be worthy of being
named by the non-diminutive lexeme.
In the area of alcoholic drinks, the diminutives naming different types
of alcoholic drinks function euphemistically when used by habitual
drinkers but dysphemistically when used by people who disapprove of
drinking. The dysphemistic-disparaging meaning is exceptionally salient
when an angry wife is using such diminutives in her scolding a husband
coming home late after a drinking spree: (46) n., sg., f., dim.
[birichka, beer-DIM], (47) n., sg., f., dim. [rakiyka, brandy-DIM],
(48) n., sg., n., dim. [vintse, wine-DIM], (49) n., sg., n., dim.
[konyache, cognac-DIM].
In adjectival diminution the X-phemisation function of diminutives is
more straightforward. Adjectival diminution is directly related to the
expression of gradualness. With negative adjectives diminution has a
euphemistic effect especially in the area of attributes of humans: (50)
adj., sg., f., dim. [debelichka, fat-DIM], (51)
adj., sg., f., dim. [zakraglenichka plump-DIM], (52) adj., sg.,
f., dim. [groznovaticka, ugly-DIM], (53) adj., sg., f., dim.
[tapovatichka, stupid-DIM], etc. The semantics of such diminutive
euphemisms is related to the speakers unwillingness to ascribe the
negative property to the referent. Instead of predicating the negative
property of the referent, a speaker using such a euphemistic adjective
tentatively states that something slightly resembling the negative property
is characteristic of the referent. The same euphemistic effect of veiling the
negative attitude of the speaker is observed by Nitsolova (2010) in
diminutives from abstract nouns with the suffixes - (-otiya) and - (-

iya). In her study of diminution from abstract nouns the author (Nitsolova
2010) reports that there is a significant increase in the use of this type of
diminutives among the young generation especially in on-line
communications (blogs, chats, etc.). In her opinion such diminutives are of
special interest because they combine pejorative semantic features in the
base with prototypically ameliorative features in the suffix (Nitsolova
2010: 135). In this combination in her opinion the diminutive suffix
overrides the pejorative connotations of the base and the result is
euphemistic: (54) n., sg., f., dim. [prostotyika, ignorance-
DIM, a stupid and socially offensive act], (55) n., sg., f., dim.
[tapotyika, stupidity-DIM, a foolish and not generally acceptable act
which reveals the ignorance of the doer], (56) n., sg., f., dim.
[selyaniyika, villageness-DIM, yobbishness associated with lack of
education and behavioural patterns characteristic of country life]. The
purposeful use of diminutives from these two groups is indicative of the
speakers desire not to offend and to make efforts to diminish potential
negative reactions.
Adjectival diminutives in the semantic space of subjective valuations
of taste derived from negative bases have marked euphemistic effects
especially in answering hosts questions concerning the served food:
(57) adj., sg., m., dim. [kiselichak, sour-DIM], (58)
adj., sg., m., dim. [gorchivichak, bitter-DIM], (59)
adj., sg., m., dim. [solenichak, salty-DIM]. By resorting to the use of
diminutives the guest indicates that they are experiencing discomfort but
politeness requirements invite them to approach the issue in a delicate
manner by belittling the unpleasantness of the experience.
In non-committal expressions of opinion or appreciation of objects,
diminutives, derived from positive lexical bases, function as indicators of
lack of specific interest, for example: (60) adj., m., sg., dim.
[interesnichak, interesting-DIM], (61) adj., sg., m., dim.
[hubavichak, handsome-DIM], (62) adj., m., sg., dim.
[priyatnichak, pleasant-DIM]. The communicative function of such
diminutives is not to indicate objective lowering of the property possessed
by an entity, but to indicate disinterested attitude on the part of the
speaker. Typically they are used in confirming an evaluation offered by
the interlocutor. The adjectives which tolerate diminution of this type are
neutral or occupy the pivotal region (Cruse 1986: 205) or ones which
name the possession of the property to a neutral degree. Adjectives
expressing a point of satiation of the property in either the negative or
positive poles do not permit diminution. (63) * adj., m.,
sg., dim. [zavladyavashtichak, captivating-DIM], (64) *

adj., sg., m., dim. [opiyanyavashtichak, intoxicating-DIM, extremely
pleasant and intriguing].
Positive adjectives with diminutive affixes usually function as
boosters, that is, they reinforce the positive features of the denotatum via
the connotations of positive evaluation traditionally associated with
diminutive affixes. This results from the prototypical concept small child
which many among whom Wierzbicka (1984) and Jurafsky (1996)
recognize as central for diminutive affixes. However, in a carnivalesque
manner such positive adjectives can acquire ironic negative marking and
become dysphemistic, when the speaker purposefully avoids acknowledging
their negative attitude to the denotatum. By utilizing diminution the
speaker inadvertently achieves the effect of subtle awareness in the
interactants of a strong negative attitude which might be perceived as
offensive or merely humorously deprecating. (61) can mean
extremely nice either in appearance or character or ugly or bad
respectively. Such X-phemistic diminutives when not used in
communication with children or among close friends usually imply
dismissive deprecation or ironically feigned approval.
4.4. Diminution, linguistics and lexicography

The above brief sketch of X-phemistic diminutives whose default
pragmatic reading is X-phemistic only comes to reveal that
diminution is a much more complex and multifarious process than has
been believed so far. Languages whose word formation rules allow an
almost unlimited derivation of diminutives are characterized by a high
degree of semantic and pragmatic complexity. (Kryk-Kastovsky 2000:
173)
This semantic complexity is what is traditionally left out in bilingual

dictionaries. Specific ways of talking are conducive of specific ways of
feeling. No matter what we take language to be (cultural resource, an
inventory of symbolic complexes, a representational system, etc.), the use
of diminutives is an available communicative strategy which has
implications for the thinking of speaking for a culture/community and
for the routinized associative complexes to which speakers are alerted. The
propositional part of the idealized cognitive model (ICM) of size that has
been found to play a central role in the running of blends in diminutive
suffixation (Senz 1999: 176; Ruiz de Mendoza 1996: 163-165): a)
entities vary in size; b) smaller entities are more manageable than bigger
ones; c) a small entity seems potentially harmful than a bigger one actually
provides the scaffolding for manipulating attitudinal expression associated
with the orientational metaphor MORE IS UP.
Senz elaborates two metonymic transfers which associate emotional
attitudes with conceptualizations captured in diminution: a) because of
their manageability small entities tend to be more likeable; b) the
possibility to ignore small entities due to their perceived innocuousness
renders them unpleasant. Ruiz de Mendoza (1996: 160) defines Spanish
diminutives as attitudinal term operators that codify axiological relatedness
between speaker and referent/interactant. In a like manner, Bulgarian
diminutives are flexible resource for the whole attitudinal range: expressing
affect, judgment and appreciation. These however are inseparably
intertwined in a single suffixal blend. Diminutive suffixes have systematic
semantic properties which can be presented in a comprehensible manner.
Unfortunately, it is not accepted practice to try and establish translational
equivalence between lexical items. Morphological equivalence or
discrepancy is systematically excluded from standard interlingual
lexicographical tools.
In discussing the appraisal system in English, Martin and White (2005:
34-40; 161-204) circumscribe and delineate very specific linguistic
mechanisms for the sharing of emotions, tastes and normative assessments
(constituting different aspects of the complex system of appraisal).
Diminutive affixes perform exactly such roles at the level of lexical items.
In Bulgarian these are collapsed in an amalgamated unity in a single
underdetermined lexical blend between a lexical base and a diminutive
suffix. Besides providing a cohort of interpretative possibilities, such
blending precludes the possibility of demarcating affect, judgment and
appreciation in any precise way. Diminutives allow speakers to construe
for themselves authorial personae and indicate alignment or disalignment
with both the referent and the interlocutor (listener/reader).
This rich appraisal system of Bulgarian cannot sneak its way into a
general-purpose bilingual dictionary unless we radically change our
concept of dictionary as a repository of culturally significant possibilities
which the lexicon affords its users. This would require the education of
users in terms of how language works, so that succinct pieces of
instructional discourse (what the dictionary entry is assumed to be) could
help them internalize culture-specific communicative strategies inherent in
the symbolic patterning of lexicons. This implies two immediate lines of
elaborating the nature of bilingual dictionaries: 1) inclusion of word
formation information in dictionaries and 2) inclusion of definitional,
aimed at explanation entries in bilingual dictionaries to the sacrifice of

notorious translational equivalents.
Culturally-informed lexicographical tools should present both the
ideational and the interpersonal resources of a lexicon if they are to equip
their users with knowledge enabling them to function adequately in
intercultural settings. Lowies notion of morphological translation
equivalence understood as the degree to which derivational affixes overlap
semantically and morphologically across languages and which can be
measured as the percentage of actual translatability of affix X in Language
A into a particular affix Y in Language B and vice versa (Lowie 2000:
178, 184) is impractical for the lexicographic rendition of Bulgarian
diminutive suffixes in Bulgarian-English lexicographical tools. Instead
they can be represented as an appended list with definitions and
illustrations of usage or they can be listed as head words in their respective
places in the alphabetical arrangement of dictionary entries:
- a diminutive suffix attached to masculine and neuter abstract nouns
which is used to express low quality of the state named by the base (e.g.
n., m., sg., dim. [narodets, a people-DIM], etc. with a typical
dysphemistic effect.
- a diminutive suffix attached to feminine abstract nouns, used to
undermine the significance or importance of the state denoted by the base
(e.g. n., sg., f., dim. [smehoriyka, something funny-DIM], etc.)
with a typical euphemistic effect.
These entries should supplement the information on the central,

prototypical denotative contribution which diminutive suffixes have in
building up the semantics of derived diminutive lexical items.
In monolingual dictionaries both prefixes and suffixes are described
and their meaning contribution defined in detail. It would only do justice
to the rich cultural potential of diminutive suffixes if their contribution to
the array of communicative strategies is described in user-friendly terms in
bilingual lexicographical products as well. It is time to supplement the
ideational resources of the lexicogrammar traditionally presented in
bilingual general-purpose dictionaries with a description and presentation
of the interpersonal resources as they are realized in lexical symbolic
complexes.
5. Final comments
[]nyone seriously interested in communicating effectively with the
cultural other have to be ever persistent in moving close to the concrete
experience, action, interaction, and, if I may add, communication at the
moment in its process (Holmes n.d.: 4).
The practice of bilingual lexicography has to take processes in the

creation of the items in the lexicon as culturally vested constituents thereof
on a par with fully lexicalized culture-specific concepts if interlingual
functional equivalence is to match up the ideal of adequate rendition of
cultural identities and become instrumental in transforming lexicography
into an international, interdisciplinary and multimedia reference science
(Hartmann 2007: 9) able to enhance new literacies and consolidate
intercultural communicative competence.
The constant trade-off between accessibility, user-friendliness and
quality of language(s)/culture(s) description in the age of mushrooming
large corpora, databases, specialized reference tools and on-line
dictionaries providing both decoding and encoding information and
descriptions of discourse patterns posit new requirements for the
production of bilingual dictionaries. However, effective communication
and construction of texts in the age when more and more of the relations
between people are regulated by texts (Bjoint 2010: 386) reveal that
powerful communicators need to know the ropes at all levels of linguistic
patterning and that word building as a cultural resource is traditionally
neglected in bilingual lexicographical products. Word building is essential
for encoding purposes and we need to provide users, in an accessible form,
with information that will stimulate their creativity.
In 1994 Landau (1994: 348) diagnosed the current practices as still
focused on [] the identity of the lexical units (with emphasis still on the
discrete word form, and with a hierarchy of valuation, with derived forms
at the bottom of the heap. Sixteen years later nothing has changed in the
practice of Bulgarian-English/English-Bulgarian lexicography. Reference
works resembling the modern idea of a dictionary, admittedly, already
include descriptions of combinatorial possibilities above the word, even to
the level of discourse strategies, but the bottom of the heap remains
generally underrepresented. The time is ripe for the inclusion of the below-
or inside-the-word wealth of language(s) and the culture(s) of their
utilization in the products of modern lexicography.
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TRANSLATING THE LEXICON OF THE LAW:
A CROSS-LINGUISTIC STUDY
OF DE FRANCHISS LAW DICTIONARY
ELISA MATTIELLO
(UNIVERSITY OF PISA)
Legal terminology is so culture-bound (the

reasons being at the same time historical,
sociological, political and jurisprudential)
that a satisfactory translation of all the legal
terms of a text from one context to another is
at times impossible. (Gotti 2008: 23)
Everything is translatable up to a point, but
[] there are often enormous difficulties.
(Newmark 1988: 73)
1. Introduction
The lexicon of the law, like other specialised languages, poses problems in
translation. This is not only due to its prevalence of technical words
belonging to the jargon of judges and lawyers, but also to the presence of:
(a) ambiguities with the standard lexicon (e.g. BAR St.E. a straight piece
of wood, metal, etc. vs. legal E. the barrier at which a prisoner stands;
hence, BARRISTER a type of lawyer); (b) polysemous and homonymous
words (e.g. CONVICTION guilty verdict and sentence); (c) false friends
with the lexicon of other languages (e.g. E. SENTENCE punishment,
penalty vs. It. SENTENZA judgement); (d) collocations and fixed
expressions whose meaning is non-compositional (e.g. CRIMINAL
CONVERSATION in the past, adultery); (e) initialisms and other
abbreviations which rarely correspond in different languages (e.g. M.P.
Member of Parliament, cf. It. DEPUTATO); and (f) culture-bound words.
For instance, unlike the English legal system, the Italian one does not
distinguish between FELONY (serious offence) and MISDEMEANOUR
148 A Cross-linguistic Study of De Franchiss Law Dictionary
(minor offence), for which it has no appropriate terms, nor does it have
concepts corresponding to E. JURY or TORT, although the terms GIURIA and
TORTO do exist in the Italian general lexis. These problems are especially
evident in EU texts,1 which usually exhibit a hybrid language as a result of
a translation process.
This study tackles the thorny problem of translating legal English into
Italian. In particular, the study shows that the difficulties that are normally
found in translation become more marked in special languages such as the
language of the law. Indeed, the translation of legal language should
guarantee not only a semantic equivalence between the source text (ST)
and the target text (TT), but also the transfer of the pragmatic component,
viz. equivalence in terms of use and function (Merlini Barbaresi 1996;
House 1997; Iamartino 2006). Thus, translators from legal English should
use more sophisticated lexicographical tools than monolingual, bilingual2
1
The texts of the European Union are available in all the language versions in the
electronic archive Eur-Lex, http://eur-lex.europa.eu/. Specifically, the EU texts
selected for this study are: Advocate Generals Opinion of 29 April 2010. Akzo
Nobel Chemicals and Akcros Chemicals v Commission and Others (AGO),
Agreement between Australia and the European Union on the security of classified
information (AGRAEU), Combating female genital mutilation in the EU European
Parliament resolution of 24 March 2009 (CFGM), Decision of the European
Parliament of 24 April 2007 on the discharge for the implementation of the budget
of the European Maritime Safety Agency for the financial year 2005 (DEP),
European Parliament resolution on Bangladesh (EPRB), Interim Report from the
European Commission to the European Parliament and the Council on Progress in
Romania under the Co-operation and Verification Mechanism (IREC), Judgment
of the Court (Grand Chamber) of 29 June 2010. European Commission v Alrosa
Company Ltd (JCGC), Judgment of the Court of 6 July 2010. Monsanto
Technology (JCMT), Judgment of the Court (Third Chamber) of 29 July 2010.
Astra Zeneca UK Ltd v Commissioners for Her Majestys Revenue and Customs
(JCTC), Judgment of the General Court (Fifth Chamber) of 1 July 2010.
ThyssenKrupp Acciai Speciali Terni SpA v European Commission (JGC), Report
from the Commission to the European Parliament and the Council on the
Application of Directive 2004/83/EC of 29 April 2004 on minimum standards for
the qualification and status of third country nationals or stateless persons as
refugees or as persons who otherwise need international protection and the
content of the protection (RCEP).
2
De Groot and Van Laer (2008: 9) formulate some desiderata for reliable bilingual
legal dictionaries.
Elisa Mattiello 149
and/or specialised dictionaries.3 They should rather have access to

encyclopedic material, including information about the etymology of legal
terms, their use in actual contexts and the cultural system they belong to
(Bhatia et al. 2003; Chrom 2008).
In this study, data from De Franchiss encyclopedic bilingual Law
Dictionary (henceforth DFLD) will be discussed to illustrate the
infrequent one-to-one correspondence between legal English and legal
Italian, and, especially, to identify the lexical strategies (e.g. literal
translation, paraphrase, use of hyper-/hyponyms, calque, borrowing), and
the semantic processes (e.g. generalisation, simplification, adaptation,
extension, expansion, reduction) used by the lexicographer to convey
language- or culture-specific concepts into a different linguistic and
cultural system (Scarpa 2001; Garzone 2008). Theoretically, it will be
shown that the specific properties of legal terms can be accommodated
within the paradigm of Lexical Complexity elaborated by Bertuccelli Papi
and Lenci (2007).
2. The translation of the language of the law

The translation of the language of the law has attracted the attention of
many scholars in past and recent times (e.g. Cecioni 1996; Srevi 1997;
Caliendo 2004; Garzone 2008; Gotti 2008; Tessuto 2008). In pertinent
literature, linguists generally agree that translators working in this field
should have both linguistic and legal competence or, otherwise, that they
should cooperate with lawyers and legal experts in order to produce
satisfactory and reliable translations. Such cooperation is especially
important in the case of EU texts, whose different language versions are
all considered official, authoritative and vested with the force of law.4
However, as Gotti (2008) observes, in some of these texts there are
significant discrepancies, primarily due to the variety of language systems
and cultural identities of the EU Member States.
3
The monolingual dictionaries used here are the Shorter Oxford English
Dictionary (henceforth SOED) and, for definitions of specialised terms, the Oxford
Dictionary of Law (henceforth ODL).
4
See Caliendo (2004: 160): according to the European procedure rules, no
distinction is made between an authentic draft and the following translations.
Indeed, as Garzone (2008: 48) remarks, all versions are destined to function in the
context of the target culture without regard for their relation to the source text (see
also De Groot and Van Laer 2008: 5-6).
In EU texts, the most evident discrepancies and difficulties in the

translation of legal English into Italian concern the following word
categories:
(a) Ambiguous words: Some words belonging to legal terminology are

ambiguous to non-experts because they exhibit a technical meaning which
differs from the meaning the same words have in the standard language.5
The translator should therefore decide whether the context activates the
standard or the specialised meaning. Consider, for example, the word
CONVICTION in the three extracts below:
(1) Welcomes the recent conviction by a court of two Islamic militants for
murdering a Christian convert, but condemns the imposition of a death
penalty. (EPRB)
(2) A final conviction decision was reached against a mayor and a former
deputy mayor for bribe-taking. (IREC)
(3) This extension interrupted a phasing-out mechanism intended to ease
the companies transition to the full tariff, which signalled the Italian
authorities conviction that the companies had been fully compensated
for. (JGC)
In (1) and (2), CONVICTION refers to the two different technical

meanings it acquires in legal English, whereas in (3) it refers to the
standard English meaning. Hence, each context requires a different Italian
translation: viz., verdetto di colpevolezza, sentenza di condanna and
convinzione.
(b) Polysemous and homonymous words:6 Polysemous legal words have

more than one meaning in the legal vocabulary. Their meanings are related,
but they correspond to different Italian words in translation. The legal
English word CLAUSE, for instance, can be rendered into Italian as
clausola, articolo or paragrafo,7 as respectively illustrated in (4)-(6)
below:
(4) Notes that contract clauses which provide for pre-financing are not
standardised with regard to the provision of bank guarantees. (DEP)
5
See the concepts of ambiguity in specialized discourse, semantic instability
and semantic evolution in Gotti (2005: 46-49, 53-56).
6
See Tessuto (2008: 297), who proposes standardization as a means to reduce
polysemy and homonymy within legal language.
7
Other possible translations attested in DFLD are: stipulazione contrattuale,
disposizione, alinea, principio, norma, regola, parte di un disegno di legge.
Elisa Mattiello 151
(5) Clause 12 of the notified agreement provided that it was entered into
for a period of five years from the date of confirmation by the
Commission to the contracting parties that it [did] not infringe Article
81(1) EC, or merit[ed] an exemption under Article 81(3) EC; and [did]
not otherwise infringe Article 82 EC. (JCGC)
(6) Pursuant to Article 4(1), first clause, Member States have the
possibility to consider it the duty of the applicant for international
protection to submit as soon as possible all elements needed to
substantiate the application. (RCEP)
On the other hand, homonymous legal words have two or more

unrelated meanings and represent separate entries in dictionaries. The
word CUSTOMS corresponds to Italian consuetudini in (7), but to
dogana(le) in (8) below:
(7) The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination
against Women requires States Parties to take all appropriate measures
to modify or abolish existing laws, customs and practices which
constitute discrimination against women. (CFGM)
(8) Vopak made a customs declaration for one of the cargoes. (JCMT)
(c) False friends: False friends are terms which, in spite of their lexical
resemblance in different languages, diverge in meaning (Caliendo 2004; Di
Renzo Villata 2007; Garzone 2008; Marrone 2008). Some legal English
terms that might be easily mistranslated into Italian are reported in Table 1,
the correct Italian translation (from DFLD) being proposed in the third
column:
Table 1: Italian False Friends of some Legal English Terms.
ENGLISH MISTRANSLATION CORRECT ITALIAN

TRANSLATION
CAUTION cauzione (= security, bail) diffida, avviso, ammonizione

8
DECREE decreto (= order) sentenza, provvedimento
9
DEPUTY deputato (= Member of sostituto, supplente
Parliament)
LEGISLATURE legislatura (= Parliament) potere legislativo
NOMINATION nomina (= appointment) candidatura
SENTENCE sentenza (= judgement) pena (detentiva)
Other cases of Italian mistranslation are provided by the words

domicilio, ingiunzione, patrimonio and statutario, which in EU
legislation are wrongly considered as the Italian equivalents of English
DOMICILE, INJUNCTION, PATRIMONY and STATUTORY (see 3.2. and
3.3.1. below).10
(d) Collocations and fixed expressions: Legal English shows some set
phrases which cannot be literally translated into Italian as their overall
meaning does not derive from the meanings of their components. The
noun phrase CLOSED SHOP, for instance, does not refer to a negozio
chiuso, as the literal translation of the two terms might suggest, but rather
to a workshop or other establishment where only members of a trade
union may be employed (SOED). EU texts offer circolo chiuso,
8
See the odd and ugly calque DECREE-LAW, corresponding to Italian decreto
legge in Marrone (2008: 324-325). In the past, the words DECREE and JUDGEMENT
respectively referred to judges decisions in Equity vs. Common law. Since the
Judicature Acts (1873-1875), the word JUDGEMENT has been used to refer to both
decisions.
9
Cf. Marrone (2008: 323), who translates Regolamento della Camera dei
deputati as RULES OF PROCEDURE OF THE CHAMBER OF DEPUTIES.
10
For the Italian words DOMICILIO, INGIUNZIONE, PATRIMONIO and STATUTARIO, De
Franchiss Dizionario Giuridico (henceforth DFDG) respectively offers the
following English translations: habitual residence, intimation, order, notice,
assets and liabilities susceptible of pecuniary evaluation, relating to, provided
for by the articles of association.
Elisa Mattiello 153
accesso ristretto and materia riservata as some possible Italian

corresponding forms, but these translations do not seem to express the
same concept as the original form.11
Another intriguing case which is generally mistranslated in EU
legislation is the expression MIXED CONTRACT, for which the Italian
equivalent is not contratto misto but rather donazione modale (DFLD).
Similarly, the EU literal translation of the metaphoric expression FAMILY
OF NATIONS (i.e. famiglia delle nazioni) sounds anomalous in Italian,
where comunit internazionale (DFLD) would be more appropriate.
(e) Initialisms and other abbreviations: Abbreviations are frequently used

in the language of the law, especially initialisms, which are obtained from
the initial letters of the words in a phrase, title, compound or list, but,
unlike acronyms, are pronounced letter by letter (Conti and Mattiello
2008). In EU legislation, English abbreviations are treated in different
ways.12 Some of them are left in their original form (e.g. RSC Rules of
the Superior Court RSC, LTD13 Limited (U.K.) Ltd, INC.
Incorporated (U.S.) Inc.). Others are made explicit in the Italian
translation (e.g. UN United Nations Nazioni Unite; cf. the Italian
acronym ONU),14 and sometimes reduced to one of the components of the
original phrase (e.g. M.P. Member of Parliament membro; cf.
3.3.2.). Still others are substituted by an equivalent Italian abbreviated
form which differs from the original one, but provides a functional
equivalent (e.g. CFI Court of First Instance TPG Tribunale di Primo
Grado).15
(f) Culture-bound words: Culture-bound words represent the most difficult

category to render into another language since they only have meaning in
terms of the corresponding culture (Nida 2001: 13). For instance, the
11
For CLOSED SHOP, instead of a proper translation, DFLD proposes the
explanation impresa o azienda che impiega esclusivamente membri di un
determinato sindacato.
12
See Newmark (1988: 148) for the various possible translations of acronyms
depending on whether they are internationalisms (e.g. FAO, UNESCO) or not.
13
The abbreviation LTD is only in the written language. In the oral language, it is
pronounced in its full form.
14
Garzone (2008: 49) notes two main phenomena in translation: on the one hand,
simplification or the tendency on the part of the translator to simplify the
language and the message or both, and, on the other hand, explicitation, i.e.
the tendency to spell things out in translation rather than leaving them implicit.
15
See also TRIBUNALE DI PRIMA ISTANZA in DFDG.
expressions COMMON LAW and ATTORNEY-GENERAL have no equivalent

words/concepts in the Italian culture. Hence, the difficulty to provide a
satisfactory translation that may convey the same meaning as the original
expressions. In the case of culture-specific terms, EU texts offer either
literal translations (e.g. COMMON LAW diritto comune) or adaptations
(e.g. ATTORNEY-GENERAL procuratore generale),16 but an analysis of
legal terms from the perspective of Lexical Complexity (Bertuccelli Papi
and Lenci 2007) will show the complexity of such words and the
difficulty, or even impracticality of an adequate translation for culture-
bound legal words.
3. Legal words and Lexical Complexity

The present study starts from the assumption that the meaning of legal
words differs from language to language and from system to system. In
this view, I hypothesise that legal words are complex lexical microsystems
that are difficult:
- to represent because of their complexity in the source
linguistic/cultural system;
- to translate because of the complex/impossible transfer into the target
linguistic/cultural system.
In this study, I will try to arrange legal English words17 within the
framework of Lexical Complexity Theory (Bertuccelli Papi and Lenci
2007) and see whether or not a cross-lingual mapping exists between
English and Italian word/concept pairs.
3.1. The Theory of Lexical Complexity

In 2007 Bertuccelli Papi and Lenci have elaborated a Theory of Lexical
Complexity according to which the lexicon and individual lexical items
can be viewed as dynamic macro-/microsystems whose lexical complexity
depends on:
16
Cf. PROCURATORE GENERALE in DFDG, which is transferred into English as
Agent with general authority.
17
Due to the predominant use of nominal constructions and nominalisations in
written legal texts (Mattiello 2010), the examples selected for the analysis are all
nouns/noun phrases.
Elisa Mattiello 155
- the type and quantity of information required to describe the system

(i.e. number of its possible states and conceptual dimensions involved,
regularity/predictability of its dynamics),
- organisational properties (i.e. emergence of regular patterns, schemata,
rules that act as constraints for the system behaviour).
Furthermore, in Bertuccelli Papi and Lencis (2007) approach,

translation can be viewed as establishing sets of dynamic correspondences
between pairs of microsystems. In their view, these cross-lingual
correspondences form a second order complex system, where second
order complexity depends on a) the complexity of the source and target
lexical systems, b) the complexity of the links between the two systems
(Bertuccelli Papi and Lenci 2007: 31).
The legal word that I propose to illustrate first and second order
complexity is PROPERTY.18
3.2. An illustrative example: PROPERTY

An exploration of the meanings of PROPERTY in the SOED shows that this
term is relevant to several domains. However, only meanings (1a)-(1c) and
(3) are pertinent to the legal domain:
1a. That which one owns; a thing or things belonging to a person or
persons; possessions collectively; spec. real estate, housing.
b. A house or piece of land owned.
c. In pl. Shares or investments in property.
d. An artist, performer, or work regarded as a commercial asset, a
success, a sensation.
2a. An attribute, quality, or characteristic, esp. an essential one; an
inherent power or capacity, a virtue.
b. The characteristic quality of a person or thing; character, nature.
c. LOGIC. A non-essential characteristic common to all, and only, the
members of a class.
3. The condition or fact of owing or being owned; the (exclusive) right to
the possession, use, or disposal of a thing, ownership.
4.-5. THEATRICAL. The quality of being proper or appropriate; suitability.
6. fig. A means to an end; a person or thing to be made use of.
18
See Cecioni (1996: 167-171) for a synchronic and diachronic explanation of the
term PROPERTY in Common law.
An in-depth investigation of the term PROPERTY in the ODL and in

DFLD/DFDG shows that it is related to a set of synonyms which match
the above-mentioned meanings:
- ASSET: Physical property and/or rights that have a monetary value and are
capable of being those of a juristic person or a natural person (i.e. a human
being).
- ESTATE: (in land law) The character and duration of a persons ownership
of land; (in revenue law) The aggregate of all the property to which a
person is beneficially entitled.
- GOODS: Personal chattels or items of property.
- OWNERSHIP: The exclusive right to use, possess, and dispose of property,
subject only to the rights of persons having a superior interest and to any
restrictions on the owners rights imposed by agreement with or by act of
third parties or by operation of law.
- POSSESSION: Actual control of property combined with the intention to use
it, rightly or wrongly, as ones own.
This investigation also shows some of the repeated collocates with

PROPERTY: i.e.,
- Adjectives < forfeited/confiscated P; industrial P; intellectual P; landed P;
legal/equitable P; literary P; matrimonial P; onerous P; personal P vs.
real/landed/immovable P; public/community/state-owned P vs. private P;
tangible P vs. intangible P >
- N of P < law of P >
- P and N < P and liability insurance >
- P in N < P in action; P in possession >
- P + N < P Act; P damage; P development; P injury; P loss; P rights; P tax >
Lastly, a corpus-based study of some recurrent co-texts of PROPERTY in

EU legislation gives the following findings:
- the right to property and the right to the protection of personal data
- respect for the law of property
- in the field of intellectual property
- the exploitation of tangible or intangible property
- second-hand movable property which is not individualised
- certain interests in immovable property
- a risk of damage to property or infrastructure
- purchases or sales of property and other assets
- dealing with lost property
- the elimination of the property tax
Elisa Mattiello 157
The encyclopedic information that we can obtain from the use of

various lexicographical tools and the electronic archive can help us
describe the concept of PROPERTY in the legal domain:
1. Property is any physical or intangible entity that is owned by a person, by a
group of legal persons/business entities or by the state.
2. A right of ownership establishes the relation between the property and its
owner, assuring the owner the right to dispose of the property as he sees fit.
3. Depending on the nature of the property, its owner has the right to use, sell,
rent, mortgage, transfer, exchange or destroy his property, and/or to
exclude others from doing these actions.
4. The value of the property is generally quantifiable through a sum of
money, but it may also depend on the owners personal feeling towards his
property.
5. The nature of the property depends on the relevant context in which the
word is used:
(a) It may refer to a tangible entity, either immovable, such as a piece of
land or a house, or movable (man-made things);
(b) It may alternatively refer to an intangible entity: e.g., to financial
instruments, including stocks, investments (shares, bonds) and
mortgages, or to exclusive rights over artistic creations or inventions
(copyrights, trademarks, patents).
Therefore, PROPERTY is a complex word in legal English because:
- Its description requires a large quantity of information involving

multiple dimensions and often contrasting features (i.e.
concreteness vs. abstractness, tangibility vs. intangibility, mobility
vs. immobility, selling/personal value, etc.), due to the different
characteristics of the possessed entity;
- The semantic space it covers is loosely organised in that PROPERTY
is a polysemous word, implying a low degree of indexicality
because, as a lexical pointer, it is vague. Moreover, it is scarcely
iconic as to its conceptual matter (cf. the property of a land vs.
intellectual property).
Predictably, the complexity of the source lexical system poses

problems in translation or second order complexity: i.e. difficulty in
identifying correspondences with the target lexical system, which is in its
turn a complex system, with no specific term to label the whole of the
concept of PROPERTY. The following Italian words found in EU texts only
partially cover the English concept:
- (diritto di) PROPRIET, PROPRIET (intellettuale), PROPRIET

(pubblica/privata)
- BENE (materiale/immateriale)
- BENI (mobili/immobili)
- OGGETTI (smarriti)
- (imposta sul) PATRIMONIO,19 (diritto/danno) PATRIMONIALE
- POSSESSO
- POSSEDIMENTO
- TENUTA
- AVERE
Indeed, Italian reshuffles the various meaning components of the word

PROPERTY and redistributes them across microsystems. That is, it
foregrounds the different features of PROPERTY by using different lexemes
according to the context/co-text. None of the Italian words not even the
word PROPRIET, despite its correspondence with the original English
lexeme can be considered an equivalent of the complex word PROPERTY.
Hence, there is no one-to-one correspondence between legal English and
legal Italian, but rather a one-to-many relationship.
In this view, the second order complexity of PROPERTY rises from (a)
its mapping on a weakly organised lexical space in Italian, and (b) a lack
of correspondence with the Italian lexeme PROPRIET, competing with
other lexemes to cover the semantic space of PROPERTY.
3.3. Translation and second order lexical complexity

As we have seen from a finer-grained analysis of the word PROPERTY, the
complexity of lexical items can be evaluated from two viewpoints:
- First order complexity: the mapping between words and concepts;
- Second order complexity: the cross-lingual mapping between
word/concept pairs.
As Bertuccelli Papi and Lenci (2007: 30) claim, translating from one
language into another might be viewed as establishing sets of dynamical
correspondences between pairs of microsystems. In translation, therefore,
different degrees of second order lexical complexity may emerge
depending on the distance and lack of correspondence between two
19
Cf. English PATRIMONY, which is defined as property or an estate inherited by
ones father or ancestors (SOED).
Elisa Mattiello 159
systems. Specifically, in the analysis of legal words, the following degrees

of complexity may be identified:
1. Low-level complexity, which occurs when, despite the correspondence
between word pairs in the source and target lexical systems, there is
only a partial cross-lingual mapping between the corresponding
concepts.
2. Mid-level complexity, which occurs when there is no cross-lingual
mapping between word pairs in the source and target lexical systems,
but approximate solutions such as paraphrases, use of hyper-
/hyponyms, etc. are used to transfer (part of) the source concepts.20
3. High-level complexity, which occurs when word/concept pairs in the
source lexical system have no equivalents in the target lexical system.
According to this classification, the cross-lingual mapping between the

English word/concept PROPERTY and the Italian word/concept PROPRIET
implies low-level complexity. There is an equivalence at word level in the
two lexical systems, but only a partial correspondence between the two
concepts. Indeed, the Italian word PROPRIET covers only part of the
meaning/concept of English PROPERTY. In semantic terms, PROPRIET
represents a reduction of the semantic space covered by the English
lexeme. Furthermore, PROPERTY is related to a set of legal expressions
(chattels real/personal, choses in action/in possession, real estate, etc.)
(DFLD) that are not in the conceptual organisation of its Italian
counterpart, and are therefore irreproducible in Italian.
Let us now explore each degree of second order complexity with
illustrative examples from legal English and legal Italian.
3.3.1. Low-level complexity
Consider the following legal English words/expressions with their

technical meanings:
- CONTRACT a legally binding agreement (ODL)
- LIFE IMPRISONMENT punishment of a criminal by imprisonment for the
rest of his life. [] In practice the imprisonment may often not be for
life (ODL)
20
Garzone (2008: 57) adopts the term simplification when lack of equivalence
at word level is [] overcome by making recourse to hyperonyms or approximate
solutions or explicative paraphrases.
- NOTARY a legal practitioner, usually a solicitor, who attests or

certifies deeds and other documents and notes or protests dishonoured
bills of exchange (ODL)
- JURY a group of jurors (usually 12) selected at random to decide the
facts of a case and give a verdict (ODL)
- TORT a wrongful act or omission for which damages can be obtained
in a civil court by the person wronged, other than a wrong that is only a
breach of contract (ODL)
For each of the above-mentioned entries, DFLD proposes a literal

translation, accompanied, at times, by a synonymous expression: viz.
- CONTRATTO
- PRIGIONE A VITA/ERGASTOLO
- NOTAIO
- GIURIA
- TORTO/ILLECITO CIVILE
Yet the similarity between the English source terms and the Italian
target ones is only apparent, i.e. in terms of signantia, but not of signata.
Although the word pairs are not false friends, the corresponding Italian
concepts differ in more or less evident ways from the original concepts, so
that there is no complete overlap between the word/concept pairs.
For instance, unlike CONTRATTO, the lexeme CONTRACT includes not
only bilateral agreements, but also unilateral contracts. On the other hand,
it does not include other legal relationships such as trust, gift or settlement
which fall under the label of Italian CONTRATTO. Hence, the Italian literal
translation, as compared with the original English term, represents a
semantic shift.
On the other hand, the Italian literal translations PRIGIONE A VITA and
NOTAIO respectively involve an extension (in terms of length) and an
expansion (in terms of functions) of the original concepts. Both in the
U.K. and in the U.S. systems, LIFE IMPRISONMENT does not actually refer
to detention for life, but rather to an indeterminate period of imprisonment
which does not last more than ten years. Similarly, an English public
NOTARY has limited functions and, in the U.S., he does not even require
any legal education to practise his profession.21
21
According to Newmark (1988: 74) a literal translation is acceptable for
institutional terms: Some transparent institutional terms are translated literally in
at least Western European languages even though the TL cultural equivalents have
widely different functions.
Elisa Mattiello 161
Lastly, the Italian terms GIURIA and TORTO cannot cover the same
semantic space as their English corresponding items, in that JURY and
TORT are culture-specific terms, with their historical and jurisprudential
backgrounds and specific features which are not reproduced by the literal
translation. In this view, GIURIA, as compared with English JURY, entails a
semantic generalisation, in that it is applicable to a variety of cases which
do not involve the trial context; while TORTO entails a simplification of the
original concept, which is regulated by a specific branch of law (law of
torts), constituting one of the most complex areas of Common law (see
Cecioni 1996: 171). Like PROPERTY, both terms create a semantic network
with a set of interrelated legal expressions that find no room in the Italian
legal system: think of the legal English words array (the order of
empanelling a jury; the panel itself, SOED), verdict (a jurys finding on
the matters referred to it in a criminal or civil trial, ODL), or to actor
(the author of a tort, cf. plaintiff, DFLD).
The English-Italian word/concept pairs belonging to low-level
complexity represent themselves different degrees of complexity.
Complexity varies along with the distance between the concepts in the two
systems. Indeed, some pairs (e.g. CONTRACT-CONTRATTO) simply differ for
some semantic components, but they seem to ensure the highest common
meaning (Srevi 1997: 77). Others (e.g. JURY-GIURIA) differ more
considerably, in that some of their distinctive features have historical and
cultural bases which are impossible to reproduce cross-linguistically.
3.3.2. Mid-level complexity
Consider now the second group of legal English words/expressions, again

with their technical definitions:
- EVIDENCE that which tends to prove the existence or nonexistence of
some fact (ODL)
- DEFENDANT a person against whom court proceedings are brought
(ODL)
- MEMBER OF PARLIAMENT/M.P. a member of the House of Commons
(ODL)
- MAGISTRATE a justice of the peace sitting in a magistrates court
(ODL)
- ESTOPPEL a rule of evidence or a rule of law that prevents a person
from denying the truth of a statement he has made or from denying
facts that he has alleged to exist (ODL)
To transfer the concepts expressed by the above-mentioned

words/expressions, DFLD proposes the following solutions:
- PROVA
- CONVENUTO VS. IMPUTATO
- DEPUTATO
- CHIUNQUE ESERCITI ALTE FUNZIONI PUBBLICHE
- EXCEPTIO DOLI/VENIRE CONTRA FACTUM PROPRIUM22
In these cases, the English-Italian pairs differ not only in terms of

signata, but also in terms of signantia. A literal translation here would be
in fact inappropriate (e.g. membro del parlamento, magistrato)23 or
even misleading (e.g. evidenza, difendente).
Again, the concepts expressed by the source and target expressions do
not completely overlap, but the use of Italian alternative solutions to a
literal translation further complexifies the relationship between the
English-Italian systems.
The Italian word PROVA, for instance, represents a hyperonym of
English EVIDENCE. English, indeed, distinguishes between evidence and
proof24 i.e. the former providing the means to attain the latter whereas
Italian has only a superordinate term to lexicalise both concepts. The
semantic process involved is therefore generalisation.
A diametrically opposed case is provided by English DEFENDANT,
which is differently rendered on the basis of the branch of law involved. In
civil law, it corresponds to Italian CONVENUTO, while in criminal law, it
corresponds to IMPUTATO. Hence, the two Italian words are co-hyponyms
of the superordinate DEFENDANT. In semantic terms, they entail a
specification of the concept expressed by the English lexeme.
Analogously, the Italian word DEPUTATO is a hyponym of the English
phrase MEMBER OF PARLIAMENT. Indeed, in the Italian legal system, also a
senatore is a Member of Parliament. In semantic terms, however, the
choice of DEPUTATO entails, more than a specification, an adaptation to the
Italian bicameral system, where the Camera dei deputati is made
correspond to the English House of Commons.
22
Both Latin paraphrases correspond to Italian preclusione in DFDG.
23
Cf. the Italian false friend MAGISTRATO translated as judge (DFDG). Indeed,
while in civil law systems a magistrato might be a judge in a superior court, in
common law systems a magistrate has limited law enforcement and administration
authority and sits in a magistrates court, which is the lowest level of court in
England, dealing only with minor offences.
24
In the ODL, PROOF is defined as the means by which the existence or
nonexistence of a fact is established to the satisfaction of the court, including
testimony, documentary evidence, presumptions and judicial notice. See section
3.3.1. for its classification within the framework of Lexical Complexity.
Elisa Mattiello 163
For the English word MAGISTRATE, DFLD provides an Italian

paraphrase, viz. CHIUNQUE ESERCITI ALTE FUNZIONI PUBBLICHE. However,
the concept expressed by the Italian translation is not as culture-specific as
the source concept and, again, it involves a generalisation process.
Lastly, for the translation of English ESTOPPEL (from Norman French
estouper to stop up),25 DFLD suggests to make recourse to borrowings
from Latin (EXCEPTIO DOLI, VENIRE CONTRA FACTUM PROPRIUM), which in
the Italian legal lexis summarily express the English complex concept,
although they entail a simplification process.
Like low-level complexity, also mid-level complexity is a vast notion
and fluctuates from a lower to a higher distance between concepts in the
source and target systems, where more complex concepts are those
exhibiting culture-specific components. For instance, the Italian translation
of MEMBER OF PARLIAMENT requires a re-interpretation in the light of the
Italian legal and cultural systems in order to reproduce the semantic and
pragmatic meaning it has in English. According to Newmark (1988: 82-
83), it requires a cultural equivalent, such as DEPUTATO, which has a
greater pragmatic impact than culturally neutral terms. On the other hand,
MAGISTRATE requires a functional equivalent which neutralises or
generalises the SL word, e.g. by using a deculturalised word or phrase
(ibid.: 83).
3.3.3. High-level complexity
The third group of legal English words/expressions can be used to

illustrate high-level second order complexity, in that it includes culture-
bound terms which have no equivalent concepts in the Italian legal system.
For instance, Italian jurisprudence does not distinguish between:
- BARRISTER a legal practitioner admitted to plead at the Bar (ODL)
and
- SOLICITOR a legal practitioner admitted to practice under the
provisions of the Solicitors Act 1974 (ODL),
nor does it have equivalents for the dated terms:
25
As Cacchiani and Preite (2010) note, this is a xenism in both English and
French, in that it is considered a word of Norman French origin in the ODL, but an
Anglicism in the Vocabulaire Juridique (Cornu, Grard. 2007. Vocabulaire
Juridique. Paris: PUF).
- FELONY formerly, an offence more serious than a misdemeanour

(ODL)
- MISDEMEANOUR formerly (i.e. before 1967), any of the less serious
offences, as opposed to felony (ODL).26
Other culture-bound terms which are irreproducible in Italian are:

- ATTORNEY-GENERAL/A.-G. the principal law officer of the Crown
(ODL)
- COMMON LAW the part of English law based on rules developed by the
royal courts during the first three centuries after the Norman Conquest
(1066) as a system applicable to the whole country, as opposed to local
customs (ODL)
- EQUITY that part of English law originally administered by the Lord
Chancellor and later by the Court of Chancery, as distinct from that
administered by the courts of common law (ODL).
In DFLD, culture-bound terms are described by long explanations,

highlighting their culture-specificity and their inexistence in the Italian
culture, or in civil law. Some approximate translations of these terms may
be provided: for instance, hyperonyms (e.g. avvocato for both
BARRISTER and SOLICITOR; cf. advocate, lawyer), paraphrases (e.g.
avvocato generale dello stato, procuratore legale, pubblico ministero
for ATTORNEY-GENERAL;27 reato maggiore/minore or pi/meno grave
for FELONY and MISDEMEANOUR),28 or even calques (e.g. Legge comune
for COMMON LAW and Equit for EQUITY).29 However, these solutions
constitute generalisations, simplifications or adaptations which would
appear ambiguous to Italian readers, and vague or anomalous to legal
experts, especially in the case of odd calques.30
26
See the current distinction between INDICTABLE and SUMMARY OFFENCES
(DFLD).
27
In Cacchiani and Preite (2010), ATTORNEY GENERAL is classified as a xenism in
legal English, its Norman French origin being evident from the morphological
structure of the compound (noun + adjective), anomalous in English.
28
Cf. Cecionis (1996: 172-173) critical translation of FELONIES and
MISDEMEANOURS as delitti and contravvenzioni.
29
DFDG specifies that the concept of Italian EQUIT (Lat. aequitas) does not
correspond to the common law concept.
30
See also odd Italian calques in EU terminology (e.g. COMIT(AT)OLOGIA < E.
COMITOLOGY; PARTENARIATO < E. PARTNERSHIP) in Caliendo (2004: 173-175). Cf.
the calques STATI DEL REAME, GIUDICE DI PACE and CORTE DISTRETTUALE, which
unequivocally evoke the English (ESTATES OF THE REALM, JUSTICE OF THE PEACE)
and American (DISTRICT COURT) legal systems.
Elisa Mattiello 165
Another solution which is offered by EU texts (cf. 2. above) is to

leave culture-bound words in their original form, as in (9)-(11) below:
(9) Astra Zeneca UK Ltd, by M. Conlon QC, and D. Southern, barrister,
instructed by G. Salmond, solicitor.
(9) Per la Astra Zeneca UK Ltd, dal sig. M. Conlon, QC, e dal sig. D.
Southern, barrister, su mandato del sig. G. Salmond, solicitor.
(JCTC)
(10) For the Government of Australia, the Minister for Foreign Affairs,
the Minister for Defence and the Attorney-General shall oversee the
implementation of this Agreement.
(10) Per il governo dellAustralia, il ministro degli Affari esteri, il
ministro della Difesa e lAttorney-General vigilano sullattuazione
del presente accordo. (AGRAEU)
(11) This is the case in the United Kingdom and Ireland, which operate
common law legal systems.
(11) il caso del Regno Unito e dellIrlanda, i quali hanno un sistema
giuridico di Common Law. (AGO)
Borrowing would be the only unequivocal option for the transferring of

culture-bound words. Because of their high complexity in the source
lexical system and lack of correspondence with the target system, culture-
bound words tend to be incorporated into the Italian lexis as loanwords, so
that their original semantic, historical and cultural components are left
unaltered.
4. Some suggestions for translators

On the basis of the previous analysis, different degrees of second order
complexity should be dealt with in different ways by the translator:
- In the case of low-level complexity, the translator should provide a
literal translation of the source language word (e.g. contratto for
CONTRACT), specifying (in notes, brackets, etc.) that it refers to the
concept of the source legal system and, possibly, providing
encyclopedic explanation of the original concept.31
- In the case of mid-level complexity, he should not provide a literal
translation, but rather choose a functional equivalent in the target
31
See Newmark (1988: 91): The additional information a translator may have to
add to his version is normally cultural (accounting for difference between SL and
TL culture).
language.32 That is, he should use an expression of the target language

which more faithfully reproduces the core meaning and pragmatic
function of the original concept: e.g., a hyperonym (prova for
EVIDENCE), a hyponym (convenuto or imputato for DEFENDANT), a
paraphrase (venire contra factum proprium for ESTOPPEL), etc.
- In the case of high-level complexity, the translator should keep the
source language word i.e., use a loanword (e.g. ATTORNEY-GENERAL,
33
BARRISTER, SOLICITOR) rather than a calque (e.g. Equit, Legge
comune) , which directly points to the concept it refers to in the
source legal system.34
In general, complex words which exhibit culture-specific components

in the ST, such as JURY, MEMBER OF PARLIAMENT, TORT and the culture-
bound terms discussed in section 3.3.3., require explanatory notes,
adaptations, or even integrations into the target lexical system to obtain
unequivocal translations in the TT.
5. Final remarks
This study of legal English words from the perspective of Lexical
Complexity has demonstrated that they are part of a complex macrosystem
(the lexis of the law) whose states and dynamics are generally
unpredictable. The specificity of the legal jargon makes it more difficult to
interpret for non-experts, not only in terms of distinction from the standard
lexis, but also because its lexemes are often context-sensitive, i.e. their
meaning varies along with the context and co-text, and culture-specific,
their meaning varies from system to system.
Hence, legal words can be viewed as nested dynamic microsystems
requiring a large amount of information to be semantically described and
conceptually represented in their linguistic and cultural system. Cross-
linguistically, this first order complexity corresponds to a second order
complexity due to (a) the complexity of source and target systems and (b)
the complex links between the two systems.
32
See the notion of negotiated equivalent in Di Renzo Villata (2007: 72).
33
Cf. phonological calque or acoustic translation (e.g. E. COURT OF ASSIZE <
It. CORTE DI ASSISE) in Di Renzo Villata (2007: 72-73).
34
Cf. De Groot and Van Laer (2008: 6-9), who claim that If no acceptable
equivalents in the target language legal system can be uncovered, subsidiary
solutions must be sought: e.g., preserving the source term, paraphrasing or
using a neologism.
Elisa Mattiello 167
In translation, legal English words differ for their degree of complexity

as emerging from the distance between the source and target systems. In
particular, culture-bound words have turned out to be the most complex
words to transfer into a different language because they refer to concepts
that are absent in the target legal and lexical systems.
The only possibility to transfer the whole of the original concept is,
therefore, to borrow the original word and incorporate it into the target
lexis. This solution is especially valid for EU texts, which are conceived
for experts, namely judges and lawyers, having specific knowledge of the
various cultural systems of the Member States. Indeed, since translation
also depends on its target reader, the perfect translation for an expert
reader would actually be a non-translation (Di Renzo Villata 2007: 72).
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ART FOR DICTIONARIES SAKE:
COMPARING CULTURAL OUTLOOKS
THROUGH DICTIONARIES AND CORPORA
GEOFFREY CLIVE WILLIAMS

(UNIVERSITE DE BRETAGNE SUD)
1. Introduction
Corpus linguistics is about being surprised. It is about being surprised by
the commonplace questions of language that we take for granted, but for
which we never take a close enough look at their complexity. If familiarity
breeds contempt, then language is a good case. Although contempt may
necessarily not be the outcome as we do value our languages, our acquired
knowledge as educated individuals often prevents us from recognising the
wealth of meanings expressed by even the simplest of words. We tend to
judge by what we have learnt, rather than taking a fresh look at language.
In decontextualising large amounts of data, corpora can force us into
taking this fresh look.
An educated person does not read linearly. We may have done this
when were learning to read, but we now skim, making snap decisions from
the key words of the text in context. Our knowledge of language enables
us to extract meanings without having to worry about ambiguity, our
contextual knowledge helps us decipher texts and handle polysemy with
remarkable ease. This is obviously an advantage in fast information
extraction, but can be a hindrance if our aim is to formalise and retain
lexical information for future use. Generally, when in known waters, we
do not need external help when decoding a text, but when in doubt we do
turn to that repository of lexical knowledge that is the dictionary.
Although this is what our education has taught us to do, this reaction is not
without danger as, although most users do not realise it, dictionaries only
contain meaning potentials, and not meanings themselves. They do not
contain the full truth and only the full truth. The senses that they do hold
are invariably institutionalised ones. The consequence of all this is that the
172 Comparing Cultural Outlooks through Dictionaries and Corpora
educated reader, and dictionary user, tends to have two separate

knowledges of word meanings, a conscious taught one that enables us to
give a correct meaning when challenged out of context, and our acquired
knowledge of language in context that may give a very different picture.
Traditional dictionaries are based on accumulated knowledge of
language and the use of written sources mediated by the trained intuition
of the lexicographer. New editions may be revised, but no publishing
house can afford to rewrite all the entries and reorder the content. That
non-corpus-based dictionaries do not portray current usage of words has
been shown time and time again in corpus linguistics. Intuition is not the
best judge of reality, and yet, surprisingly, we still very often accept that
the dictionary is right, and real usage is, in some way, wrong.
For those who are willing to stand back and take a fresh look, and who
are willing to give the time necessary to learn to read concordances,
corpus linguistics has turned our view of meaning on its head.
Concordancers, like educated humans, do not present text in a linear
fashion, instead they present a key word with sufficient context for its
particular textual meaning to became apparent. By sorting and grouping
the contexts, recurrent contextual meanings stand out, and these are often
at odds with taught knowledge. If we have eyes to see, and are curious
about language, we are inevitably surprised with the results.
This text is thus about surprises, the surprises found by looking at one
very familiar word in the context of several different corpora. This word is
art.
Art has been chosen as an example, although the same problems are to
be fond with all the words in the lexicon. It has been chosen as it is closely
related to culture, another word that is widely used without taking a fresh
look at its meanings in varying textual environments. Culture then shall be
our starting point as this texts will set out to show how dictionaries are
essentially cultural artefacts that are the fruit of a social, educational and
language culture.
First, we shall look at culture as a means of setting the scene for a
particular analytical method and for a study of lexis within paper
dictionaries. After discussing the nature of paper dictionaries with
reference to the lexeme art, we shall move on to how this word is
represented in English and French corpora. The conclusion call for a
considered rethink of dictionaries wherein the corpus provides more that
just source data, but the whole means of structuring the dictionary itself.
Geoffrey Clive Williams 173
2. The meaning of culture

Culture is such a simple word. Culture is one of the defining elements of
advanced civilised societies. In educated societies we tend to see less
developed societies as having traditions, whereas we have culture,
meaning something that encompasses all the higher arts. Expressions such
as primitive culture or popular culture simply show that lower forms of
culture exist, but that true culture is neither primitive nor for the masses,
it is something better than that. This may sound presumptuous, but it is
very much what we find in published works. This sense of a higher culture
is an institutionalised meaning, one we have learnt at school and
university, and from dictionaries. This can be illustrated by the following
extract from the Oxford Dictionary of English (ODE):
(1) The arts and other manifestations of human intellectual achievement
regarded collectively. (ODE).
The highly popular French Larousse dictionary also gives this

meaning, but in fifth place, when it describes the phenomenon as being:
(5) Ensemble des usages, des coutumes des manifestations artistiques,
religieuses, intellectuelles qui dfinissent et distinguent un group, une
socit (Larousse)
A collection of usages, customs, artistic, religious and intellectual
manifestations that define and distinguish a group or a society.
ODE is a corpus-based dictionary, Larousse is not, but both highlight

the intellectual aspect.
The interesting point is that we can easily accept that this is the central
meaning of culture, when in reality earlier uses of the word had nothing
whatsoever to do with the mind and intellect, but all to do with tilling the
soil. The fact that meaning can evolve over time is not new, what we tend
not to do is to map these changes and take into account what aspects of
earlier meanings may be carried over into new contexts. We also tend to
accept that meanings change, but fail to accept the the dictionaries upon
which we rely may not be giving the currents meanings of the word.
Dictionaries contain senses, the meanings are in contexts.
3. Cultural resonance
Language changes over time. This is not decay, but change. Language
change is brought about changing circumstances. Words do not have
meanings, we give them meanings in contexts. As contexts change, so will

meaning. One of the major outcomes of contextualist linguistics in the
Firthian tradition and of corpus linguistics is the acceptance that
dictionaries do not contain the meaning of words, but only describe how
words have been used, and list meaning potentials (Hanks 2000). From
these meaning potentials, we can extrapolate new meanings from new
contexts.
Metaphor is a major factor in language change in that we exploit one
sense to elaborate another. This is why Hanks (1994) claims that meanings
should be described not in definitions, with senses and sub-senses, but
through prototypes that allow for continuity between aspects of meaning.
The value of using prototypes to compare meanings across time and across
languages has already been demonstrated (Williams et al forthcoming).
Prototypes allow us to see that as meanings change, certain features are
carried over, thereby colouring futures sense, even if an earlier sense
disappears from usage. This process has been termed collocational
resonance as aspects of meaning that colour the semantic prosody of their
contextual usage are often attributed unconsciously (Williams 2008a).
The word culture has already been discussed in a cross-language
perspective (Williams 2011). This study showed how culture has
developed a variety of meanings in three contemporary languages
English, French and Italian as revealed in the IntUne comparable corpora.
Just looking at English, we can see how from an earlier Latin usage,
culture has moved from meaning tillage and husbandry, the two synonyms
provided in Cawdreys 1604 Table Alphabeticall in lieu of a definition, to
agricultural in general, and then via the notion of human intellectual
traditions to the current usage, which, in English, has retained only human
intellectual behaviour and the arts. The fact of growing things has not
disappeared entirely, but culture in this sense is limited to biological
studies, the earlier sense lives on only in agriculture. These changes are
well mapped for English in the Oxford English dictionary (OED). When
we compare to French and Italian usage, the agricultural aspects are still
active. In English, however, the word seems to be taking on a new
connotative meaning wherein culture is frequently linked to negative
behaviours. This new aspect does not appear either in the OED or ODE, as
such change is insidious and can only be seen through the use of corpora,
which only goes to show the difficulty of tracking active language change.
What is interesting about Cawdreys usage is that he does not define,
but simply gives two synonyms. In so doing, he is actually giving two
senses in that tilling is what we would now call arable farming, whereas
husbandry includes animals. In both cases the current word is farming.
Neither of Cawdreys synonyms are frequent in current usage, whereas on

the other hand, farming did not have this meaning in Cawdreys time.
What is clear from corpus data is that connotative meanings change over
time and with context. In addition to this, a much more subtle change is
that whereby groups of contexts gradually create what Louw (1993,
2000|2008) has termed semantic prosody, a situation where an aura of
connotation can subtle giving new underlying meanings, often positive or
negative, to words. Semantic prosody shows how culture has come to take
on new meanings, including the notion of as excess in current English.
Thus culture, the word and its meanings, is cultural, that is to say fixed
in the behaviour, traditions and expectations of different societies.
Dictionaries can describe senses attributed to culture, but are themselves
cultural in that they reflect the culture of the society for which they have
been compiled.
Although the word culture has evolved differently in different
languages, the relationship to human intellectual experience, and notably
what we term the arts is a constant across western languages.
Language changes, and consequently so do the senses recorded in a
dictionary. However, in a non-corpus-based dictionary, which means all
the traditional reference works, the senses are entered and ordered by the
intuition and accumulated knowledge of the lexicographer. Accumulated
knowledge and a tendency to prescription may run against real usage with
the user believing that the dictionary must be right, whereas they are
wrong. This fallacy is remarkably current amongst teachers who often
seek norms, without questioning the validity of those norms.
Thus, the senses found in a dictionary are not necessarily those that
predominate in current usage. The problem lies partly in the nature of
dictionaries, and the way we perceive them. Thus, before moving on to
real usage as seen through corpora, we shall look at how meanings are
encapsulated in a condensed form in dictionaries. To do this, we must first
look at how dictionaries view their users and the extent to which
dictionaries are driven by inherited notions as to what constitutes such a
work and to what extent they are actually user-driven.
In the following section, we shall look at how art and related words are
dealt with in English dictionaries so as to illustrate the problems with
current paper dictionaries before moving on to corpus evidence and how
that should change more than just content in a move towards interactive
electronic dictionaries.
4. Dictionaries and their users

One of the problems with dictionaries is that they are too familiar. We are
made to buy one, or more, when we start school, and at home there are
invariably dictionaries, because our parents were also brought up in the
cult of dictionary worship. The problem is not necessarily with the
dictionary itself, but with the fact that users lack the dictionary knowledge
necessary to judge quality and to answer the essential question of to whom
a given work is addressed. We are generally introduced to dictionaries by
our school teachers. However, this can be very much a question of the
blind leading the blind in that it is highly unlikely that their critical
knowledge of lexicography is very developed. This is simply not
something that is taught outside of lexicography courses. In addition to
this, if they have had a literary training, they may well see dictionaries as a
prescriptive tool to uphold a perceived norm. The normative function of
dictionaries is important, but whether or not they hold the current norm
can be a moot point.
It is obvious that dictionaries do have a prescriptive role when used in
the earlier stages of education. It is vital that learners perceive the
language norms of the society in which they are being educated.
Unfortunately, there is a danger that the dictionary be seen as the source of
true meanings, and that is pernicious. Meanings change with the context
whereas dictionaries can only contain institutionalised senses, and these
change over time. As a consequence, not only do users often have a false
idea of the authority of a dictionary, but they are also very conservative
about them. If a dictionary appeals, why buy another? To some the
perception is that the simpler is the better, polysemy only gets in the way.
Obviously, in order to better understand and use the tool, and to develop a
critical outlook, what users needs to do is to ask themselves what a
dictionary really is. So what is it?
The standard view is that a dictionary is a collection of words in
alphabetical order accompanied by a definition, an explanation, a
commentary, a semi-encyclopaedic entry, one or more synonyms or, in
the case of bilinguals, a translation equivalent. The question as to how
these differ is not generally asked.
As we all know, dictionaries are not necessarily alphabetical in order.
When Cawdrey entitled his 1604 dictionary A Table Alphabeticall, he
considered the fact as being a novelty. Then, as now, not all dictionaries
are semasiological, and even those that are have to make decisions
concerning the order of run-on entries, compound forms and multiword
units.
That dictionaries contain definitions is another misnomer in that many

still give one or two synonyms instead of a phrasal or semi-phrasal
definition. Even when there is a definition, readers do not always
necessarily know the difference between a paraphrase, a definition in the
Aristotelian definiens-definiendum format, or the Full Sentence
Definitions and explanations introduced in the COBUILD, and now
widely used elsewhere (Hanks 1987). In addition, users of bilingual
dictionaries expect a translation equivalent, but do not necessarily ask how
equivalent the equivalent is. Before even endeavouring to give a history of
English lexicography, Bjoint (2010) feels the need to give an exhaustive
analysis of what a dictionary is and who writes them as most people retain
a folk definition of what constitutes a dictionary, and a hazy knowledge as
to who writes them. It is therefore important to consider what dictionaries
are, and what are the advantages, and drawbacks, of each dictionary type.
The next question is who actually writes dictionaries and how they carry
out their tasks. The link between dictionary and lexicographer is not
known to all, although those who have come across the great Dr Johnson
know that the latter is a writer of dictionaries; a harmless drudge, that
busies himself in tracing the original, and detailing the signification of
words. (Johnson 1755).
When Johnson was at work, dictionaries were compiled by a single
author. To some extent this is still true today, but the contemporary large
reference dictionaries are written by teams of lexicographers under the
control of an editor. If a lexicographer writes dictionaries alone, or as part
of a team, the question as to the degree of competence of a lexicographer
in scientific or technical dictionary writing may be raised. Many serious
specialist dictionaries are written by scientists or medical practitioners,
these are not necessarily lexicographers and may lack the analytical skills
of the former, but they do have an in-depth knowledge of the subject areas.
Other dictionaries are written for fun or by those with an axe to grind.
The lexicographical competence is lacking, they are simply alphabetical
lists, but we still call them dictionaries. A so-called wiki dictionary is an
on-line collaborative work, which cannot really lay any claim to any
rigorous analysis of the lexicon, and yet they are freely available on the
internet and much consulted. Even the great dictionary of the French
Academy is not written by lexicographers, but by a committee of literati.
Thus, however prestigious a dictionary may be, it does not ensure that the
content has been written by reliable trained lexicographers.
The question as to what dictionaries are for is another rarely asked
question. There is a tendency to see dictionaries from a purely European
perspective, when in point of fact dictionaries first enveloped in India and
China, well before Europe as an entity even entered human consciousness.

In looking at the history of dictionaries, it is interesting to see why they
evolved, Chinese dictionaries being linked to the need to standardise
character description for monolingual dictionaries and the integration of
Buddhist terminology for bilingual ones (Yong & Peng 2008).
Dictionaries have always arisen from a need to name and classify, and a
need to teach those classifications.
Thus, dictionaries are a response to language needs and changing
language circumstances. In Europe, they evolved from glosses found in
medieval manuscripts in Latin with a need to explain and understand
words. By the time of the renaissance, the problem was relating Latin to
the emerging vernacular languages. This is well seen in the development
of English language lexicography (Cowie 2009) where we move from a
need to understand Latin, then French, and then the English language
itself, which led to the emergence of monolingual English language
dictionaries, the first of which was that of Cawdrey.
On the continent, academies had been created to set a gold standard for
the great nations of Europe and their language. The first of these was the
Accademia della Crusca which set out to impose the literary output of
Tuscany, or more precisely Florence, as a linguistic norm. This was
followed by France with its own royal academy. Thus, by the 18th century,
the need to have a reference dictionary of English was felt, and this led to
Johnsons mammoth undertaking. Johnson set out to prescribe, but his
pragmatism quickly led him to a requirement to describe. Later, in the 19th
century, Murrays Oxford English Dictionary responded to the need for a
historical and complete dictionary of English as the language rose to the
status of a world language. In the mid-20th century, Hornbys Oxford
Advanced Learners Dictionary, not at first considered a true dictionary in
the noble tradition, addressed itself to the needs of the non-native speaker
wishing to understand and produce correct English (Cowie 2010).
Changing needs, changing dictionaries.
A similar evolution can be seen in France where the lexicographical
tradition started by Pierre Larousse arose from the development of
education for all under the loi Guizot of 1830, and thus the need for a
popular dictionary of French, as opposed to the literary and historical one
proposed by Littr (Pruvost 2005). In more recent times, the postwar
development of higher education in France brought about a need for a new
type of dictionary for educated users, a need fulfilled by the Le Robert
dictionary.
Thus, the development of dictionaries is essentially driven by needs,
whether societal or cultural as the title of Pruvosts (2006) history of
French lexicography shows when he declares them to be outils dune

langue et une culture (tools of a language and a culture). The process of
dictionary evolution is simple; different cultures bring forth different
needs, and engender different answers. Nevertheless, the fact that they
respond to changes in society, and to perceived associated needs, does not
necessarily mean that they are user-driven. Dictionaries are often the
reflection of a certain scholarly culture, and that culture may not fully
reflect user needs. Dictionaries are eminently cultural tools and may
reflect cultural, rather than, user, needs.
Consequently, although dictionaries reflect changes in society, the
content may reflect more the position of a controlling elite than the users
themselves. Thus, some dictionaries are prescriptive. This is the case of
the dictionaries of the national academies which seek to create a prestige
language, but are of little use in everyday life where a descriptive
dictionary will be of more use. Some dictionaries, like the Oxford English
Dictionary are historical. Although they are wonderful reference works,
they are not designed for everyday reference usage. Some dictionaries will
rely on citations from literary works, fine for prestige, but useless in the
production of everyday language. The outcome of this variety of
dictionary types, is the fact that to choose the best dictionary for any given
purpose we should know when it was written, for whom it was written and
why. These questions are rarely asked, and most dictionary publishers are
very shy about limiting their audience by declaring to whom their
productions are best suited. This is especially the case when we consider
bilingual dictionaries, which must handle encoding and decoding in two
directions.
To sum up, the ideal dictionary does not exist. If we want to build new
dictionaries for new cultural conditions and new needs, we cannot start
from a blank page. We need to look at and admire earlier dictionaries as
they are not just a source of knowledge, but also provide highly innovative
solutions to real problems of their time, and these can be adapted to
current needs and technologies. However, corpora bring new sources that
are closer to real usage than the lexicographical intuition of the past.
Corpora can change our outlook, and may help change the format of the
dictionary, but they remain a means and not the end. Thus, to build new
dictionaries, we need to understand new technology and its possibilities,
whilst keeping a healthy dose of cynicism if we are not to worship the
technology more than what is sets out to achieve. In other words, we need
to rethink where we are going, and above all, why. This I shall try to
illustrate by returning to the notion of culture as being the arts and other
manifestations of human intellectual achievement regarded collectively
and seeing how culture relates to art and the arts. However, in so doing,
we shall have to go back over some of the points about dictionaries raised
earlier. As a starting point, we shall start with the treatment of art in
contemporary English dictionaries.
4.1. The dictionary and art

So what is art? We shall start with a corpus based English reference
dictionary, the Oxford Dictionary of English.
According to the ODE art is:
1.The expression or application of human creative skill and imagination,
typically in a visual form such as painting or sculpture, producing works to
be appreciated primarily for their beauty or emotional power
2.(the arts) the various branches of creative activity, such as painting,
music, literature, and dance
3.(arts) subjects of study primarily concerned with human creativity and
social life, such as languages, literature, and history (as contrasted with
scientific or technical subjects)
4.a skill at doing a specified thing, typically one acquired through practice
Phrases
art for arts sake
art is long, life is short
The above does not cover the entirety of the entry as I have
deliberately left out the examples that are given for each sub-sense and
phrasal pattern.
In looking at the entries for art and its related word forms, two things
appear clearly. One is the problem of lemmatisation as the above
definition gives three different definitions of art with the plural and
definitive forms differing from the more general one. The second is that
although the notion of human creativity can be found in all four
definitions, they do vary greatly in scope. Dividing entries into separate
senses is a necessary, but artificial task. This is clearly a case where a
prototype would be useful, as this would not only highlight the links
between senses, but might also help elucidate the phrasal expressions that
follow. However, lemmatisation is not the only problem as other problems
arise when listing compound entries and multiword units. Although arts
may follow art, we cannot group all the related forms as we shall see when
looking at art in three advanced learners dictionaries; the Oxford
Advanced Learners Dictionary (OALD), Collins COBUILD, and the
MacMillan English Dictionary for Advanced Learners (MEDAL). Thus,

the following takes into account certain facts about dictionaries.
4.2. Dictionaries are alphabetical

As can be seen in appendix one, dictionaries are more or less alphabetical,
something which gives rise to numerous problems for users. The list
shows the headwords found in the ODE compared with the three other
dictionaries. Where a word exists in one dictionary, but not in another, the
column is marked with an X. In this table, the entries retained are only
single headwords and multiword units, the compound forms as artwork
and other related forms as artist have not been retained.
That there are variations in headword lists is normal; a reference
dictionary such as ODE will be more complete than a learners one. In
addition to questions of scope, there is also the choice of individual editors
as to what is to be included in a word list. What is common points to a
certain perceived relevance, similar corpus results, or maybe just
comparisons with the competitors lexicons. The COBUILD stands out as
having its headword list rigorously based on corpus results, but even here
different editions can show different results as the initial corpus has grown
from the big COBUILD corpus to the vast bank of English. As in all
metalexicographical analyses, similarities are interesting, differences are
inevitable. What is most interesting in all cases is the degree of dispersal
brought in by alphabetisation which leads to related entries being very far
apart. Surely an electronic dictionary should be able to show links between
related words?
4.3. Different dictionaries define differently

Dictionary entries differ in the way words are listed and also on the way
they show homonymy and polysemy. For ODE, art has three entries, the
first being the noun, the second the archaic verb form and the third the
abbreviation for the noun article. Only MEDAL gives the verbal form on
the basis that although archaic in usage, it is difficult to read English
without coming across either the Bible or Shakespeare, or any work
wishing to give a magical or medieval atmosphere. When we look inside
the entries we find that they group word meanings, lumping, or divide
them, splitting, differently. Thus, OALD and COBUILD each have seven
senses, whereas MEDAL has only five. That they agree on the number
does not mean that they will agree on the order in which they are to
represented. Again, this results from different editorial decisions. Where

differences are most apparent is in defining styles.
OALD
1. The use of the imagination to express ideas or feelings
4. art, music, theatre, literature, etc, when you think of them as a group
COBUILD
1. Art consists of paintings, sculpture, and other pictures or objects which
are created for people to look at and admire or think deeply about
3. The arts are activities such as music, painting, literature, cinema, and
dance, which people take part in for enjoyment, or to create works which
express serious meanings or ideas of beauty
MEDAL
1. Paintings, drawings and sculptures that are created to be beautiful or to
express ideas
3. arts (plural) subjects of study that are not scientific, such as history,
literature, and languages
the arts (plural) activities such as art, music, film, theatre and dance
considered together
These definitions show how the ordering and content can vary between
dictionaries. In the full entries for all three we find the difference between
art, arts and the art with the key element of the arts being not scientific in
outlook. The important point is however that of defining style.
OALD takes the traditional approach which does not repeat the
headword but rather relies on the user adding in the formula X is. In many
dictionaries a tilde is used to replace the keyword, these dictionaries all
prefer a numbering system. The major difference lies in the full sentence
definitions used by COBUILD. This is a definite policy decision designed
to increase clarity and is based on Hanks call for explanations rather than
definitions (1987). This has been the subject of much debate (Rundell
2006) and whilst the definitions given here follow the more traditional
format, MEDAL will make use of both depending on the situation. In
other words, the format is part of an in-house culture that defines standards
in terms of perceived user needs and expectations.
The wealth of dictionaries lies in choice, but do users see the choice?
These are all first class dictionaries taking deliberate editorial decisions on
a number of essential matters; defining styles, definition v. explanation,
content information, highly concise entries v. the more descriptive,
ordering of senses following precise criteria. If the user is not aware of the
issues, then the user has not the means to choose.
In addition to the explicit meanings, there are also implicit ones. A

rapid prototype built from the learners dictionaries give us the following
facts/
Art is about objects

Art is deliberate
Art is about beauty
Art is about ideas
Art is to be looked at
Art is to be enjoyed
Art is to be admired
Art is an activity
Art can be studied
Art has value
Whilst it is clear that art differs from science, which of these

characteristic are activated when discussing art, arts and the arts? Theatre
is one of the arts, but is not art. And culture? Is culture about all three or
just the arts?
The answer is cultural. Different dictionaries either group senses, the
lumpers, or divide them into a myriad of sub-senses, the splitters. This is
partly an in-house culture, and partly a national culture.
5. Dictionaries as cultural artefacts

Dictionaries grow out of a society that created them, so inevitably a
change of language will bring about a change of style. This is of course
simplistic, the English and American dictionary styles are very different
(Bjoint 2010). In this article we have only looked at English dictionaries,
so in comparing with usage in another language we shall turn to our
continental neighbour, France. Obviously, despite a strong prescriptive
tradition, the dictionaries found in France and in French-speaking
countries as Qubc will differ, but that is another story that we shall not
attempt to tackle here. Neither shall we look at the academy or historical
dictionaries, but concentrate on todays big sellers, Larousse and Le
Robert.
5.1. Dictionaries of contemporary French:

Larousse and Le Robert
The first thing that becomes clear is that Larousse and Le Robert are
lumpers. Both have very long entries listing what each considers relevant.
In terms of multiword units, only Larousse has art deco and art nouveau,
presumably because Larousse is more open to encyclopaedic information
compared to the very literary Le Robert dictionary. Both of these are
included as run-on entries. One important difference in terms of
alphabetisation lies in the nature of the language. In English, art frequently
qualifies another noun, as in art gallery or art house. In French this cannot
happen so that galerie dart will be elsewhere in the dictionary unless
included as a run-on. Thus the problem of dispersant of related items is
going to be even greater in French than in an English dictionary.
If we turn to the defining style, there is no particular innovation. Both
tend to be excessively concise, but are not necessarily clear to the
uninitiated. In other words the approach is very traditional and does not
seek closeness to the user as in the English dictionaries. The user is
expected to know the model. The following gives a shortened list of the
sub-senses found in the Larousse along with a translation. This is not a
corpus-based dictionary and so ordering has been fixed by the
lexicographer in line with in-house style. It is unclear whether this is
historical or simply what is deemed as a logical order.
1. Aptitude, habilit faire qqch
Aptitude, ability to do something
2. Ensemble des moyens, des procds, des rgles intrressant une
activit, une profession
Entirety of the means, procedures, rules that concern an activity, a
profession
3. Cration dobjets ou de mises en scne spcifiques destins produire
chez lhomme un tat de sensibilit et dveil plus ou moins lis au
plaisir esthtique
The creation of objects or specific staging aiming at producing
amongst humans a state of sensitivity and awareness that is more or
less linked to aesthetic pleasure
4. Chacun des domaines o sexerce la cration esthtique, artistique
Each of the fields in which is carried out aesthetic or artistic creation
5. Ensemble des usages, des coutumes des manifestations artistiques,
religieuses, intellectuelles qui dfinissent et distinguent un group, une
socit
A collection of usages, customs, artistic, religious and intellectual
manifestations that define and distinguish a group or a society
If we turn to Le Robert, we find a much more lengthy and complex

entry filled with literary citations. The definitions are differently ordered
and much more complex, which is why only a very simplified version is
given. The very numerous literary citations have also been left out.
Ensemble de moyens, de procds rgls qui tendent une certaine fin
Entirety of means, or regulated procedures which lend themselves to a

certain end
Moyen dobtenir quelque rsultat
Means to obtain some result
Ce que lhomme ajoute la nature; ce qui est artificiel
What man adds to nature, what is artificial
Ensemble de connaissances et de rgles daction dans un domaine
particulier
Entirety of knowledge and rules of action within a given field
In all, Larousse gives five senses, but which have little correspondence
with the English definitions. It does however have colour illustrations and
encyclopaedic entries. Larousse sets out to be a household dictionary and
aims at a much wider audience than its rival. Le Robert has no
illustrations, but plenty of citations. In addition, the dense entries are
potentially hard going, even for a French user, due to their concision and
philosophical outlook. In other words, if you have not been trained in a
certain literary tradition, it is quite impossible to extract information for
everyday usage.
Both these dictionaries are aimed at native French users, but, although
they do not say so, they essentially aim at very different audiences. It may
well be that the Larousse is used more for confirming meanings and for
spell checking, whereas the Le Robert aims at a more erudite university-
educated literary audience. To an English reader, neither seems
particularly clear, but this is normal in that they are not addressed to non-
native users. They are, in theory, addressed to users with a particular
dictionary culture that enables them to cope with this style of entry
writing.
5.2. Summing up dictionary cultures

The study of the entries for culture and art do not seek to be an in-depth
metalexicographical analysis of these words, but serve simply to show the
defining styles, and hence the dictionary cultures, of two publishing
houses. They also provide the means of comparison with popular English
dictionaries. That they are different within each language and between
languages is obvious. The question arises as to whether, in comparing
dictionaries across languages, we are simply trying to compare the
incomparable.
Audiences differ so that a reference dictionary aimed at a native

speaker is obviously different from those aimed at non-native learners of a
language. In addition to this there is in-house culture. The OALD and
COBUILD have a very different approach to defining, the Larousse and
Le Robert differ greatly in audience expectations. In addition to these
factors, there is the question of national culture. Although words share a
common origin, the meaning patterns will have developed in very different
ways. This is clearly the case with culture, and apparently that of art too.
The difference found between monolingual dictionaries in content and
style leads to other problems when we come to bilingual dictionaries. In
the latter case, beneath the simple translation equivalents can lie very
different culturally-based expectations and meaning patterns. Thus, rather
than comparing dictionaries, it might be more profitable to compare
language using corpora, and then build new dictionaries that can handle
these cultural expectations.
6. The way forward for data. Can corpora cope better?

Having looked at art in dictionaries, we can now turn to what corpora
offer so as to see whether not only the picture given in published works
will need updating, but also whether new data sources will require a new
look at user needs and thus new dictionaries. To do this we shall be using
corpora in both French and English so as to carry out a brief pilot study
rather than a full exhaustive analysis of available data.
Since the advent of the COBUILD project in the nineteen eighties,
corpora have revolutionised attitudes towards dictionaries sources, and
also in the representation of that data. The COBUILD outlook introduced
new ways of handling lexical and grammatical data and new ways of
defining (Sinclair 1987) as well as providing analytical methodologies and
opening up new lines of research for the entire corpus linguistics
community.
Dictionaries that make use of corpora reply on large balanced reference
corpora. Standard reference corpora for languages should be built
following clear criteria so as to allow representativity (Sinclair 2005). This
is the case with balanced corpora such as the British National Corpus. This
is fine for studies within a single language, but problems invariably arise
when comparing languages. Two problems can be cited; one is that criteria
will differ from language to language, which means that corpora in
different languages may not be fully comparable (Williams et al.
forthcoming), the other is that not all language have reference corpora.
French, for example, does not.
One way of getting around the representativity issue may be recourse

to internet extracted corpora insofar as these can be very large and
constantly kept up to data. However, these do suffer from numerous
problems as they represent only what is available, which means that vast
amounts of written and oral data, and all electronic texts in closed
archives, are simply not accessible. Another difficulty is that they follow
no real selection procedures, they are literally what is available at a given
time with no means of controlling either the age or source of the data.
Nevertheless, despite these drawbacks, it has been argued that their sheer
size may help in gaining some form of representation by ironing out
variables in spelling and non-native speaker grammatical errors. The
usefulness of size has been argued by Church (2010) who accepts that
these may be the corpora of the future for large-scale generalisations about
language. Nevertheless, insofar as the devil is in the detail, we may yet
come back to well constructed corpora so as to get a closer knowledge of
language, but for the moment those with the power and financial resources
to create large corpora are turning towards internet.
Consequently, in order to carry out this study, two web corpora have
been used, the Ukwac (UK web as corpus) corpus which has 1.565.274
190 running words and its French counterpart, Frwac at 1.628.667.738
running words. These are thus similar in size and also in collection
method, if not selection, procedures. Both are to be found amongst the
selection of corpora proposed for use with Sketch Engine1, which is the
analytical tool adopted here.
What corpus linguistics as expounded by John Sinclair has proven is
that collocation lies at the heart of language. Thus, collocation will be the
main exploratory tool applied here, notably using the theories of
collocational networks and collocational resonance (Williams 1998, 2007,
2008a). These theories draw on a contextualist approach, rather than a
traditional phraseological one that tends to concentrate on formulae
studied out of context. Given that this study is looking at both dictionaries
and corpora, it is importance to consider these two approaches to
collocation as both influence lexicographical production, but in different
ways. The central question remains collocation, but the starting points are
different. However, far from being in opposition, the two approaches can
be seen as clearly complementary.
1 http://www.sketchengine.co.uk/
6.1. Collocation: A tale of two traditions

Historically two main traditions in collocation studies can be found;
lexicographical and contextualist collocation. These have their beginnings
largely in a tradition going back to Palmer (1933) for the former and a
contextualist collocation approach stemming from Firth (1957) for the latter.
If, in corpus linguistics, Firth is generally attributed the fatherhood of
collocation studies, it is because his approach was taken up and developed
by numerous linguistics working in the Sinclarian tradition, whereas the
major work of Palmer, the Second Interim Report on English Collocations
(1933), remained largely inaccessible and, hence, forgotten. Nevertheless,
the two approaches look at similar language data, but not at all from the
same perspective. That words go together is hardly new, without speaking
of collocation as such, Dr Johnson knew that such information would be
vital in his dictionary when he pointed out that:
The syntax of this language is too inconstant to be reduced to rules, and
can only be learned by the distinct consideration of particular words as
they are used by the best authors. Thus, we say according to the present
modes of speech, the soldier died of his wounds, and the sailor perished
with hunger; and every man acquainted with our language would be
offended with a change of these particles, which yet seem originally
assigned by chance, there be no reason to be drawn from language why a
man may not, with equal propriety, be said to die with a wound or perish of
hunger. (Johnson 2008 [1747]: 25)
In the Second Interim Report on English Collocations, Palmer made

the first systematic effort to classify collocations. Most of his categories
would now be termed lexical phrases or fixed expressions and idioms
(Moon 1998) as he lists multiword formulae, largely by syntactic criteria.
He defines collocation as:
a succession of two or more words that must be learnt as an integral whole
and not pieced together from its component parts.
Although Palmers book largely disappeared from circulation, it has

been much quoted and his ideas greatly inspired the developing
phraseological schools, notably in central and eastern Europe. His ideas
certainly found a place in Hornbys Oxford Advanced Learners
Dictionary, first published in 1949. His ideas also helped shape a
phraseological tradition developed by Hausmann and others who
privileged syntactic criteria in the locating and listing of collocations for
dictionary usage. Another tradition developed in Russia and lead to Igor
Meluks Thorie Sens Texte and the lexical functions, that include
collocation. The latter breaks free of simple syntactic patterning to discuss
the semantic roles played by collocations.
It could be said that the Palmerian phraseological tradition represents
collocation as a static phenomenon in that collocations are found, either in
texts or by intuition, and described. There is a tendency to seek what is
fixed and invariable, rather than the everyday wealth of collocation found
in corpora. Apart from Meluks lexical functions, little attempt is made
to go beyond classifying through formal linguistic criteria. On the other
hand, with Firth and the contextualist tradition, we have a much more
dynamic approach based on the key notion that You shall know a word
by the company it keeps (Firth 1957).
The Firthian approach places collocation and meaning firmly within
context. Outside of context there can be no real meaning as words do not
have meaning, meanings have words! (op.cit.).
Firths writings were largely literary in outlook, and have indeed
inspired the stylistics analyses developed by Louw (1993, 2008 [2000]) in
semantic prosody and other analyses. However, Firths insights were taken
up and adapted to computer analysis of corpora by John Sinclair, thereby
founding an entirely new approach to collocation. Disarmingly simple to
read, but extremely profound in its repercussions on language studies,
Sinclairs Corpus, Concordance, Collocation (1991) is probably by far the
most important work in modern language studies, placing as it does
collocation at the centre of language.
Very many important studies have stemmed from Sinclairs insights, in
addition to semantic prosody, Hoeys notion of lexical priming (2005)
which seeks to explain how we combine words to express thought, and
also how we learn language to start with can also be cited as bringing to
the fore fundamental questions about language. In many ways, primings
are akin to the norms and exploitations described by Hanks (forthcoming)
in a revolutionary new approach to language and dictionary building.
Sinclairian notions of collocation are also the basis of the two approaches
used in this study; collocational Networks as the widening lexical
environment of lexical items and collocational resonance, which describes
the transfer of meaning from one textual environment to another. These
two methodologies have been brought together in experimental dictionary
building in the form of organic dictionaries. The aim of organic dictionary
building (Williams and Millon 2009) is to bring the phraseological and
contextualist traditions together so that collocational networks can be used
to explore data and provide a means for for headword extraction and
navigation in a dictionary in an attempt to overcome the limits of
alphabetisation. Networks provide a means of applying dynamic

collocation and preparing the ground for the phraseological knowledge to
be included in the dictionary.
7. The corpus picture. What is art?

The first step will be to build a local network for art from the Ukwac
corpus. This is done by using the statistical collocations using a word
sketch. As can be seen in figure one, there are aspects of art and related
multiword units that did not appear in the dictionaries discussed earlier.
Figure 1: Modifiers of art in UKwac.
At a first level, we can see a series of lexical units that on the right-
hand side are easy to enter in a dictionary in alphabetical format, provided
we get over the dispersal problem, and on the left, those units which will
require some other form of anchoring. In addition, we have the multiword
unit martial art(s), which do not fall under the creative functions seen so
far. At a second level, each of these collocates could be used to start a
network leading to en enriched lexicon. What are the collocates of martial,
visual etc.? How do these link with other words in the growing headword
list? This is very much the basis of an organic dictionary. One problem
will be the effects of lemmatisation which makes it necessary to look at
separate networks for the singular and the plural forms.
Table 1: Immediate collocates of art and arts.

Art museum Arts fine
works centre
gallery martial
fine visual
contemporary crafts
martial sciences
Some collocates will be common to both singular and plural forms,

thus we talk of martial arts in general, but also a martial art. We also have
a combined form with arts and crafts, a formula found in the English
dictionaries to describe a particular movement. Art gallery, art historian
and the fine arts were not found in the dictionaries consulted, which means
that these might need enriching. It can be noted that the definite article that
appears with fine arts needs to be included as it clearly designates a
particulate grouping of art types. This is interesting in itself, but is even
more so when we look at the French corpus using the same methodology
and compare results (tables three and four).
Table 2: Immediate collocates of art in English and in French.
Art museum Art contemporain
works plastiques
gallery histoire
fine martiaux
contemporary oeuvres
martial muses
Table 3: Immediate collocates of arts in English and in French.

Arts fine Arts plastiques
centre martiaux
martial visuels
visual mtiers
crafts beaux
sciences dcoratifs
If we now start linking the findings from the English and French
corpora, a number of units that are apparently easily translated can be
found (Table 4). Thus, in bringing together the data from two different
datasets, we have not only enriched two monolingual dictionaries, but also
built the basis of a bilingual one.
Table 4: Simple translation equivalents.
Fine arts Beaux arts

Martial arts Arts martiaux
Arts and crafts Arts et mtiers
Visual arts Arts visuel
Art works Oeuvres dart
... ...
However, as with culture, this simple picture is too simple. Behind

each translation equivalence lies significant cultural variations in
interpretation. We are not necessarily discussing the same thing.
We can start with the apparently odd man out in table four, martial
arts. This is a case of agreement, on the whole martial arts refers to
Japanese combat skills that have become popular sports in the west. The
underlying element is the notion of skill, rather than human creativity, skill
at potentially neutralising other humans. The interesting point is that in our
western culture, we have similar traditions of combat skills going back to
ancient Greek, providing the inspiration for the Olympic games. Agreement
between French and English on martial arts comes about because the
concept is of relatively recent in Western Europe.
Another apparently simple translation equivalent is arts and crafts / arts
et mtiers. These both refers to skills, but artistic skills in producing
beautiful objects or buildings. This is where priming comes in to play. In
English, arts and crafts primes movement as collocate, which in turn
conjures up images of William Morris and the architectural, decorative
elements and furniture associated with this circle. This was renewal of the
the notion of craftsmanship, amongst which book binding and carpentry
were included. In French, arts et mtiers refers to two entities: a museum
and a prestigious engineering school. In the first case, the term collocates
with Muse, and concerns the museum that houses a collection of
scientific instruments belonging to the Conservatoire National des Arts et
Mtiers (National Conservatory of Arts and Industry). This conservatoire
pre-dates the Arts and Crafts movement, and also has very different
origins and terms of reference. The second primed reference is to the

engineering school and refers directly to where a given engineer was
trained. The full name of the institution was the cole nationale
suprieure darts et mtiers, it is now called Arts et Mtiers ParisTech, but
to most French people, it is still Arts et Mtiers. The skills of fine furniture
making and carpentry do not enter under their terms of reference as the
school trains scientists and engineers. Simple translation, but totally
different terms of reference.
The Fine Arts / Beaux arts formulae brings us fully to human
creativity. Fine Art concerns the creation of objects that serve only for
aesthetic appreciation and require visual appreciation, hence visual art as
another related term. Beaux Arts, like Arts et Mtiers tends to collocate
with a higher education institution, the cole Nationale Suprieur des
Beaux Arts, but also to large municipal art galleries. Part of what is taught
in the Beaux arts covers aspects of Arts and Crafts, but by no means all.
Once again, surface similarity leads to different concepts.
The corpus provides vital information as to both similarity and
differences in usage. This information can then find its way into a
bilingual dictionary that goes beyond simple translation equivalents. A
corpus-based dictionary must show translation equivalents, but, to be truly
usable, these require supplementing with a lot of cultural and
encyclopaedic information.
8. The way forward

So how far have we come and what is left to be done? So far we have seen
the advantages and drawbacks of paper dictionaries and also what the use
of corpora can bring. We now need to see how new technological and the
accumulated knowledge of centuries of dictionary making can be
harnessed to take the art and craft of lexicography forward without
sacrificing its values.
By having a corpus based dictionary, we have removed some of the
problems encountered earlier in terms of missing data and updating senses
in line with current usage. Defining traditions and cultural expectations
behind what we expect from a dictionaries still differ, but we now do have
a common base from which to build, one that is based on reality of usage
and frequency of use. We have also a means not only of enriching a
lexicon, but a tool to go beyond alphabetical organisation and the artificial
groupings into imposed semantic categories. We have also found a means
for comparing usage across languages and to locate real translation
equivalents.
There remains however a problem, one that the use of comparative

corpora has clearly shown. How can we be certain that the associated
meanings and prosodies are the same in each language?
The answer is that we cannot. If we have different cultural expectations
and backgrounds, we also impose different meanings, that is what cultural
and language variety is about; a wealth of experience. Thus, if we cannot
simply translate, we can explain. Prototypes are one tool to allow
comparison, another one to come from the Sinclairian toolbox is the
bridge dictionary, a dictionary designed to bridge gaps in understanding.
Bridge dictionaries (Williams 2008b) were a means to bridge the gap
between languages by using the COBUILD dictionary as a hub. The idea
is simple, a full sentence definition provides an understandable sentence
explaining a meaning. The sentence can thus be translated as shown in the
examples below for nail.
English
(1) A nail is a small piece of metal with a sharp end which you hit with a
hammer in order to push it in to something.
Portuguese
COUNT N A nail e uma pequena haste de metal com um lado pontiagudo
ena qual se bate com um martelo para crava-la em algo. Veja a figura
Czech
(1) Nail je malykousek kovu se s picatym koncem, QD NWHU\ XKRG PH
klavidem,abychom ho do neceho zarazili.
Now imagine that we build a dictionary definition in the same way for
clou (nail) in French, and then translate it. In this way we go beyond
simply giving a list of words in the lexicon, we can endeavour to show
how they can be used to give meanings in context. With such an approach,
the real primings and expectations can be made clear showing the
similarities and differences between, for example, fine arts and beaux arts,
and all the other apparently simple equivalences that make up an encoding
oriented bilingual dictionary.
9. Conclusion
Our starting point was the dictionary, essential reference tools that we
have grown up with and learned to love. Being so close, we have not seen
them grow old with a need of being rejuvenated without losing their soul.
Dictionaries provide a wealth of knowledge, and that knowledge is largely
cultural, so it is vital that users have the means to access this information
and that it is kept up to date.
Dictionaries are human artefacts, so they vary enormously. There are

no bad big commercial dictionaries, but they are not necessarily adapted to
all situations. A first step in rethinking dictionaries is to give users the
means to judge and draw the information they seek from the best source
for their immediate need. The biggest challenge is to go how to go further
in creating dictionaries for the 21st century. Paper dictionaries are not
dead, far from it, but due to costs, many publishing houses are likely to
push towards electronic dictionaries. One problem of this will be getting
users to pay when there are free, but not necessarily good, dictionaries on
the web. The difference will come from rethinking dictionaries and
bringing in more of the of the information carried by a corpus.
Organic dictionaries are an attempt to let the corpus speak by building
a word list from statistical significant relationships discovered in the
corpus. This implies using collocational networks for the extraction and
management of lexis, and then using collocational resonance to show
language change through the use of prototypes to manage sense variation.
The Bridge dictionaries were not a commercial success, but they did
provide a unique means to transfer real meanings across language and
across contexts. They were probably simply too early, many breakthrough
require time before there full value is recognised, and lexicography is a
remarkably conservative discipline. In the general rethink, the advantages
of explaining rather than defining may become essential in building new
bilinguals that will give access to the corpus and explained access to the
underlying cultural environments.
Having a general rethink is necessary. English being used as a world
language can give a false impression that the cultural assumptions across
the world are ironed out. Dictionaries are eminently cultural tools that will
have to show the meaning potentials of lexis in different environments.
Beyond definitions of senses, we need to raise awareness of the cultural
assumptions that are hidden within entries and bring forward the primings
and prosodies underlying different Englishes, let alone their equivalences
in other languages. It also means recognising that other languages carry
different assumptions and reaffirming the wealth of language variety. The
dictionaries of both major and lesser-used languages demonstrate the
wealth of human experience, they are a storehouse of the knowledge that
makes us human.
Dictionaries are a vast repository of human knowledge and experience.
Users need to be taught to appreciate dictionaries, and demand more from
them whilst accepting that they do not show reality but simply reflect a
reality, like fine art.
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Appendices
ODE OALD COBUILD MEDAL

Art Art Art Art Art
art archaic X X art
Art Abbrev. X X X
2 entries X X X
Art deco
Art director X X
17 entries 6 entries 4 entries 5 entries
Art form
1 entry 1 entry 2 entries 2 entries
Art gallery X X
Art history X X
Art house
40 entries 29 entries 23 entries 24 entries
Art nouveau
2 entries X 2 entries X
arts and craft X
Arts and X X
Crafts
Movement
Arts council, X X X
the
X 2 entries X 1 entry
Art therapy X X
Appendix 1: A comparative table for art and related words.

TOWARDS A CORPUS-DRIVEN BILINGUAL
ITALIAN-ENGLISH DICTIONARY
OF COLLOCATIONS
BARBARA BERTI AND LAURA PINNAVAIA

(UNIVERSITY OF INSUBRIA, VARESE / UNIVERSITY OF MILAN)
1. Introduction
The way lexical items combine with each other to form natural-sounding
chunks is highly specific to every language and is part of native-speaker
competence. Due to the anisomorphism of the Italian and English
languages, Italian and English collocations often differ, making them a
particularly thorny issue for learners. Whilst the monolingual
lexicographical tools for the retrieval of collocations in the English
language are multifold and exhaustive, Italian learners still prefer to
consult Italian-English bilingual dictionaries, especially for encoding
purposes. Research has shown, however, that Italian-English bilingual
lexicographical resources poorly document collocations from both a
quantitative and qualitative point of view. The aim of this chapter is thus
to present some practical motivations and hypotheses for the compilation
of a corpus-driven bilingual Italian-English dictionary of collocations for
Italian learners of English, accompanied by due thought on the theoretical
aspects and problems it might entail.
2. The need for a bilingual dictionary of collocations

The evidence that words are not combined on the sole basis of syntactic
and semantic rules has been shown by a plethora of studies arisen over the
last decades, especially in the field of corpus linguistics. Indeed, the
existence of recurrent word combinations and patterns typical of every
language is now almost universally acknowledged, and research has tried
to describe the lexical relations that intervene among words. In such a
202 Towards a Bilingual Italian-English Dictionary of Collocations
scenario, it is not surprising that lexical collocations have attracted a great

deal of attention, both at a theoretical and practical level.
Collocations are indeed habitual associations of words that change
from language to language and, therefore, from culture to culture, and
which are responsible for that feeling of naturalness peculiar to native
speech production. This naturalness goes far beyond the boundaries of
grammar, and is strongly dependent on what Sinclair (1991) termed as the
idiom principle, according to which words are not combined singularly but
stored and assembled in larger chunks. Hoey (2005) noted that people rely
on these chunks persistently and that, as a consequence, collocation is a
vastly pervasive characteristic of all languages. Therefore, mastering the
way words combine with each other is an ability that needs to be boosted
when learning a foreign language (Nattinger and DeCarrico 1992, Lewis
2000, Woolard 2000), for it is key not only to participating in a linguistic
event but also in the target culture. Not being able to make the appropriate
lexical choices can lead to misunderstandings and even undermine
communication.
Over the years, many have been the definitions elaborated in an
attempt to capture this multifaceted phenomenon; yet, at present, a fully
shared theory on collocations (one that accounts for the way these lexical
relations come into being and captures their essential features) is scantily
available. However, one of the few characteristics linguists seem to agree
upon is the arbitrariness in the choice of the lexical items that make up a
collocation. In a very often quoted example, Hausmann (1989: 1010)
shows how, despite being synonymous, the adjectives strong and
powerful cannot be used interchangeably with the noun tea: the former,
in fact, is recognised as a natural phrase of English, the latter sounds odd
and unnatural.
Despite some valuable attempts to demonstrate that collocations need
not be arbitrary (Walker 2008, Grossman and Tutin 2007), many scholars
have put forth the idea that there is no logic beyond such recurrent and
significant pairing of two or more words (see for example Hausmann
1985, Siepmann 2006). As a consequence, from a second language
acquisition perspective, it is often impossible to provide students with a
reliable explanation that accounts for lexical items forming a collocation
(Lewis 1997, Woolard 2000) and, above all, with generalisation rules that
can be further applied to similar contexts so as to produce correct (natural)
word combinations.
Whether lexical combinability is subject to any law at all or, on the
contrary, it is dependent on an inextricable series of haphazard linguistic
events that have developed over the course of time, what is certain is that
Barbara Berti and Laura Pinnavaia 203
collocations represent a hurdle for learners of any language and therefore

need addressing. Previous research conducted on learners corpora
(Altenberg and Granger 2001, Nesselhauf 2005) has shown that students
find it hard to cope with collocations and that often L1 interference
prevent them from forming natural word combinations. Indeed, learners
often assemble phrases according to the hypothesis of the transferability
(Bahns 1993: 61) of word combinations from their L1 onto their L2 by
means of a verbatim translation. This way of operating naturally leads to
errors caused by the anisomorphism of two languages. As regards Italian
learners of English, studies carried out by Philip (2007), Martelli (2007),
and Prat Zagrebelsky (2010) have highlighted the fact that also Italian
learners are at a loss when required to produce collocations, especially in
view of the differences in which information in the two languages is
structured and organised.
The linguistic difficulties that collocations give rise to explains why
learners tend to opt for the bilingual dictionary when they have to encode
or decode them. Despite their being advised differently, Italian students
have shown a strong tendency to consult Italian-English bilingual
dictionaries rather than monolingual lexicography (Nuccorini 1988). The
semantic and syntactic transparency of the translational equivalent
typical of the defining strategy of the bilingual dictionary is evidently
preferred to the explanatory phrase that the monolingual dictionary can but
provide. And it is worth noting that this preference is true for learners in
general. Surveys of dictionary use have shown that learners own, use and
like bilingual dictionaries more than monolingual ones (Atkins 1985,
MacFarquhar and Richards 1983, Piotrowski 1989, Rundell 1999,
Scholfield 1999). It is for this reason that the compilation of a bilingual
dictionary of collocations is envisaged as being an optimal lexicographic
support next to the traditional monolingual tool.
Unfortunately, however, Italian-English bilingual lexicography has
failed to keep up monolingual dictionary-making as regards collocations.
In fact, if, on the one hand, many efforts have been put in the design,
update and organisation of monolingual resources with an ever increasing
attention for idiomatic material in general and fixed expressions in
particular, on the other, the theoretical debate on collocations, together
with its practical applications on didactic material, does not seem to have
made it to the Italian soil in terms of a substantial improvement in the
bilingual lexicographic production. Research has shown (Berti 2010) that
the treatment of collocations in some of the most important Italian-English
bilingual dictionaries1 is far from being satisfactory both from a quantitative

and a qualitative point of view and that, furthermore, it has not changed
much over the last fifty years (Berti forth). What is particularly striking is
how poorly documented collocations are in bilingual dictionaries, being
confined to very few examples scattered around entries. What is more is
that the quality of the word combinations included is doubtful in that they
are often closer to plain free combinations than to collocations, thus
proving less useful to Italian learners. Users are, indeed, more likely to
come across the combination to express surprise than to register
surprise, despite the latter being more difficult to form and/or to translate
for an Italian learner.
Problems also arise at the level of the organisation of the entries, which
seems to be overall inconsistent. Collocations and free combinations are
not associated to the entries by means of a general, recognisable, and
consistent criterion which, once understood by the learners, allows them to
orient their lookups in a rational and economical fashion. In a second
language acquisition perspective, the most obvious outcome of this
poverty of linguistic data is that students cannot safely rely on bilingual
dictionaries when in need of information on the combinatorial properties
of lexical items in their target language, neither for encoding nor for
decoding purposes.
For the above mentioned reasons, it is felt that Italian learners of
English are in need of a specific resource that can guide them towards a
more natural input and output of collocations. The novelty of a English-
Italian bilingual dictionary of collocations would thus be in its specificity:
on the one hand, it would specifically deal with lexical collocations
typical of the monolingual dictionary, and on the other it could be
specifically tailored for Italian learners typical of the bilingual
dictionary. The possibility of combining two lexicographic approaches
the content-specificity of the monolingual lexicographic approach with the
user-specificity of the bilingual lexicographic approach is in fact
endorsed by more recent studies (Hartmann 1994, Laufer and Hadar 1997)
that demonstrate that bilingualised versions of monolingual dictionaries
best cater to individual preferences (Laufer and Levitzky-Aviad 2006:
137). It stems from a more modern lexicographic principle whereby the
main focus of the lexicographic product shifts from the target language
and an ideal foreign learner to the target language and a specific mother-
tongue speaker.
1
The dictionaries taken into examination were Oxford Paravia 2008, Garzanti
Hazon 2008 and Zanichelli 2007.
With the present project, then, the view that lexicographic material
should be designed for and around learners of different mother tongues is
embraced. In our case it concerns Italian mother-tongue speakers. The aim
is to construct a tool which will allow Italian speakers to retrieve as many
English collocations as is technically necessary and possible and be
provided with as much syntactic, semantic and pragmatic information as is
deemed useful, through translational equivalents and examples of use.
3. Methodological problems in identifying collocations

The first issue to tackle when planning to compile a bilingual dictionary of
collocations concerns the definition of the term collocation itself. Indeed,
anyone who has ever dealt even minimally with this topic is aware of
the entangled web of theoretical definitions and approaches that has
developed around this concept over the years. Almost every scholar that
has approached the topic has come up with their own personal definition
(Nesselhauf 2005) and, furthermore, the same terms have often been
employed to refer to different concepts, thus creating even more confusion.
However, in order for a lexicographic tool to be consistent and usable,
a guiding principle that provides sound guidelines on what must be
included is essential. Yet, given that lexicography has a strong practical
nature owing to its aims and target, theoretical rigour need not be followed
too strictly as it often has to compromise with the needs of real users.
Thus, we shall aim for a flexible definition that should be functional for
Italian learners of English. In other words, theoretical consistency comes
second to practical usefulness.
Within the vast theoretical panorama, collocations have been identified
according to two principle approaches: a corpus-based approach and a
phraseological one. The difference between these two is very profound.
The term collocation in fact refers to two different sets of items
displaying different characteristics.
According to the former, collocation is any statistically relevant word
combination that can be extracted by means of a software from a large
corpus of texts over a certain span of words. The criteria that define the
significance of a word combination are based on the frequency of co-
occurrence of two lexical items and/or on their likelihood of being found
in each others proximity. This way of automatically extracting
collocations from a text database is largely inclusive in that it does not
take semantics into account; therefore, the list of collocations associated to
a given node word is very heterogeneous and includes word combinations
of different kinds.
The second approach, instead, is based on more rigid, but also more
subjective, criteria. In fact, collocation is not regarded as a merely
statistical phenomenon, but rather as a highly exclusive lexical and
semantic one. In order for a word combination to be considered as a
collocation, rigid criteria must be met, among which are semantic opacity,
fixedness and compositionality. Collocations are often located on a cline
that ranges from free combinations, which are loose, compositional, and
transparent word combinations put together solely by means of rules of
syntax and semantics, and idioms, which, on the contrary, are opaque,
fixed, and non compositional expressions.
A rather banal yet effective example that well captures the core
difference between the two approaches is the reference to the combination
to drink tea. According to its high frequency of occurrence in a corpus, it
would most certainly be registered as a collocation by corpus linguists,
however, according to the criteria expressed by phraseologists, it would be
labelled as a free combination. In a nutshell, it can be claimed that the
collocations picked out of a corpus by means of statistical tools
correspond, by and large, to the sum of the collocations and the free
combinations selected through a phraseological approach. Evidently, from
a dictionary-making perspective, this difference has massive consequences
on the kind of material that is included in a lexicographic resource: an all-
embracing class of frequent word combinations as opposed to a group of
less predictable ones.
The issue of predictability is indeed one of paramount importance. As
noted by Hausmann (1985: 120) and Benson (1989: 3), a great deal of
predictable, banal and trivial word combinations succeed in making their
way into dictionaries, even in dictionaries of collocations, as can be easily
verified through a random lookup. Evidently, since the amount of
information contained in a dictionary has to undergo strict limitations of
space, it is essential that a hierarchy in the kind of material provided be
applied. It should, therefore, be assessed whether banal collocations (or
free combinations, as phraseologists denominate them) however frequent
they might be are to be included at the expense of more semantically
and/or contrastively relevant combinations.
This is evidently not a simple task for predictability also depends on
ones first language and on the extent to which L1 and L2 are compatible
or follow the same lexical patterns. For example, the combination to take
a shower is rendered by means of the same lexical items in French; as a
consequence, for learners of this mother tongue, to take a shower should
sound like a very natural translation of the expression in their own native
language (prendre une douche). On the contrary, for an Italian learner of
English, the lexical pairing is far less predictable as the Italian counterpart
is fare una doccia, where the function of the verb to take is performed by
the verb to make (or to do). Thus, the issue of predictability strongly
connected to the concept of what is more useful for dictionary users only
partially depends on the intrinsic immediateness of putting two lexical
items together on the basis of the rules of syntax and semantics. In fact, it
is also connected to a large extent to the similarity of the collocations in
the two languages. These culture-bound, language-specific lexical
peculiarities ought to be taken into account when compiling a dictionary
and this can only be done having a specific linguistic community in mind.
Returning to the question of what approach to follow, pros and cons
must be carefully evaluated. On the one hand, a statistical-based
standpoint allows for the automatic extraction of relevant word
combination and is therefore more convenient in terms of time. However,
the collocations picked out of a corpus might not necessarily be all very
relevant. On the contrary, collocations selected according to
phraseological criteria are more salient yet also more time consuming to
determine.
The need to choose between these two approaches could, however, be
overcome if a synergic approach integrating the strengths of both
approaches were pursued. In fact, if, on the one hand, frequency is crucial
in the process of transforming an occasional word combination into a
collocation, it is also true that some word combinations seem to be
semantically more relevant than others, especially in a contrastive
perspective. The extraction of collocations could thus be hypothesised in
two steps: the first by means of statistical tools in order to retrieve a first
large set of collocations; the second by a further manual skimming process
based on phraseological and contrastive criteria.
3. The selection of collocations
3.1. A corpus-driven extraction

Granted that the retrieval of collocations should be firmly based on
attested data and that intuitive results would be incomplete and inaccurate
(Stubbs 1995: 249), the nature of such attested data requires some
consideration. First of all, there are two types of official documents that
could be used to extract collocations, those of the elaborated kind, such as
glossaries and dictionaries, and those of the raw kind, such as linguistic
corpora.
As far as the English language is concerned, such typologies of attested

data are numerous and varied. To start with, elaborated material is truly
not lacking. Besides the abundance of English monolingual dictionaries,
both for native speakers and learners, there are many specific dictionaries
that register collocations only, such as the Macmillan Collocations
Dictionary Book, the Oxford Collocations Dictionary for students of
English, The BBI Dictionary of English Word Combinations. These are
dictionaries that have been compiled using large linguistic corpora, and
thus interestingly represent attested data that could be exhaustive and
accurate enough for the extraction of collocations. As thorough and
updated as these dictionaries might be, no serious lexicographer can
however nowadays base his/her work purely on existent material. The
need to consult raw material is also of prime importance. Not only does it
satisfy the lexicographers impulse to carry out his/her own research, but
also enables each work produced to have its distinctive character and
hopefully be an improvement upon earlier models.
Linguistic corpora representative of the general English language are
also multifold. Leaving aside the diachronic ones (for example, the
Helsinki Corpus and the Brown Corpus), some of the more significant
synchronic ones comprise the International Corpus of English, the British
National Corpus, the Bank of English, and UKWac. There is therefore
much raw material to consult and from which to select English
collocations.
As far as the Italian language is concerned, elaborate and raw material
is less copious. Not only are there fewer Italian monolingual dictionaries
for native speakers and learners than there are English dictionaries, even
less replete is the market of Italian dictionaries of collocations. To our
knowledge, only two have been compiled. One is the online corpus-based
Dictionary of Italian Collocations, recently compiled by Spina (2010) and
addressed to foreign students of Italian. The other is the non corpus-based
Dizionario delle Combinazioni Lessicali compiled and published by
Francesco Urz in 2009. As for corpora, the general Italian language is
essentially represented by two significant corpora, the CORIS CODIS and
ItWac. The former is an online corpus of written texts containing 120
million words, the latter is a much larger online corpus of about 2 billion
words constructed by crawling the .it Internet domain.
Having briefly accounted for the texts that attest English and Italian
word combinations in the respective languages, there is no doubt that
material available for the extraction of English and Italian collocations
amply exists. It exists, however, in different shapes and sizes, and in
different quantities within each language and across the two languages.
While in theoretical terms, any lexicographical project should be grounded

upon all material available, in practical terms it would be impossible. A
more feasible enterprise could instead primarily focus on a selection of
corpora. To carry out a completely new corpus-driven research for the
extraction of collocations, successively supported by dictionary dataif
needs be, might indeed be an interesting solution, especially in the light of
disappointing recent research results carried out upon the treatment of
collocations in some learners dictionaries (Walker 2009).
While for the Italian language there is essentially only one large
complete and general corpus (ItWac), it has been seen that for the English
language many more general reference corpora are available. Discarding
the British National Corpus, which is a closed corpus (dated 1964-1994),
and the International Corpus of English (GB version), which is a fairly
small corpus (1 million words), the other two monitor corpora, the Bank of
English and UKWac, are both large (the former is made up of about 555
million words, while the latter is even bigger, made up of 2 billion words)
and accessible online (the former at wordbanks online, the latter at
http://www.sketchengine.co.uk/). The use of both corpora for the
extraction of English collocations would however undermine the
extraction of Italian collocations. To use the two comparable ItWac and
Ukwac corpora would instead make much more sense.
The advantage of using the ItWac and UKWac corpora is that they are
managed by the same tool, the Sketch Engine2. This instrument allows
researchers to obtain corpus-based summaries of a words grammatical
and collocational behaviour (Kilgariff et al. 2004: 105). Being detailed
pictures of the combinatory patterns of words, word sketches clearly
represent the primary information upon which to pursue a quantitative and
qualitative comparative and contrastive analysis of words, cornerstone of
any bilingual lexicographical compilation.
3.2. A bilingual analysis of noun collocates

The word sketch in fact provides a list of collocates for each grammatical
relation any word participates in. For example, for the noun, verbs, other
nouns, adjectives, prepositions and prepositional objects are all presented
in different lists. Such word sketches are a valid starting point for
contrastive analyses of pairs of words in different languages. The type and
frequency of collocates that node words have in one language and the
2
For a description and evalutation of the corpora ItWac and UKWac see Baroni et
al. (2011).
other should help to guide us when establishing what to include and what
not to include in the dictionary. From the statistical information held
within such word sketches it is possible to gain an idea of the lexical
patterns that recur most frequently in each language. If these recurring
patterns are moreover syntactically and semantically different across the
two languages as the corpus contexts in which the node word and its
collocate co-occur will show then they instantly become material for
inclusion.
The point of following a bilingual or contrastive methodology in
creating a dictionary of collocations is in fact that of being able to
distinguish what is relevant and what is not relevant for the learner. Lists
of collocations readily used in the one language are already provided in
monolingual dictionaries for learners. There is no need to reiterate this
monolingual methodology. On the contrary, by means of a contrastive
metalexicographic approach, many of the nicer sense distinctions in one
language [] come to light against the background of another language
(Siepmann 2006: 18). It is these sense distinctions and their equivalents
that a bilingual dictionary of collocations should give priority to, fostering
as is customary among language teachers the employment of both
types of dictionaries, monolingual and bilingual.
The way in which a contrastive analysis for collocations might be
carried out is following an onomasiological approach to language
classification. Instead of starting from collocations themselves, it could be
easier and more inclusive to start from concepts. A corpus linguistic
analysis moreover facilitates this type of approach based as it is upon the
search of patterns for single node words. There are after all many words
that represent concepts that are equivalent in more than one language. The
concept and classification of the human body, for instance, is more or less
equivalent in all languages.
If we take the nouns that represent the main parts of the human body,
equivalents in Italian and English are evident: braccio / arm; orecchio /
ear; occhio / eye; faccia / face; piede / foot; mano / hand; gamba /
leg; bocca / mouth; naso / nose; spalla / shoulder. What is
particularly interesting is that these words not only share literal meanings,
but metaphoric ones too. Owing to the fact that they refer to a human
phenomenon, they also carry connotational values that might indeed be
considered universal. In fact, besides indicating the upper limb, both
braccio and arm are used to refer to natural elements, concrete objects,
entities. They are also used as a synonym of strength, power, control,
authority. They also appear in metaphoric expressions that are motivated
by gestural language. That said, even though the metaphoric scope of the
pair is equivalent, the collocates used to express the similar concepts are
not always the same in the two languages. It is the similarities and the
differences between the syntactic and the semantic patterns of equivalent
words in English and Italian that have to be comprehended before any
lexicographical compilation of collocations can commence.
Having undertaken a close corpus-driven syntactic and semantic
analysis on Italian and English body part equivalents appearing in the
Sketch Engine corpora, some significant exemplifying results regarding
the similar and different collocates of the metaphoric scope of braccio and
arm are worth reporting.
3.2.1. The collocates of braccio and arm in metaphorical expressions

regarding nature
When braccio and arm metaphorically represent natural elements,

concrete objects, entities, many are the lexical collocations and meanings
that are equivalent. Equivalence can be found, for example, when braccio
and arm attribute anthropomorphic characteristics to nature, such as the
sea / mare or the river / fiume:
(1a) Ma anche in questo periodo, lAustralia continuava a rimanere
isolata anche da un braccio di mare3 largo solo una trentina di miglia.
(#22063917)
(1b) But in this case, good reasons can be assigned for believing that this
valley was formerly occupied by an arm of the sea. (NB1-020426)
(2a) Un braccio di fiume scorreva lungo uno stretto e profondo burrone

che la corrente aveva scavato nella roccia tenera. (#1855680606)
(2b) Aragorn led them to the right arm of the River. (BB-fM042804)
Similarly, when braccio and arm refer to machinery, collocates are

also equivalent: il braccio della gru / the arm of the crane, braccio
meccanico/robotico / robotic arm. Collocational equivalence also exists
when the abstract idea of death is expressed, as in the case of braccio della
morte / arm of death:
(3a) Cos Kalevipoeg cap che Linda dormiva serena nelle braccia della
morte.(#49959685)
(3b) Then she jumped off the balcony into the open arms of death.(BU-
aM871322)
3
All the italics in this section is ours.
However when in Italian il braccio della morte expresses the area

reserved for prisoners who await execution, this more concrete element is
expressed in English as Death Row, and is therefore a totally different
collocation.
3.2.2. The collocates of braccio and arm in metaphorical expressions

regarding authority
As a synonym of strength, power, control, authority, braccio and

arm also often share the same collocates. Braccio del governo is
literally arm of the government, braccio dello stato is arm of the
state, and braccio della legge is the arm of the law, as the
examples below show:
(1a) Le Ong sono un braccio del governo americano e devono
comportarsi come tali.(#251944350)
(1b) One arm of the government attempts to control the technology, but
some ministries and government branches are feverishly working with
domestic and foreign companies to spread the technology to Chinas
every corner. (BUm022068)
(2a) Siamo di fronte ad un altro tentativo di cancellare la distinzione tra il

lavoro di chi deve riferire le notizie e quello degli inquirenti, la
distinzione tra un braccio dello Stato e una libera stampa.
(#1607227598)
(2b) Inevitably, this means that the police are to some extent an arm of
the State. (NB1040923)
(3a) Ma il lungo braccio della legge ti scova anche quaggi.

(#184495567)
(3b) The long arm of the law may also catch up with Bob Malcolm.
(NB1041122)
Despite this congruence, corpus evidence also shows that while the
collocations arm of coincidence and arm of chance are frequent in
English, no such equivalents seem to occur in Italian:
(4) There are moments when the long arm of coincidence seems to stretch
pretty far in 21 Grams. (NC1031128)
(5) It just went to prove that in the world he inhabited it was not the
obvious one had to guard against, but the long arm of chance. (BB-
aM89-312)
There are in fact other differences in the way braccio and arm
collocate as regards power, strength, and control. A major difference
concerns the frequently used Italian metaphoric expression braccio di
ferro that translates into English as arm wrestle:
(6a) Il decreto legge Urbani contro la pirateria internet rischia di
provocare un braccio di ferro tra maggioranza ed opposizione al
Senato. (#1055310)
(6b) The industrys big players gear up for a month of political arm
wrestling. (NC1030606)
Also different are the expressions il braccio destro and right-hand

man:
(7a) Ma chi Abu Musab Al Zarkawi, luomo sul quale pende una taglia
di 25 milioni di dollari, pianificatore di attentati e di sequestri, e
soprattutto braccio destro di Osama Bin Laden? (#15107327)
(7b) More important, he was Todd 's right-hand man; loyal to a fault.
(BBM012078)
Compared to the Italian collocation, the English uses the term

hand instead of braccio (arm) and adds the explicatory term
man that is implicit in Italian.
Similarly, the Italian expression braccio armato is rendered in
English by another noun that is not arm but wing, as in armed
wing:
(8a) La brigata al-Badr il braccio armato del Consiglio supremo per la
rivoluzione islamica in Iraq. (#12726960)
(8b) The FMLN had agreed to disband the armed wing of their
organization. (BB-aM941320)
3.2.3. The collocates of braccio and arm in metaphorical

expressions motivated by gestures
Lastly, in metaphoric expressions that are motivated by gestural language,

English and Italian share two collocations that are half-way between the
literal and metaphorical: torcere il braccio equals to twist ones arm and
a braccia aperte is the same as with open arms:
(1a) Scopriamo cos che Blair e Bush stavano compromettendo lintero
processo democratico delle Nazioni unite, torcevano il braccio a paesi
sovrani, agivano al di fuori delle leggi internazionali. (#793997240)
(1b) I will twist the arms of the other Council members to supply
information for future editions. (EB------188)
(2a) Mi accolsero a braccia aperte, con i pi grandi onori. (#19160860)

(2b) National Park Organization () welcomed our offer of labour with
open arms. (BB-Zm941170)
However, while the literal expressions incrociare le braccia and cross

ones arms, allargare le braccia and stretch out/extend ones arms are the
same in both Italian and English, they are not when intended metaphorically.
The Italian incrociare le braccia, meaning to strike, is expressed by the
English idiom to lay down ones tools, which incidentally is not very
frequent in English use, as testified to by its absence from the corpus on
Word Sketch. Only the Italian expression was found:
(3) La CUB ha condiviso lo sciopero di oggi deciso nelle assemblee
perch sostiene la necessit di incrociare le braccia per fermare i piani
dellazienda. (#7103433)
Neither can the Italian collocation allargare le braccia meaning to

surrender to ones fate be expressed in English with the same metaphor. It
is instead expressed in English by another bodily one, to lose heart.
It is interesting to remember, moreover, that in English the idea of
surrendering to someone can be expressed with the collocation raise ones
hands, which coincides with the Italian alzare le braccia:
(4a) Eppure, ministro Maccanico, lei aveva sempre detto che la
maggioranza sarebbe andata avanti da sola, anche contro il
centrodestra. Ieri avete alzato le braccia. (#120371263)
(4b) Will raised his hands in surrender . -Okay, you win-. (BB--
M012121)
As seen earlier with the pair braccio destro / right-hand man, here
too there is incongruity between the use of the word braccio in Italian, and
hand in English. It is also worth pointing out here that the Italian
syntactic equivalent alzare le mani of the English raise ones hands has
actually the opposite meaning in Italian. It means to hit.
The results of this very brief contrastive analysis of collocations
formed with the nouns braccio and arm are exemplary of the degree of
collocational equivalence between Italian and English within the semantic
field of the human body in its metaphoric use. While such similarities (see
braccio del mare / arm of the sea) are surely interesting, there is no
doubt that even more significant are the collocational differences. Such
differences, we saw, can be syntactic (il braccio destro vs. right-hand
man; il braccio della morte vs. death row) or semantic (alzare le mani
vs. raise ones hands), or else they can be culture bound. In the latter
situation equivalence does not exist, such as arm of coincidence/chance

that has no collocational equivalent in Italian. Only when the similarities
and differences between Italian and English collocations for semantically-
related nouns have been established, will it be possible to start compiling
the dictionary deciding exactly what to include and what to exclude and
how to treat it.
4. The treatment of collocations
4.1. The place of entry

It is therefore not easy at this stage to say with all certainty how the entries
in the bilingual dictionary of collocations will be treated. As was just
mentioned above, it will be necessary to complete the contrastive analysis
first in order to have an idea of how many collocations to include, and
whether similar patterns should be included along with the different ones
which will definitely have to be included. Realistically speaking, not
everything will be includable. This is why crossing the quantitative and
qualitative information held in the corpora is of paramount importance.
Only in this way will it be possible to give priority to the most frequent
Italian and English collocational patterns that differ, and then decide how
many pure equivalences to include too.
As far as the place of entry is concerned, there is still much variety
among lexicographical works. This is because there are two issues at play
that do not necessarily coincide; the first lexicological, the second
lexicographical. Lexicologically speaking, it has been recommended that
collocations be entered in dictionaries under their base form and not
collocate (see Hausmann 1985). For lexicographers, this means
distinguishing the word that in a combination supplies the majority of the
meaning. In the case of Noun + Adj (e.g. il braccio destro) and Verb +
Noun (e.g. alzare il braccio) collocations, the base might indeed be the
noun. In the case of a Noun + Noun collocation (e.g. braccio del mare),
however, Walker (2009: 293) points out that it is not always clear which
of the two nouns supplies the majority of the meaning, and thus is the
base. The distinction of bases and collocates might therefore not always be
so evident. The distinction, moreover, might not always be functional from
a lexicographical point of view.
If learners consult monolingual dictionaries to find collocations they
do not know, it is clear that they will be able to look for them only under
the words or ideas that they know, irrespective of whether these are
collocates or bases. In an experiment Bogaards (1999) in fact showed that
when learners look up collocations they do not give preference to bases or

collocates; they only slightly prefer nouns. This might explain why in
monolingual learners dictionaries the place of entry of collocations is
often under the noun, but also under adjectives, adverbs, and verbs. Thus,
whilst having to respect a lexicological strategy, lexicographers also have
to anticipate users difficulties and the fact that learners do not know
which word to look up to find a desired collocation. This determines the
inconsistency of place of entry so often lamented by researchers.
The advantage of the bilingual dictionary over the monolingual
dictionary is that learners know exactly what they are looking for. In their
own mother tongue learners should instinctively be able to distinguish the
word carrying the major meaning within a combination and look it up to
find the English equivalent. In this dictionary it might therefore be easier
to respect the methodology by which collocations are entered under the
base word of the collocation, avoiding their repetition under more than one
word, which is time-saving and especially space-saving. While it is highly
probable that the majority of bases for the collocations will be nouns, only
after thorough lexicological analyses can all bases be fully determined.
4.2. The definition of collocations

Next to the commercial advantages it would and did bring, the creation of
monolingual learners dictionaries was undoubtedly encouraged by the
inadequacy of bilingual dictionaries for encoding purposes. By providing
series of translational equivalents for one-word items supported by very
few examples of use, bilingual dictionaries were not and still tend not to
be exhaustive enough to guide their users to pick the correct foreign
equivalent. The choices made are in fact usually haphazard and often
wrong. In their aid came the monolingual learners dictionaries which can
now contextualize the meaning and use of each translational equivalent
retrieved from the bilingual dictionary.
In compiling a bilingual dictionary of collocations we hope to offer
this synergy in one tool. That does not obviously mean that general and
specific monolingual learners dictionaries should no longer be consulted.
Far from it, it is our belief that language learners need to continue
consulting monolingual collocation dictionaries, especially for decoding
purposes. For encoding purposes, however, we contend that the bilingual
dictionary of Italian and English collocations might be sufficient.
This is so for two reasons principally. The first depends on the nature
of the subject matter being treated. Unlike single word items that do not
have one-to-one equivalents in a foreign language, collocations on the
whole do (Siepmann 2006: 32). This means that users will not have to sift
through series of translational equivalents to stumble upon the correct one,
but will be offered one definite equivalent for each collocation. The
second hinges upon the structure of the dictionary itself which, being
corpus-driven, will, firstly, provide the most frequent and thus most
suitable translational equivalent for each collocation included, and
secondly will support its definition with an appropriate and real-life
example of use. In this lexicological and lexicographic approach, this
dictionary will be very similar to the way monolingual dictionaries are
compiled and definitions organized.
Judging by the short exemplary contrastive analysis illustrated above,
English definitions for Italian collocations should take into consideration
at least three situations. The situation of pure syntactic and semantic
equivalence; the situation of partial equivalence, with either syntactic
and/or semantic differences; and the situation of complete non-equivalence.
In the case of pure equivalence should it be decided that such
collocations are included in the dictionary it might be enough to supply
the translational equivalent only. The collocation il/un braccio del mare
could, for example, be simple defined as an/the arm of the sea without
including an example of use. It might be useful to add an explanatory
phrase to point out that the collocations in the two languages are exactly
the same, but certainly not indispensable.
In the case of partial equivalence, it would certainly be more helpful to
support the translational equivalent with a suitable example of use taken
from the corpus. For the collocation alzare le braccia, for example, next to
the equivalent raise ones hands, one would have to add an illustrative
sentence like Will raised his hands in surrender. - Okay, you win. A
metalexicographic explanation, pointing out the syntactic differences,
might also be welcome. This would be especially useful when such
contrasts are particularly conspicuous as in the case of the Italian braccio
della morte and English death row.
In the case of non-equivalence, an explanatory paraphrase is essential.
If a collocation exists in one of the two languages only, the lack of
equivalence has obviously to be explained. If the collocation exists in
Italian but not in English, this need simply be signaled next to the Italian
entry. It is the case of the many culture-bound expressions that
characterize the Italian world and its customs and ideology (for example,
buttare la pasta, bandire un concorso). For encoding purposes, it might be
useful to offer the user a possible suggestion for its translation into
English.
A little more complicated is the situation in which the collocation

exists in English but not in Italian. Not being aware of it in their own
language, users will evidently not look for it in English. If it regards a
frequent and significant collocation in English, it should however be
included in the dictionary. This could be done in two ways. One
possibility is to include it under an entry with which it is in some way
connected. For example, under the entry braccio della legge/stato whose
translational equivalents in English are arm of the law/state, mention
could be made of the fact that the expressions the arm of
coincidence/chance also exist in English, even though they are missing in
Italian. The other possibility is to include a list of all culture-bound
expressions with explanations in a sort of appendix at the end of the
dictionary. Whatever methodology is embraced, it will be important to
describe and motivate it fully in the front matter of the dictionary.
5. Conclusions
In sum, the hypotheses put forward so far regarding the treatment of
collocations in the Italian-English bilingual dictionary are still very
tentative. We will be able to confirm or refute them with some cognition
only after the lexicological analysis will have been fully completed. What
we are instead certain about is that Italian learners are in need of a
bilingual dictionary in which to be able to find English equivalents for
Italian collocations. It has been claimed that a tool of this kind will allow
learners to improve enormously their production of English, raising their
levels to native-like competence. It is after all an enterprise that is not too
distant from the Bilexicon project ideated and described by Siepmann
(2006). Siepmann (2006: 3) pursues the theoretical aim of providing a
sound basis for the productions of unabridged onomasiological bilingual
dictionaries that focus on collocation. On the practical side, such
dictionaries are to be developed for the language pairs English/French,
English/German, and French/German. Similarly, our enterprise promotes a
new kind of bilingual dictionary that will heavily rely on corpus-driven
data, which will be analysed following a bilingual approach and thus
appropriately selected and presented in a user-friendly and exhaustive
manner.
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AN INNOVATIVE TOOL
FOR AN ALL-INCLUSIVE
SPORTS LANGUAGE DATABASE
ALESSANDRA FAZIO
(UNIVERSITY OF ROME FORO ITALICO)
1. Introduction
The language of sport reflects the complexities between diverse sports
activities. It describes specialised, factual and theoretical competences, an
integral part of different sports theory. In addition, it refers to competences
related to specific textual genres and cultural themes. It concerns the
management of international sporting events, the theory of sport as an
educational process including its social and psychological implications,
and the norms of applied sciences. Finally, it expresses controversial
sports issues, and in particular, the specific juridical language of sport.
Considering the global complexity of this field, we feel that there is a
need for an all-inclusive glossary which would provide an exhaustive
collection of the different concepts representing the whole domain of
intercultural and interdisciplinary sports language. New tools enhancing
successful communication need to be sought and verified. Moreover, we
believe that the sociological aspects which account for a significant part of
the intercultural component in this sector could be further developed.
From a socio-cultural perspective, we agree with McCarthy and
Wengers views and reflections on culture and cultural practices. While
McCarthy (1996) defines culture and cultural practices, Wenger (1998)
assumes that a community of practice involves much more than shared
technical knowledge or skills in a specific domain. Members are involved
in inter-relations throughout the time spent together which gives them a
sense of joint enterprise or identity. A community of practice also needs to
produce a repertoire of shared knowledge and ideas exemplified in
resources such as tools, vocabulary and documents.
224 An Innovative Tool for an All-inclusive Sports Language Database
In this chapter we aim to highlight two directions of analysis through a

contrastive study of the language of sport in both Italian and English. The
first investigates the extensive dimension between the single general
language concepts/terms and their degree of specificity in the field
considered. The second regards the inter-disciplinary nature of the
language of sport.
Generally speaking, extension refers to the lexical set it applies to.
Intension consists of the properties or corresponding characteristics that
are implied by the concept in question. According to Svensn, B. (1993:
120-121),
a concept can be described by specifying its intension and/or extension.
Intension denotes the content of the concept, which can be defined as the
combination of the distinctive features which the concept comprises. [...].
In Sagers words (1997: 24), the range of objects a concept refers to is

called its extension. In addition, Temmerman (2000: 79-81) points out
that
a definition in objectivist traditional terminology is based on the position
the concept has in a concept system. Based on that position, an extensional
definition can also be given (...) whether it is possible to enumerate all
species, which are at the same level of abstraction or all individual objects
belonging to the concept defined.
As an introductory observation and methodological premise, there is a

need to specify that the terminological approach has been used to
investigate the theoretical representation of the whole domain under the
general definition of language of sport.
A database demo from a prototypical glossary is illustrated with its
main functions. An outline of a theoretical and methodological database
model of a possible conceptual structure was investigated. It was applied
to various terminological collections and to different degrees of in-depth
analyses. Indeed, the reference to applied sciences implied a deeper
language insight. A multi-layered approach using additional sociological
and historical components were employed in different theoretical settings,
thus accounting for a variety of perspectives, knowledge, skills,
interconnections and epistemology.
Two case-studies were carried out in order to analyse two different
aspects of the language of sport and diverse methodologies of approach: 1)
the specific language of a sports discipline and 2) the juridical language
applied to sport in an attempt to integrate terminology and the analysis of
corpus linguistics into a database construction. Examples from the two
Alessandra Fazio 225
specific knowledge fields were provided from previously applied

theoretical considerations.
Data was processed in order to outline an all-inclusive LSP database
where it was felt that an automatic extraction of key words in terms of
keyness (significant frequency) and new exploratory techniques of
qualitative research methodology would highlight new professional and
socio-cultural issues. Moreover there is a discussion of further possible
implementation.
2. Global complexity of the language of sport

It is not easy to define the language of sport. As a first observation, it
could be defined as a typical example of the domain of multicultural
knowledge, characterized by a complex and ever-changing structure
reflecting the inner characteristics and connections of sport. According to
Beard (1998: 1-2),
Sport is often associated with words like recreation, leisure, play[...]
but all sport, and especially serious competitive sport, is tied in with
complex systems of human behaviour that we call society.
The complexity of the language of sport is not only the result of

different factual and theoretical competences but also of references to
diverse applied sciences. It reflects complex and varied activities
concerning the description of specialised factual and theoretical
competences that are an integral part of different sports theory referring to
different language topics. Indeed, the language of sport is characterized by
intrinsic and extrinsic components. It is our belief that language should be
standardized if a consistent global interpretation is to be achieved.
Language creativity, although a vital phenomenon, sometimes does
create chaos, especially in the field of sport. It is, therefore, imperative to
formulate uniform standards of reference from term/word to concept,
despite the fact that we are aware that absolute uniformity is not always
feasible,
standardisation is a separate process and consists of users reaching public
agreement (conventional expectations) to adopt a given term for use in
specific circumstances. (Sager 1990: 114)
Intrinsic difficulties lie within the internal dynamics of language: in the

register and the vocabulary, in synonymy and equivalence, in morphology
and word formation; extrinsic difficulties lie in the inter-disciplinary

nature of the specific domain.
The first intrinsic difficulty is due to the variety of registers used,
ranging from the extremely informal and metaphorical to the more formal
scientific or technical; from formal normative registers (such as sports
codes and rules), to the not-so formal, such as sports journalism. The
latter is further complicated by the different text types for example:
television or radio reporting, interviews, sports journals or popular
newspaper articles. In this case, sports journalists or coaches often use
terms that lie outside the official lexicon of the sport. Some of the most
creative usage has been retraced and pointed out by Delahunty (2006) and
a rich variety of typological actualizations has been collected and
explained some familiar sporting metaphors such as level playing field,
move the goalposts, hit the wall.
The presence of quasi-synonyms and a marked overlapping of general
terms assuming highly specific connotations, adds further complexity.
While analysing the specific domain of fencing, we noticed the emergence
of the following lexical patterns: 1) simple terms overlapping with general
terms such as analysis (= ricostruzione dellazione, analisi) or avoidance
(= schivata della stoccata); and/or 2) terms directly borrowed from general
language such as cut (= taglio) without changing meaning; and/or 3)
general terms with different connotations such as martingale (=
martingala), or arrow (= frecciata) or distance (= distanza/misura tra due
avversari); and/or 4) terms borrowed from Italian and/or French for
historical reasons and traditional fencing schools such as flche, pe.
Sometimes equivalence is not easy to find for both languages. For
instance, although we established simultaneous conception and execution
of attack as tempo comune in fencing, the two concepts differed from each
other in the two languages because of the different conceptual structures.
Indeed, in terminological theory, concepts should be ordered according to
a conceptual classification scheme and presented in a systematic structure
(cfr. Sager 1990: 28). This process of concept comparison and systematic
classification between the two languages is not always possible (see also
the examples related to the concepts of time and movement section 4.1). In
English simultaneous conception and execution of attack is a hyponym of
priority of attack which is a complex concept that belongs both to the sub-
area (see section 3.1) actions (a sub-area within the wider area technique)
and to the area rules. This concept has a double connotation both from the
technical and from the judgment/evaluation point of view. In Italian,
instead, tempo comune does not have the double connotation, but refers to
a specific action during the procedure of judgment only. With regard to
recurrence synonymy, we noticed the frequent use of quasi-synonymy, as

seen in the terms match and bout. These terms show that the use of the
borrowed English term match does not correspond to its use in Italian, and
in the specific language of fencing bout has to be used. Therefore, bout
means incontro which is commonly expressed in general language with
the Anglicism match.
Sports lexicon is characterised by factual language rather than cultured
elevated forms. Phrasal verbs are preferred such as to break/breaking
ground, to make/making a hit, to get/getting back on guard instead of
sophisticated/technical forms. In addition, the most frequently used
adjectives/adverbs necessary to describe actions and movements are those
of direction such as backward/s, forward/s, upwards etc., and the use of a
varied and descriptive adjectival composition such as muscle-bound,
record-breaking, fast-moving etc.
The second extrinsic difficulty is due to the inter-disciplinary or
multi-disciplinary nature of sports terms as mentioned above, as well as to
its multi-layered structure. Reference to the various disciplines applied to
sport such as psychology, pedagogy, physiology, anatomy etc. highlights
high objectivity, impersonal elements, high frequency of nominalization
(simple or complex strings), and synthesis with a wider use of passive
forms to describe phenomena resulting in a higher density of scientific
characteristics compared to general texts.
2.1. Intercultural and interdisciplinary components

in the language of sport
Sports language focuses on additional issues related to specific textual
genres as well as to cultural themes. Although there are various definitions
of culture, in McCarthys (1996: 25-26) words, it is diversely many-
layered, and multi-coded. The language and knowledge of sports-related
professions are regarded as communication within a homogenous
discourse community. As a member of a profession, the individual actor
(e.g. trainer, international athlete, sports arbitrator) adopts a discourse
register appropriate in importance and relevance to his professional
identity depending on what is regarded as important. Hence, culture is
seen as a component of knowledge created in relation to others.
[...] knowledge is best conceived and studied as culture, and the various
types of social knowledge communicate and signal social meanings.
(McCarthy 1996: 1).
In this perspective, the focus is on the communication between actors.

Knowledge is considered to be the production of a group of people
connected to each other in some social practice; it is used by them to
understand their behaviour and guide their physical or discursive actions.
We applied the same approach to the specific language of sport, taking
it to be a product of a specific professional practice, bearing in mind that
professional practice is an integral part of our highly specialized global
transnational society. A contrastive analysis in Italian and English was
carried out. We compared both the language used in a specific sports
discipline and the juridical language of sports arbitration practice in
national and international contexts through an analysis of two specific
corpora and the kind of responses received. Concerning specific sports
discipline our corpus consisted of a collection of various sources made up
of specific literature, handbooks and rules of the game. Regarding juridical
language in sport, our corpus consisted of a collection of sports awards
(see section 3).
As briefly mentioned above, according to Wenger (1998), a
community of practice is a group of people who share an interest, a craft,
and/or a profession. The group can evolve naturally because of the
members common interest in a particular domain or area, or it can be
created specifically with the aim of gaining knowledge related to their
specific field. It is through the process of sharing information and
experiences with the group that the members learn from each other, and
have the opportunity to develop personally and professionally. For this
purpose we considered identity as an integral part of a social theory of
learning, closely related to practice, community and meaning. Based on
the assumption that building an identity consists of negotiating the
meanings of our experience of membership in social communities
(Wenger 1998: 145), our analysis did not focus on the dichotomy between
community and the individual, but rather on the process of their inter-
relationship. Through our analysis, we intended to discuss the crucial
issues of belonging to a community in terms of identification and
negotiation. In other words, identification was defined by the meaning a
specific community adopted, while negotiation referred to the
process/interplay in which that meaning was shaped within a given
community and reflected in significantly frequent concepts (such as
doping and international sporting contracts).
Through this analysis we endeavoured to examine crucial concepts and
complex difficulties for this highly specific community. Moreover,
observations on the fairly new issue of doping mentioned above and any
new connotations of the juridical concept of contract within international
sports settings were also analysed. In addition, as new needs and professions
emerged, the interdisciplinary dimension of fields that crossed traditional
boundaries between academic disciplines and schools of thought were also
taken into consideration. Inter-disciplinary activity involved researchers,
students, and teachers in connecting and integrating several academic
schools of thought, professions, or technologies in the pursuit of a common
task, in an attempt to synthesize broad perspectives, knowledge, skills,
interconnections, and epistemology in an educational setting.
3. Aims and methodological procedure

Our purpose was to show a prototypical (English-Italian) glossary of
sports terminology and to establish guidelines for the construction of a
controlled, user-friendly, flexible, open-ended, exhaustive, up-to-date tool.
First of all, an in-depth analysis was carried out on the whole corpus
made up of specific international sports codes, technical codes of different
sports, specific sports-related literature, sports articles, handbooks, do-it-
yourself handbooks, specialized theoretical documentation/publications
for elite sports operators (international elite athletes and coaches). Second,
the entire corpus of items was recorded and its development and changes
in usage throughout history were registered. Modern evolution and new
lexicalization due to up-dating processes and the evolution of both
theoretical and factual elements were listed. Third, a sound logical basic
framework was constructed to detect, check and analyse differences and
similarities between languages.
New language associations arose not only in terms of equivalence
between terms, but also in terms of the relationship between terms and
their related meanings within the hierarchical system.
3.1. Database construction

Investigation involving a comparison of the logical structures of the two
languages was developed. Since the logical structure of English seemed to
offer a better solution to didactic needs in teaching English as a second
language it was decided to initiate our study with this language rather than
with Italian.
The database addressed either students or academic staff involved in
the field of sports sciences. Users were mainly Italian speakers who
needed to understand or translate specific/technical articles or students,
technical writers, translators, journalists/reporters who were not
necessarily experts. Bearing in mind that this tool was addressed to an
heterogeneous group of mainly Italian users, it was decided to use Italian

as the meta-language to facilitate surfing the database/software.
With English as our source language and the starting point of analysis,
we dealt with:
- concept finding and related hierarchical orders (in English),
- categorization and concept definition (in English),
- equivalence and analysis of the target language (in Italian).
We then investigated the relationships between the concepts, expressed

mainly by hyperonymy/hyponymy relationships: first, the hierarchical
order, then expressions of the theoretical basic structure of the collection,
and preference of use / synomymy. Therefore , for example, between the
two synonyms measure and distance, English seemed to prefer distance,
while misura was more frequently used in Italian for historical and cultural
reasons.
An additional challenge was to create a multimedia environment,
where either dynamic (video clip) or static (images) visual aids were
available. An analysis was carried out with the intention of rendering the
hierarchical relationships between terms more explicit, as well as the
knowledge areas/sub-areas they belonged to. Therefore, the sports
terminological database was meant to be a clear, synthetic, and, at the
same time, a highly specialised tool which satisfied the needs and the
demands of the different types of users. This experimental innovative
prototype was based on a possible logical model according to the
ontological structure outlined by Poli (2002), namely the part regarding
the ontological structure of the language of fencing. The example of the
specific sub-domain of fencing is illustrated in Figure 1.
Figure 1: Frame structure of fencing (tree).
The model in Figure 1 was created to help understanding and

reasoning from a logical point of view. According to Poli (2002), the
basic structure of the domain was put together by taking into
consideration the following three dimensions of the domain: external,
internal and mixed. Starting from Polis consideration on the nature
of sport (2002),
the basis of sport is neither medical nor biological but phenomenological.
What truly counts is our experience of movement (running, for example, or
jumping) [...],
the internal dimension concerned information related to any sport

performance, while the external dimension was characterized by a social
nature, concerning the organization, the regulation and the competition
(rules, regulations, associations, tournaments) including the sports
facilities (stadiums, sports arenas, various types of facilities). Mixed
dimensions concerned the multilayer structure of this field when
overlapping with applied sciences (such as, physiology of exercise,
biology, etc.). The external and internal dimensions were categorized
according to traditional logical categories. Indeed, most of the external
items were objects, while the internal ones were processes (events).
Additional categories, (apart from the strictly logical ones needed to
build up the logic frame), were created to highlight a different type of
relationship around a shared logical concept. We tentatively called them
semantic areas and/or sub-areas (see Figure 2 and Figure 7). The function
of these categories was to help users in their search by subject.
An example of area and sub-area application is illustrated in Figure 2.
Each area and sub-area was further developed and pictorially
represented for a deeper level of analysis. For example, Figure 2 shows the
in-depth analysis of the area rule and its related sub-areas.
Finally, the frame structure or model, illustrated in Figures 1 and 2,
had two main functions: 1) to provide a synthetic pictorial representation
of the knowledge field analysed (to show a quick and exhaustive visual
overview of the logical scheme); 2) to control the logical organization of
the relationships among concepts (e.g. the hyperonymy / hyponymy
relationship). The model was sufficiently schematic to provide a
compositional scaffold for an indefinite number of variations and
adaptations and provided the foundation for a knowledge base.
Figure 2: Frame structure of area rule.

3.2. Featuring an all-inclusive sports database

In order to exemplify our hypothesis, an all-inclusive LSP database was
created to make interoperations possible between different sub-languages.
In this chapter, we provided a demonstration of the realization of a
prototype glossary of fencing terms. The following illustration shows the
database homepage from where the main menu accesses the database
(Figure 3).
Figure 3: Database homepage.
Each entry includes a source language part (English), a target language

part (Italian) and a possible Multimedia aid.
Figure 4 shows the entry hit. For each entry/concept, we provide the
English term, its definition, preference of use or synonym (according to
the various degrees of synonymy), and hierarchical relation (expressed by
hyperonymy/hyponymy relationship).
Figure 4: Example of entry: hit.
In this case hit is the hyponym of judging of hit. The various database
functions are circled in red.
Figure 5 shows the Italian equivalent stoccata. Indeed, each entry is
provided with its Italian equivalent, definition, source and type of definition.
Figure 5: Example of Italian equivalent of hit: stoccata.

In Figure 6 we show possible additional multimedia attachments

related to the entry hit (using either a photograph, or a video, or both, or
neither; see also Section 4.1 for an in-depth analysis of the concepts of
time and movement). In this case, it was possible to see three video-clips
related to the different types of hit according to the three conventional
weapons (foil, sabre and pe). To this purpose we selected concepts
related to time and collected and stored an inventory of related videos1.
According to Toran (1992), in fencing these two dimensions of time
(objective and subjective) blend to determine the so-called rhythm =
scelta di tempo. By time we mean when the phrase or the sequence ends.
This is important from the point of view of both the fencer and the judge.
Figure 6: Example of hit multimedia environment.
Therefore videos were provided to show these two different

perspectives. From the fencers point of view, it is useful to show how the
stroke conventions for the three weapons have a different effect on the
technique and the evaluation of the fighting progression of each weapon.
The epe is not a conventional weapon. It does not require a re-
construction of the fencing phrase; indeed, none of the two fencers has an
advantage in starting the action. This approach corresponds to the fencers
1
In the future we intend to add visual static aids such as illustrations or schemes to
further concepts, e.g. to help to represent the piste or field of play.
uncertainty, their higher mental load and their cautiousness to attack.

Although the three actions shown in the video were performed at high
speed, the differences in time/rhythm between the three weapons clearly
emerged from the videos. From the judges point of view, it is even more
important to be able to re-construct the fencing phrase. With regard to
conventional weapons (foil and sabre), the judge has to establish who
attacks first, in order to evaluate the hit/stroke. In effect, during 2007
World Fencing Championship, matches were video-recorded in an attempt
to achieve correct judging and to avoid judges misinterpretations or
mistakes in an athletes performance.
Another function of our prototype database was the search by
subject, shown in Figure 7 below. Its function was to facilitate, but also to
guide database search and information retrieval. For example, it was
possible to sort all terms related to rules of fighting as related to the
conventional weapons (and implicitly to the non-conventional weapon) by
means of the sub-area called conventions. This function was linked to the
main logical frame structure of the database (see Figure 1 and 2 in Section
3.1).
Figure 7: Searching by subject: the example of semantic sub-area conventions.

Figure 8 shows the entry feint, discussed in section 4.1. In the

illustration, the three functions of each entry are circled in red. Each entry
provides the English concept, the Italian equivalent and possible additional
multimedia attachments. In this case, two videos were attached and
submitted to users.
Figure 8: Example of an Entry: feint.
Another example, in Figure 9, shows the concept cadence, which is

illustrated in detail in section 4.1:
Figure 9: Example of an Entry: cadence.
Another function of the database was to show hierarchical relationships

between concepts through hyperonym/hyponym relationships. Here follows
an example of cadence as a hyperonym and its related hyponyms (Figure
10).
Figure 10: Hyperonym cadence and its hyponyms.
4. Two case studies

Featuring an all-inclusive LSP database, we will here discuss some of the
critical points related to two main issues: 1) the logical organization
structure (tree structure) of the language of sport concerning the crucial
concepts of time and movement in fencing terminology and 2) some
observations regarding the juridical language of sport with special
reference to new language entries (doping).
These two issues are discussed within two different sports sub-fields:
the language of a single sports discipline and the juridical language
applied to sport, both of which converge into the database. In these two
case studies we applied two different approaches to research terminological
and corpus analysis, respectively. In particular, in the second a specialised
terminology drawing on socio-cognitive theory, comparing arbitration
codes in Italian and English (Fazio 2008) demonstrated how it is possible
for recent developments, to complement more traditional approaches, by
envisaging terms as units of understanding, (prototypical structures),
rather than forms to be related to concepts. This facilitates the analysis of
intercultural variation; categorisation and the use of the concepts
constitutive of logical and professional identities in arbitration for sports

discourse.
These two case studies were different in that the specific language of a
sports discipline contained lists of categories describing factual elements,
sports theory and references to different applied sciences. Juridical
language applied to sport is concerned with: a) theoretical concepts of law;
b) historical, sociological and cultural references affecting the theory of
law; c) special rules adapting the law to factual sports situations, specific
codes, locations /courts and tribunals, judges/arbitrators.
At this point, a discussion and perhaps a revision of some problems
and difficulties in database construction is necessary revise. In the first
case-study, the specific language of a given sports activity (examples were
taken from the glossary of fencing), focused on problems related to the
representation of two particularly problematic key-concepts as they
implied subjective evaluation and/or perception of facts. These two
concepts, time and movement, were essential to a correct description of the
quality of action.
With regard to the second case-study, the language of sports law, a
very specific field of the juridical language of sport was analysed sports
arbitration. In this analysis a fundamental similarity between the two
languages, Italian and English, was noticed; the recurrent conceptual
difference in the current use of some recently included terms appeared to
be of the same kind as those existing in the core juridical language, for
example, the concept of equity (linked to historical and cultural differences
between juridical systems). Reflections on sports law appeared to be
linked to socio-cultural elements causing language differences in basic
concepts the international sports contract (and its related concepts
arbitration clause, breach of contract, strict liability) and doping.
4.1. Specific terminology of sport: Fencing

We will discuss the terms and concepts of time and movement. Both
concurr to figure out a fighting action phase in fencing, as for example in
response to external variables rhytm/control of action (Toran 1995: 56-
61).
Several sports disciplines as well as fencing use the term/concept of
time to describe the most recent conceptual language acquisitions referring
to tactical or strategic components, derived from diverse applied sciences,
Reference to the contribution made by cognitive psychology in explaining
underlying mental processes connected to actions is recognised (Rossi and
Nougier 1996).
The concept of time in fencing is absolutely fundamental as it is in

many other open skill/combat sports. Generally speaking, time has an
objective reality that can be measured according to a recognised
chronological sequence or a subjective reality influenced by the mental
and emotional mood of the individual. In other words, language is an
extremely synthetic tool. We tried to highlight and focus on this
phenomenological/experience in a specific-language domain.
In the light of the dichotomous value of the concept of time, we
intended to discuss how different channels of communication could be
more effective in understanding concepts and related knowledge transfers.
Objective sequential time and fencing time being difficult and complex
concepts to describe verbally, we found that it was easier and more
helpful to add a video representation to the verbal definition of the concept
not simply a still image, but an image in motion to help the effective
understanding of a complex, but fundamental concept.
Figure 11: Tactics.
As shown in Fig. 11, all the terms/concepts linked and/or strictly

related to time (such as control, intention, cadence/rhythm/tempo and
measure as shown in the sub-domain tactics share the same type of
challenge regarding their position within the logical tree frame.
Nevertheless, the collocation of some terms in fencing must take into
account additional external components: the term conventions is related to
historical and social factors; movement implies a psychological component
of attention since further information has to be processed by the athlete
during the decision making process.
Again time passes an objectively measurable temporal limit to the

advantage of the psychological processes while the athlete processes his
decision, e.g., action planning in response to the opponents behaviour in
order to deceive him/her using the feint technique.
Time and movement converge into action when performing technical,
strategic or tactical behaviours. Feint is the prototypical action in which all
these components play a crucial role in order to deceive and take
advantage of the opponent. In the software, we provide two video-clips
showing the same movement in slow motion and in real speed to better
represent the concept of feint in a training situation (Figure 8)2.
4.2. Juridical language of sport

In sports law discourse the case of arbitration clause/clausola
compromissoria (Greppi and Vellano 2005: 227-232) takes on a highly
specific and binding significance when related to the international sports
contract. It is characterised by a conceptual difference between the two
language frameworks especially in the regulation of athletes transfer
and/or breach of contract.
This second case-study refered to some observations regarding a
contrastive analysis of a highly specific sector of sports law language, i.e.
the language of sports arbitration. Sports jurisdiction is completely
separate from laws regulating general legal theory. It has its own codes,
judges, tribunals and separate lists of offences and related sanctions. A
special language is used to describe the concepts necessary to build a
separate logical theoretical tree. In a previous study (Fazio 2010), we
commented on concepts such as arbitration clause, strict liability, burden
of proof, breach of contract as they are mutually interrelated and clustered
around the core concept of the international sports contract. Other
emerging concepts are strictly related to doping and the concept of
technical infringement. We observed the number of terms describing
concepts and noticed how similar they were to those characterizing general
juridical lexicon. New terminology, however, describes new concepts
typical of a language reflecting a fairly new special branch of juridical
language.
2
Speed is another crucial component, as many sports now are characterized by
extremely high speed actions, although this issue (speed) will not be discussed in
this chapter.
In the analysis of our sports arbitration corpus, we mainly focused on

language differences between international and national arbitration
registers. The main characteristic which emerged regarded the procedural
order in the phase of law application: the operative application phase of
the arbitration clause. It was noticed that in national procedure, the
arbitration clause was a compulsory preliminary pre-requisite to the final
judicial phase. It appeared to have a binding and fairly recurrent power
in its relation to the judicial phase.
Regarding the fairly new issue of doping there is evidence that
scientific and legal implications are currently involved. According to
Greppi and Vellano (2005: 195-202), this concept of categorization
implies a multi-layered structure; it can be summerised into three main
points: the protection and promotion of an athletes health, the promotion
of fairness / fair play, and the promotion of social and sport ethics. In
Miahs (2004: 18) words, a different kind of categorization may be
attempted according to the following characteristics: coercion, unfair play,
pharmacology & health risk, unnatural rule breaking/respect, unearned
advantage, against internal benefits of sport, against the nature of sport.
The successful international diffusion of this term follows a newly
acquired multicultural conceptualization, universally agreed upon and
referring to the illegal practice frequently used by sportsmen of all levels
to assume banned substances in order to enhance their performance. It
would be well worth retracing the language process through which a term
like doping changed its referential environment (originally it meant
taking a narcotic and /or with specific reference to horse racing to
obscure predictions of unexpected race outcomes).
The term entered the Italian language as an Anglicism and was
promptly included in the list of sport terms related to applied sciences with
the updated meaning. Nowadays, doping is accepted and currently used as
the use of a substance an anabolic steroid or erythropoietin) or technique
(blood doping) to illegally improve athletic performance (Webster on-
line, 2011).
The first implicitly codified use of the new conceptualization was
found on the internet texts long after it had been used in international
oral/written documents of all genres, describing this new and fashionable
indulgence despite its illegality.
To conclude, doping is nowadays a crucial issue and has become a
global phenomenon. It is mainly because of the huge problem created by
the emerging science of gene transfer (gene doping) which can enhance an
athletes performance at an almost-impossible-to-detect genetic level. This
phenomenon not only concerns doping or performance enhancing drugs,
but it also concerns legislation; it is strictly interrelated to the concept of

strict liability, offences and rule infringement and the consequent
banning/sanctioning of the athletes continued participation in competitive
sport. A specific sports body, the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA)
was established with an ad hoc Code to provide a basis for World and
National Governing Bodies to adopt rules and regulations concerning the
use of illegal performance enhancing substances in sport arising from the
disciplinary nature of this issue.
5. Conclusion
Our model is by no means definitive or exhaustive; indeed, it is
sufficiently schematic and simple to provide a compositional scaffold for
an indefinite number of variations and adaptations and further
developments. With the perspective of building up an electronic
multimedia database prototype based on a logical model in English and
Italian aimed at a heterogeneous group of users, the possibility of
conveying terminological information through different channels of
communication in a multimedia environment was experimented and
exploited. The example of fencing was well suited to our purpose because
of the particular use of the concepts of time and movement in terms of their
abstract and complex nature. Our future challenge is to create an
innovative and useful tool to facilitate the sharing and/or the acquisition of
knowledge.
From this analysis further features emerged such as inter-cultural and
interdisciplinary elements embodied in the lexical characteristics of the
texts which seem to demonstrate that sports language and sports-related
discourse communities share a highly specific technical-professional
terminology. Moreover, features of a specific professional knowledge
domain seem to extend above and beyond national and linguistic borders.
The final objective of this study was to create a well-structured and
robust database model for the organization and management of sports
terminology and applied sciences (such as medicine, economy, law, etc.
related to sport). It would be available for further development, application
and possible implementation as an on-line resource. In the future, this
analysis could be implemented. From a methodological point of view, a
facet classification could be added and an automatic visualization of a
conceptual structure (tree) could be implemented using different
compatible software available (e.g. Visio3). From the operative point of

view,it is evident that a more in-depth analysis of a theoretical
contribution from the applied sciences (historical, socio-cultural additional
themes) needs developing. A further implementation might be the
exploration of automatic concept extractions by means of new text data
mining techniques, including specifically innovative software such as
Lexico or N-Vivo.
Finally, although we are aware of the constraints that such a technique
and application may imply, we believe that it could be a useful tool
towards bridging the comprehension gaps between cultures by attempting
to explicitly represent reasoning in a specific knowledge domain.
References
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270-283.
. 2008. A preliminary approach to look for logical identity in arbitration
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3
Visio is a graphical and drawing application that helps to visualize, explore, and
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it is possible not only to create data-connected diagrams that display data
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. et al. 1990. A practical Course in Terminology Processing.
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Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
INTERCULTURAL AND IDEOLOGICAL ISSUES
IN LEXICOGRAPHY:
A PROTOTYPE OF A BIOETHICS DICTIONARY
ALESSANDRA VICENTINI
(UNIVERSIT DEGLI STUDI DELLINSUBRIA, VARESE)
KIM GREGO
(UNIVERSIT DEGLI STUDI DI MILANO)
BARBARA BERTI
(UNIVERSIT DEGLI STUDI DELLINSUBRIA, COMO)
PAOLO BELLINI
(UNIVERSIT DEGLI STUDI DELLINSUBRIA, VARESE)
GRAZIA ORIZIO
(UNIVERSIT DEGLI STUDI DI BRESCIA)1
1. Introduction
The current growing influence of bioethical themes on common peoples
life is undeniable, as it affects potentially all citizens in a personal and
direct way. The availability of new tools and technological approaches,
together with the phenomenon of globalisation, has rapidly changed the
forms, the contents, the protagonists, and the role of communication.
1
Research for this chapter has been carried out jointly by the five authors.
Alessandra Vicentini, in particular, is responsible for the lexicographic aspect
(parr. 1, 1.1.2, 2, 4); Kim Grego for the Genre Analysis, Translation Studies and
web-lexicographic perspectives (parr. 1.1.1, 1.1.5, 4.1); Barbara Berti contributed
an overview on Corpus Linguistics (par. 3); Paolo Bellini (par. 1.1.4) and Grazia
Orizio (par. 1.1.3) provided the philosophical and medical backgrounds,
respectively. The general framework and the concluding remarks were elaborated
by the whole team.
248 Intercultural and Ideological Issues in Lexicography
Society as was known up until the mid-20th century is no longer

recognizable as such. Especially over the past two to three decades, the
traditional boundaries between medical science and society have ceased to
be as clean-cut as they used to be and, also due to the acceleration of
information flows, the medical debate has entered our own homes.
The studies produced over the past few years by this interdisciplinary
group (Grego 2008, Vicentini 2008, Grego and Vicentini 2009, Bellini et
al. 2010, Grego and Vicentini forthcoming a and b) have highlighted how
hybridisation may be considered the word of this era, between the past and
the present centuries, between old and new technologies, between
traditional national cultures and the emerging single globalised culture.
Intercultural hybridisation is thus both the background considered in and
the perspective adopted for the research project presented in this chapter.
How so?
1.1. Hybridization
1.1.1. Topic
Starting from the main topic itself bioethics it is apparent how much
thinner and overlapping the limits between medicine and society have now
become: as hinted above, the former has got closer and closer to the latter,
to the point of receiving directions from it, thus contributing to creating a
bi-univocal relationship of exchange of scientific and healthcare information
between users/patients and the political, medical, healthcare, etc. institutions
that emanate it in the first place.
1.1.2. Language and genre

Secondly, all this has not only sped up the access to and the availability of
such information, it has also given rise to phenomena of genre and
language change and hybridisation (suffice it to think of relatively recent,
yet well established, terms such as e-health2 and medicine 2.0, which well
2
The term, testifying to the transformation of medicine in the internet era, was
coined and defined in 2001 by the editor of the Journal of Medical Internet
Research (the leading journal in the field) as: e-health is an emerging field in the
intersection of medical informatics, public health and business, referring to health
services and information delivered or enhanced through the Internet and related
technologies (Eysenbach 2001). Moreover, the double nature of the internet,
between great potentials and risks, poses ethical dilemmas already referred to as
e-health ethics (Eysenbach 2000).
Vicentini, Grego, Berti, Bellini and Orizio 249
represent the new communicative paradigm illustrated above), and

transformed on the one hand the models and modes of dissemination for
medical and healthcare discoveries, as well as all the connected issues,
once only used exclusively or mostly by experts (Swales 1987, 1990,
Bhatia 1993, Sarangi and Roberts 1999, Candlin and Candlin 2002,
Cortese and Riley 2002, Sarangi and Clarke 2002, Garzone and Rudvin
2003, Roberts and Sarangi 2005, Salager-Meyer and Gotti 2006), and now
ever so available to the masses and, on the other hand, the underlying
social and economic drives.
1.1.3. New technologies

Thirdly, the availability of new tools and technologies (i.e. the internet,
web 2.0, social networks, etc.) along with globalisation has rapidly and
deeply affected medical communication: its formats, content, actors and
roles (e.g. Kress and van Leeuwen 2001, 2006, Mooney and Sarangi 2003,
Hesse et al. 2005, Fox and Jones 2009). Healthcare and medical products
and services are now directly available via the web (e.g. drugs, diagnostic
and genetic tests, etc.), while beforehand their access and practice used
(even had) to be mediated by healthcare operators (Orizio et al. 2010); the
web and the other new media have so accelerated the information flow that
the medical debate now enters everybodys home in real time on an almost
daily basis.
1.1.4. Bioethics and philosophy

Fourthly, from a philosophical viewpoint, the technological and
experimental evolution in the biomedical field leads us to reflect on the
fact that man is today more and more able to interfere with the normal
biological processes and on the forces regulating life, its genesis and its
maintenance, to refer just to hybridisation theories. This phrase indicates
the specific phenomenon of the natural fading into the artificial and vice
versa that came into being with the modern scientific revolution. In
particular, it may be observed how the 21st-century technological
civilisation is going to produce, with its ever increasing performative
capacity, a complex set of mixed forms and hybrid elements, constantly
suspended between the natural and the artificial. This techno-scientific
attitude affects man, as well as the environment and all living creatures, so
much so that it is ever so difficult to distinguish clearly between the
natural and the artificial, between the man-made and the non-man-made.
But it is the human body the real objective on which the new technologies
mainly focus, and which will inevitably be subjected to every kind of
experiment. In this framework, to traditional bioethical topics such as

abortion and euthanasia, artificial insemination, reproductive and
therapeutic cloning and all those hybridising practices affecting man and
his genetic pool must be added (see Jonas 1997, Longo 2003, Bellini 2008,
forthcoming, Bellini et al. 2010). It is furthermore well known how these
issues stir substantially very heterogeneous views, with a frequent clash
between secular and pragmatic thought, more open to accepting these
practices, and religious (especially Roman Catholic) thought, which
supports stricter measures on the matter. In this context, bioethics,
conceived as that discipline which provides guidelines for practical
behaviour as regards particularly controversial and debated issues, and
allows users/potential patients to access medical information easily and
comprehensibly, plays a key role, especially in the new relationship
between society and medical science. As well as being relevant from an
academic perspective, it is also significant from the practical viewpoint
both in those professional contexts centred on the doctor-patient
relationship, and daily to orient the social debate on specially sensitive and
thus disputed issues.
1.1.5. Inter-culture
Lastly, all the above points are summed up and brought together by the
new hybridisation at the (inter-)cultural level: when dealing with bioethics,
which concept of bioethics of which culture are we dealing with? The
leading culture in science usually sets the pace, therefore it would be easy
to say it is the Western culture that generally defines bioethics. More than
that, the pace is set in English as the official language of (the leading)
culture and science, and as the worlds current lingua franca (Seidlhofer
2004). However, how can just one culture (and its language), though the
predominant one, rule on something so clearly inter- and even cross-
cultural as human life? On the other hand, it would be useless to deny it
does, and does so according to its own values; but, yet again, cultural
values are shared by some and not by others, just as ideologies are. Then it
is apparent that, when working on bioethics, even if just from a linguistic
perspective, it is hardly possible to build a bioethics (or any, for that
matter) dictionary free from ideologies. Yet this cannot prevent the
lexicographer from seeking to photograph language in and over time by
compiling dictionaries and, in the case of bioethics, this is clear from the
significant number of bioethics dictionaries that were created even
recently in spite of or thanks to certain ideological stances. The question
remains of how much or how little the ideological aspect should count in
building a tool whose potential target user for the so very human-centred
topic, the philosophical implications behind it, the web-based communicative

media, modes and genres, the lingua franca English language is any
new, hybridised citizen of this globalised world. The global, intercultural
hybridisation challenge, at all of these levels, is what this project, limited
to its aims, intends to take on.
2. Background: Bioethics, interculturality

and lexicography
As outlined above, besides its multidisciplinary approach3 and hybrid
character at various levels (e.g. concept, genre, etc.), this project poses a
challenge as regards the cultural perspective. The topic of bioethics itself,
indeed, is a multifaceted one, entailing as it does diverse cultural
dimensions, which are strictly interconnected with ideology and language.
The interdisciplinary groups recent research (see par. 1) has shed light
on the way different healthcare systems, emanating from diverse countries,
and therefore cultures, deploy diverse linguistic and communicative
strategies to reach out to their public/possible patients, especially when
dealing with ethics-related issues. These are by nature particularly debated
and ideologically loaded, an aspect that emerges also from the related
lexicon, which is usually imbued with terms not only pertaining to the
medical field, but also to the social and moral sciences and to legal and
political aspects, thus resulting in complex linguistic hybridisation.
Moreover, though it has been shown that a lexicon of (bio)ethics does
exist in general (Grego and Vicentini forthcoming a), it is clear that
(bio)ethics and its lexicon are culture-bound and, as far as healthcare
communication is concerned, they also depend on the communicative
strategies employed by a given service (public vs. private) and country.
The above clearly points out to the fact that ideological and cultural
perspectives are inseparable when (bio)ethics is at stake, something that is
also reflected in/by the lexicographical tools compiled so far.
This study has taken into account the already existing lexicographic
works on bioethics in terms of macrostructure (compilers, target users,
aims and methodology), and microstructure (single lemmas and their
3
The multidisciplinary team working on the project is made up of researchers,
professors, research fellows and Ph.D. students based at the Universities of Varese
and Milan (Italy). The University of Varese comprises a linguistics and a
philosophy section, while the University of Milan includes a linguistics and a
medicine component.
related definitions). The dictionaries, encyclopaedias and manuals that

have been examined belong to the Italian, British and American bioethics
tradition, as they all stem from Western philosophical thought. In
particular, reference is made to Reich (1978), Duncan et al. (1981 [1977]),
Boyd et al. (1997), Post (2004 [1978]), Lecaldano (2007) and Leone
(2007) as sample lexicographic tools over a short-term diachronic
perspective.
The analysis shows: (a) a juxtaposition of genres (encyclopaedia,
dictionary, encyclopaedic dictionary, manual); (b) a single user-target,
usually a specialist, i.e. a doctor or a philosopher, or an expert in the
bioethics field; (c) a single compiler, normally an expert in the field of
medicine or philosophy, but never of lexicography/linguistics, and
moreover (d) the lack of a scientific methodology in the compilation of the
work. Apart from the last point (d), which will be more specifically
touched upon in par. 4, what stands out from the above corpus is the
intercultural viewpoint emerging from the paratextual material (preface,
introduction, etc.). Though all belonging to a specific, common Western
thought which is also the slant chosen for the prototype object of this
chapter such dictionaries, depending on the country and language variety,
follow different compilation canons and consequently display diverse
macrostructures.
As regards the Italian bioethical tradition (Lecaldano 2007, Leone
2007), the authors are moral philosophers or physicians, basing their
descriptions on a Christian (i.e. Catholic) interpretation and directing their
dictionaries at physicians or specialised, learned readers (e.g. non solo a
chi vive nelle scuole e nelle universit, ma in generale al pubblico colto
del nostro Paese, Lecaldano 2007: v), such as students of philosophy,
medicine and theology (e.g. studenti universitari, dei master, dei corsi di
perfezionamento, delle facolt teologiche, Leone 2007: 6). The British
lexicographic production (Duncan et al. 1981 [1977], Boyd et al. 1997)
highlights that, though being compiled in English, thus a lingua franca, it
directs its works primarily at readers in the UK, in particular for []
members of the medical and allied professions or students in these
disciplines (Duncan et al. 1981 [1977]: Preface) and the contributors to
the volumes are generally physicians. As for the American bioethics
lexicographic publications (Post 2004 [1978], Tubbs 2009), they are
generally written and edited by dedicated specialists of ethics, i.e.
ethicists, who base their views either on religious or traditional principles.
Moreover, the dictionaries analysed are all compiled in the compilers
language, with the exception of Lecaldano (2007), which includes a
multilingual perspective; indeed, though it can be said that bioethics
terminology is generally almost the same within Western cultures, this

dictionary provides translations of the lemmas but not of the definitions
into English, French, Spanish and German (see Lecaldano 2007: v).
Not only are both the inter-cultural/ideological influence and the
hybrid and multidisciplinary nature evident in the works macrostructure,
but they also emerge from their microstructures. Indeed, for each lemma, a
multi-layered definition is provided, which follows a quite recurrent
pattern in all the dictionaries analysed, that is, firstly, a technical/medical
part, then a legal/social section and lastly, though only in some of the
works under scrutiny, a part dedicated to the undergoing debate on
bioethics and/or to the religious implications of each subject. Furthermore,
it is interesting to see how each definition, especially vis--vis the
social/legal connotations, reflects the specific civilization, and therefore
legal/political system, making up the cultural background against which
each work was designed and created. All this can be easily inferred from
the following examples concerning the lemma ABORTION, which,
among the many differences featured, show how diversely the UKs vs.
Italys legislations behave in the bioethics domain:
Abortion.
The termination of a pregnancy, either spontaneously or by intervention

before the fetus reaches viability. In the UK a fetus is legally viable at the
age of 28 weeks from the first day of the last monthly period, but in
keeping with the practice in other countries, steps are now being taken to
reduce the accepted age of viability to a lower level. [] (Duncan et al.
1981 [1977], s.v. Abortion).
Aborto. (ing. abortion; fr. avortement; sp. aborto, ted. Abtreibung)
Il termine si riferisce allinterruzione spontanea o volontaria di una

gravidanza; quella qui in discussione linterruzione volontaria.
Questultima regolata nel nostro Paese dalla legge n. 194 del 1978,
confermata dal referendum del 1981, che consente di interrompere una
gravidanza, nel primo trimestre, quando la sua prosecuzione possa
comportare un pericolo per la salute fisica o psichica della donna, e dopo il
primo trimestre, solo nei casi di minaccia alla vita della donna o di gravi
anomalie e malformazioni del nascituro. Dal punto di vista bioetico il
dibattito molto acceso e la pratica dellaborto stata fatta oggetto di
opposte considerazioni morali. Critici della liceit morale dellaborto sono
principalmente i fautori della SACRALIT () della vita. []
(Lecaldano 2007, s.v. Aborto).
These very brief examples and overview of the past lexicographic

production show how bioethics dictionaries included and include
intercultural and ideological issues at multi-levels due to the complex,
multifaceted nature of the subject itself. The Pro.bio.dic. tool aims at
bringing them together in a comprehensive, novel template.
3. Aims: Towards a collaborative, corpus-based, online tool

The principal aim of this project is the creation of a corpus-based
dictionary of bioethical terms, which will be firstly realised as a prototype.
This will be compiled in English, so as to make it accessible to a larger
number of users (both specialists who will provide their comments and
suggestions, and common citizens), as well as to give it a more
international scope.
Moreover, the intention is to move away from traditional lexicographic
practices in the pursuit of an objective and scientific method for the
compilation of dictionaries. By tradition, the choice of which lemmas to
include in a lexicographic resource, together with the elaboration of their
related definitions and examples, has been mainly left to the introspection
of the lexicographers, thus opening to a questionable subjective
dimension. On the contrary, the prototype under elaboration will be based
on different principles, especially for what concerns the selection of the
entries. In particular, the current project represents a challenge to take the
methods of corpus linguistics a step further towards an even greater degree
of automation in the analysis of large databases of texts.
As regards the reception within the community and the access to this
resource, our aim is to make it reachable by the largest possible group of
people, not only in terms of numbers, but especially in terms of cultural,
educational, professional background. That is why the prototype will be
published online.
Finally, the choice of the wiki modality thanks to which experts in
the field will give their contribution will allow for a constant monitoring
and update of the lemmas, in order to keep up with the constant changes
and new perspectives that bioethics undergoes.
4. Description: Project definition, design and articulation

In the history of every natural language, new realities imply new
terminological and lexical challenges, and this is what is happening in the
bioethics field too. The emergence of issues related to the biomedical
technological development, together with the presence of new modalities

of production, consumption, provision and use connected to globalisation,
the widening of participation frameworks and, consequently, the
dissemination of medical information to different social actors from the
non-specialist who is daily updated on the bioethical debate by the media,
to the specialist/professional who follows and contributes to the same
debate through dedicated channels all require a redefinition and update
of the lexicographic material available on the subject, which is what this
research project intends to propose.
The research carried out so far has indeed shown how the
lexicographic material available, as regards the (bio)ethical concepts
relating to Western culture and thought (and especially written in English,
given this languages relevance in todays scientific communication and
for this groups research interests and competences), is addressed only to a
specialist public, and was created without referring to a scientific
compiling method, but based on the existing material, thus exclusively
referring to what lexicographic works existed (if any) beforehand. In
addition, traditional lexicography is, generally speaking, based widely on
the compilers own introspection, which results in the presence of a
subjective dimension connected only to the lexicographers own
individual linguistic experience.
Considering the above, it seems necessary to propose instead the use of
an up-to-date and innovative scientific methodology that might take into
account, objectively, the new conceptual and thus terminological
developments undergone by bioethics in recent times. It is furthermore
necessary to make this tool available to the public, to non-specialised
users, who represent today one of the protagonists of the bioethical debate,
not only in a passive constantly bombarded as they are by the media
(TV, the web, the press, etc.) but also in an active way, and often called
to express themselves on these issues thanks to the new collaborative
genres born with/on the web (discussion forums, blogs, etc.).
For these reasons, an innovative compiling methodology will be
adopted, which will result in lemmas, definitions and usage contexts
obtained through the use of established information retrieval
methodologies and based on realia (texts) that reflect both the specialised
(medical, philosophical and bioethical) and non-specialised (accessible to
any citizen) aspects of bioethics.
This will happen by combining the principles of corpus linguistics
(Sinclair 1991), i.e. using large databanks of texts from which to
automatically extract statistically provable linguistic regularities, with
those of text mining (Salton et al. 1975), and applying them to
lexicographic practice. Indeed, computer-based queries conducted on large

databases of texts will allow for a methodologically reliable selection of
the entries to be included in the dictionary as well as provide the words
different contexts and usages both in the specialised and non-specialised
domains.
In order to make the automatic analyses possible, the text will be
represented through models known in text mining literature such as the
vector space model (Salton and Buckley 1988, Lewis 1992, Apt et al.
1994, Dumais et al. 1998), which can provide a solid and analytically
processable representation of written documents.
The researchers working on this project will be concerned with
assembling the corpora of texts needed to proceed to the extraction of the
terms that will later make up the dictionarys word list. To strengthen the
results statistical value, the corpora used will have to be very large,
ideally covering all the usage contexts of the terms to be contained in the
dictionary. Moreover, the IT section will be in charge of elaborating a
methodology based on the techniques of machine learning (Mitchell
1996) that will allow for the automatic classification of the documents
into specialised and non-specialised. The automatisation of the process
will also allow for a more thorough and extensive text collection
(Sebastiani 2002); a large corpus of popular nature will be put together to
represent a truth value with respect to the bioethical nature of the
documents contained in it.
As regards corpora compilation, the texts will be retrieved from
specialised bioethical journals (e.g. The Journal of Medical Ethics, The
American Journal of Bioethics, Ethics & Medicine, etc.) and non-
specialised (newspapers, magazines, etc., e.g. The Guardian Online, the
Times, The New York Times, etc.) sources, and texts will be put together to
provide a sound basis for linguistic analysis (Arn Maci et al. 2006).
Indeed, both the quantity (the number) and the quality (the typology) of
the texts assembled in the corpus are of paramount importance if a truthful
account of the usage of bioethics terms is to be provided, thus the
proportion between the two types of texts will have to be weighted. The
documents will be taken both from American and British journals,
newspapers and magazines, so that the final corpus will be representative
of cultural and linguistic variations. Once the corpus has been obtained,
the most significant terms will be extracted from it by means of text
mining tools, thus making up the dictionarys word list. The time span
chosen for the investigation is about 10 years, long enough to cover and
report on the digital revolution brought forth by the web.
As a final point, it is interesting to expand on a remark made at the

beginning of this chapter, in par. 1, wondering how just one language,
though the official language of todays culture and science, and the
worlds current lingua franca, can rule on something so clearly inter- and
even cross-cultural as human life as conceived in/by bioethics. The
question of English as a Lingua Franca (EFL), localisation and the
necessity of translation at all is surely challenging and is currently being
debated especially in Translation Studies (see e.g. a summary in Grego
2010: 116-123). While the human kind is waiting to see whether EFL will
replace all languages and make translation useless, though, the need to
reach out to the widest public is strongly felt in this project with so deep
an ethical stance, and translation is still considered one good means of
achieving that. For this reason, at a later stage, the Pro.bio.dic project also
intends to consider the adaptation of part of its results into other
languages. In practical terms, the construction of a multi-lingual4 sample
version of the bioethics glossary is proposed as the final development of
the project, yet not as a result in itself, but as a workshop to test translation
as the product, process and practice (Grego 2010) that might physically
bring together and bond all its various dimensions lexicography,
lexicology, English for Specific Purposes, medicine, philosophy, IT into
a really and operationally intercultural tool.
4.1. Sample lexicographic sheet

The following sheet (sheet 1) exemplifies the structure of the Pro.bio.dic.s
lemmas; it illustrates the way the definitions are compiled and takes into
account the dictionarys wiki nature. Once again (see par. 2) the term
ABORTION was chosen for description.
4
This final stage will include a discussion of and come up with reasons as to how
many and which languages to consider in developing the multi-lingual glossary.
ABORTION General
The premature termination of pregnancy; an instance
thereof.
The termination of a process or procedure.
The aborted foetus; fig. a failed or badly conceived thing,
esp. a project, an object, etc.
A flat battery would have been a cast-iron excuse to abort
the visit.
Medicine
The medical practice of inducing the termination a
pregnancy, either surgically or pharmacologically. Reasons
to practice an abortion may be due to voluntary choice or a
medical condition. A spontaneous, as opposed to induced,
termination of a pregnancy is usually referred to as a (cfr.)
miscarriage. MORE TO ADD/CHANGE BY MEDICINE
CONSULTANT.
Example to be added.
HyperlinkEthics
to the Miscarriage lemma
The practice of abortion is a highly debated issue in

bioethics, due to the very differing views existing over the
interruption of human life, albeit in its earlier stages,
frequently associated to specific religious beliefs. MORE
TO ADD/CHANGE BY PHILOSOPHY CONSULTANT.
There were significant differences in students
attitudes to abortion, reflecting differences in
religious, legal and educational experiences.
Hyperlink to Abortion,
Ethics above
Law
As a consequence of the differing ethical views on
abortion, its practice has come to be regarded differently in
different cultures, and has legal or illegal status depending
on the country. In the EU, MORE TO ADD/CHANGE BY
LAW CONSULTANT. In the Commonwealth, MORE TO
ADD/CHANGE BY PHILOSOPHY CONSULTANT. In
North America, MORE TO ADD/CHANGE BY

PHILOSOPHY CONSULTANT. In South America,
MORE TO ADD/CHANGE BY PHILOSOPHY
CONSULTANT. OTHER EXAMPLES MAY BE ADDED
IF PARTICULARLY RELEVANT (= DIFFERING FROM
MAINSTREAM).
Example to be added.
Hyperlink to the The scientific committee or the

Users files on the portal, individual specialized
with CV and professional subcommittees may decide to amend
credentials. Only / integrate the definition(s) based on
registered users may post. the ensuing forum discussion(s).
Specialised
forum
Username 1 Comment / opinion / criticism / question
Username 2 Reply / comment / opinion / criticism / question
Sheet 1 Pro.bio.sic: sample structure of the lemma ABORTION
5. Expected results and criteria for their evaluation

The research is expected to produce, as its main result, a prototype of
electronic dictionary that will distinguish itself from its predecessors for
its multi-disciplinary approach, its innovative scientific methodology, and
its wiki-mode collaborative approach. The model created will be
exportable and the methodology applicable with due adaptations to
various if not any subject. The prototype of dictionary would particularly
suit those subjects that like (bio)ethics are concerned with hybrid
concepts and tools, and thus need a high degree of collaboration from
different participants to come into existence.
As a side result, an innovative and large corpus of texts on bioethics
will be available for further linguistic research (sociolinguistics and textual
analysis); it could indeed be investigated as a collection of contemporary
British and/or American texts (as it will initially include texts from these
two English-speaking countries alone) (diatopic dimension), of specialised
academic/professional language (diaphasic/diastratic dimension), of
contemporary written English (diamesic dimension) of bioethics journal
articles (genre), of the language of bioethics (ESP), etc. As a future,
possible development, the project will also take into consideration the
feasibility of a multi-language glossary.
In order to evaluate the obtained results, several elements and criteria
associated with the different disciplines will be exploited. As regards
lexicography, studies on the compilation of specialised multidisciplinary
dictionaries, on the conformity of the lexicon of bioethics and on the
accessibility of the data incorporated in an electronic form will be carried
out. Translations studies will deal with works concerning the feasibility
(with problems and suggestions) of a multi-lingual glossary as a future
development, especially as regards the localization of both the content
(from the legal, medical, ethical viewpoint) and the form (from the
linguistic viewpoint) into other Western-European languages (see note 4,
par. 4). From the corpus linguistics and IT perspective, research on the
assembling of representative corpora and on the statistical significance of
the linguistic analysis will be referred to. Particular attention will be given
to evaluate performances of the automated procedures based on accuracy
indexes, precision and recall measures. The contribution made by the
public health sector will be evaluated in terms of the existent scientific
literature, discussing the ethical implications of the access to web health-
related information by the general population. Finally, the philosophical
dimension will strive to provide for every entry an exhaustive description,
comprising the most common bioethical practices and theories, in a
historical and multidisciplinary perspective, and in line with the users
specific interests, ethical and moral beliefs, and practical needs.
The research group has been collaborating on this initiative for about 1
year, starting from the end of 2009; the expected timeline for this project
covers 3-5 years, and it is being developed as we write; more detailed
publications will soon follow, describing the methodology and
technologies employed, and producing the first tangible samples of the
tool.
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English Dictionaries As Cultural Mines - Roberta Facchinetti

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English Dictionaries as Cultural Mines

This book first published 2012

Cambridge Scholars Publishing

12 Back Chapman Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2XX, UK

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Copyright 2012 by Roberta Facchinetti and contributors

ISBN (10): 1-4438-3647-8, ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-3647-0

Riches; Money, or Precious Goods: The Lexis of Wealth in Modern

Phraseology in Time: Examples of Culture-Bound Expressions

Giving Voice to Local Cultures: Reflections on the Notion of Dialect

Culture-specific Lexis and Knowledge Sharing in the Global Village...... 73

Brand Culture Mirrored in Dictionaries: Generic Trademarks in English

Culture-specific Lexical Items, Concepts and Word-level Communicative

Translating the Lexicon of the Law: A Cross-linguistic Study

Art for Dictionaries Sake: Comparing Cultural Outlooks

Towards a Corpus-Driven Bilingual Italian-English Dictionary

An Innovative Tool for an All-inclusive Sports Language Database ...... 223

Intercultural and Ideological Issues in Lexicography: A Prototype

Dictionaries are mines whose word-gems encapsulate centuries of language

remarks that the Oxford English Dictionary certainly includes an

appendices or supplements presenting sub-word information to encode

syntactic and semantic rules does not guarantee a natural-sounding

subject. Hence, the authors illustrate their project called Pro.bio.dic

1. From the far East to the far West:

of significant economic and political development in Britain, marked [...]

Starting from 18th-century encyclopaedic works, either universal

trade with English America [...]. (Hancock 2000: 3-34).

Thirdly, an appendix collects a series of encyclopaedic entries which,

2. Discussing wealth: From lexicographic treatment

Wealth, which is primarily associated with and lexicalized as

cultural and linguistic exchange.5 Wealth is the way to the construction

This means that a commercial unifying principle, that is the most

different values or different shades of the same original cultural value(s)

Labour human labour is, in fact, the intrinsic value of anything

It may be argued that labour itself is an aspect of wealth: the

wealthy consumption or, rather, wealthy consumption as social

In contemporary discourse, money is both identified-lexicalized first

first as the measure of value and then as the medium of permutation or

However, even though mainly associated with coins-cash, money also

is of no consequence, whether any nation hath a vast deal of gold and

3. From eastern luxury objects to western valuable needs

of wealth and welfare, that is to the elaboration of new manners of

18th-century (British) wealthy thought also requires and embodies a

The improvements of practical arts and manufactures does greatly depend

This multifaceted and wealthy aesthetic-civilizing principle, ultimately

Metal work: points, pins, scissars, andirons, tongs, fire forks,

All of them expanding fashionable categories for a great amount of

Trade, the Exchange of Commodities; [...] There is no doubt but

From a negative connotation which associated luxury and luxury

3.1. Comfortable Anglicization (of America)

The source of this transformation goes back to a set of shared values

As a matter of fact, Great Britain is the place where the superfluous

The exportation from England to her American colonies, consist of almost

of provisions, as before observed. (Postlethwayt 1757, BRITAIN, or GREAT

Later, this material experience whether necessaries and conveniencies

The common consumer experience triggers off the new American

1. private property (necessaries, conveniences, commodities, circulating

Wealth is definitely usage and delight of those riches, money, or

The lexicographic works become the linguistic repository of lexis a

Moreover, dictionaries and encyclopaedias transform such learning and

Indianapolis: Liberty Fund (This Liberty Fund edition of 1982 is an

. 1994. Domestic bubbling: Eighteenth-century London merchants and