Abstract: |
The latest research conducted by De Jong (2014) indicated that only a few European
academic dictionaries, among over one hundred and fifty, use pictorial illustrations. On the other
hand, it has been mentioned several times in the literature (related to both printed and electronic
reference works) that visual content makes a general dictionary more attractive for the user. Therefore
a new methodology, enhancing graphical strategy in lexicography, would be proposed. Firstly,
a thematic division of meanings will be applied to the authentic multimodal explanations taken
from two general dictionaries (verbal definition and graphical facility). As a result, commonly
illustrated thematic fields will be shown along with the ones used by lexicographers in a restrained
way, as well as the fields left without illustrations for some reasons. The exemplary meanings from
these latest, "orphan" groups will be confronted with the query results from the authentic multimodal
corpora. Such a procedure will give us some more detailed information about the obstacles
connected with illustrating this particular set of senses (for example multimodal denotation and
connotation problems). |