| Abstract: |
In the middle of the nineteen seventies Herbert Ernst Wiegand discovered the lexicographic Yeti: The Dictionary User. This should not count as a discovery; Lexicography has always aimed to satisfy certain needs for information of certain user groups and many dictionaries and encyclopedias have done it. Since the linguistics of the Romantic Era (the Grimm Brothers and others) has lexicography more and more turned away from the users and their real needs, maybe not so much in bilingual as in monolingual lexicography. But on the whole Wiegand was right: the well-known unknown exists, the dictionary user. Strangely enough, through the years Wiegand forgot this point of view and in his description of the access structure he chooses an abstract figure which is far away from real users. A real user has an information problem. He looks for help, not always in a dictionary, but also in dictionaries. In this paper we try to describe - in an abstract way, but in a real framework - the phases and steps which the user goes through on his way from the definite problem to the solution of this very problem. Or to the knowledge that the problem cannot be solved. This path does not correspond with the macro- or microstructure of a concrete dictionary, because the user often consults more than one and often uses other information tools. |