A Communicative Approach to Meaning Discrimination in Bilingual Passive Dictionaries

Abstract

Advances made in the area of linguistics and lexicography have affected the way bilingual dictionaries are perceived. Bilingual
dictionaries, as important devices in intercultural and interlingual communications, are not regarded as mere reference tools containing a
list of items with their corresponding translation equivalents. Nowadays, the role of the user in lexicographic communication has been
highlighted and every decision made in the process of dictionary making is based on the purpose the dictionary is going to serve and the
intended users' needs and expectations. The present article aims at studying the issue of sense discrimination in bilingual passive
dictionaries from a communicative perspective. In so doing, meaning discrimination and its importance is discussed. Then, the factors
influencing the application of meaning discrimination strategies are introduced. In addition to equivalent relation which is a factor already
discussed by the scholars of the field, part of speech is introduced by the researchers as the second factor contributing to meaning
discrimination. It is concluded that the entries having more complicated equivalent relations need more meaning discriminatory
strategies. Besides, verbs, due to the role they have in comprehension and due to their polysemous nature, call for more meaning
discriminatory strategies.