ABSTRACT
In Chapter 3, dictionary definitions were identified as an aspect of the microstructure of the dictionary, where they are subject to the expectation that ‘information not explicitly given means “normal” information in any particular field’ (Béjoint, 1994: 12). Definitions are also subject to two specific semiotic constraints: first, that each word or sense of a word must have a definition and, second, that each word or sense will have only one definition. These constraints reinforce the assumption that the dictionary definition of a word is an essential quality of the word itself rather than an evaluation or particular way of looking at it. Dictionary definitions have been described as problematic from the viewpoint of theories of language that emphasise the indeterminacy or multiplicity of lexical meanings. The semiotics of the microstructure, however, specifically exclude the notion that words may ‘change their meaning according to the positions of those who use them’ (Pêcheux, 1982: 111). Definitions also carry ideological meanings in a number of ways. They may be either explicitly or implicitly evaluative. They may objectify social, ethnic or nationality groups, thus excluding their perspectives from the dictionary, or they may construct cultural contexts from which the perspectives of those groups are implicitly excluded. Words may be defined ‘pseudo-bilingually’ in terms of a ‘core’ vocabulary or ‘encyclopedically’, as if the denotatum of the word were of greater interest than the word itself. These aspects of definition are unified within a more general tendency for definitions to establish central and peripheral perspectives of ‘knower’ and ‘known’ in the dictionary.
