ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on one language, one type of monolingual pedagogical English as a Foreign Language (EFL) dictionary and, presumably, one culture. Naturally, the question of the dictionary-versus-culture interface can easily, and, admittedly, with more conspicuous results, be asked in a cross-linguistic perspective, which is when the same lexical items show convergent and/or divergent cultural qualifications in different languages or different varieties of the same language. The systemic-symbolic distinction is not meant to supersede any of the traditionally delimited types of dictionary definitions that are typically given in probably all introductory or comprehensive books on lexicography and related subjects, such as Bejoint, Atkins and Rundell, Svensen, or Riemer. Dictionary makers appear to do their best to include cultural information as well as to avoid possible undesired consequences. In order to write a dictionary definition, one sets a word against language users' awareness as expressed in language, which produces a certain mental cultural picture of the world.
