ABSTRACT
The central topic of this chapter is the contrastive principle for the lexicographic treatment of the lexicon of American Spanish. This principle was conceived and developed in the last decades of the twentieth century within the framework of the project Contrastive Dictionaries of American Spanish at the University of Augsburg, Germany, led by Günther Haensch and Reinhold Werner. First, in order to understand the context, we outline how lexicography evolved prior to the contrastive principle being introduced. We then review the theoretical bases of the contrastive principle and present the continuities and ruptures with respect to nineteenth-century differential American lexicography. Finally, we highlight the effects of the implementation of such a principle at the microstructural level.
