ABSTRACT
The argument that English dictionaries are fundamentally ethnocentric rests on a view of the English dictionary as a representation of the English language organised in terms of metaphors of centre and periphery. The process of lexicographical representation, constrained by the rules and principles of lexicographical practice, leads not to the production of a direct reflection of the language ‘as it is’, but to the production of a version of the language, with definite form and shape. This version of the language both represents and conditions our conceptions of what the language is, what it is made of and the ways in which its component parts are related to each other.
