PRESENTATION OF PRAGMATIC INFORMATION IN DICTIONARY DEFINITIONS

Abstract

The theoretical basis of this study is pragmatics in the context of lexicography, in other words, the concept of lexico-pragmatics. The concept of lexico-pragmatics is discussed based on Wang’s (2015) study, in which he redefines pragmatic information by comparing different perspectives. In particular, pragmatic information processed in learners’ dictionaries is less researched than semantic and grammatical information types in dictionaries. The study first highlighted the definition and scope of pragmatic information with a lexicographic approach and then attempted to outline the pragmatic features in dictionaries. Different lexicographic tools, such as labels, usage notes, definitions, and examples, can be used to present pragmatic information in dictionaries. Definitions carry both pragmatic and semantic information about a lexeme.

In the context of the relationship between lexicography and pragmatics, questions such as “what is pragmatic information, what are the pragmatic features in dictionaries, how is pragmatic information presented in dictionaries, what benefits does the dictionary provide to the user” were attempted to be answered. It was investigated how pragmatic information is presented in the microstructure of a monolingual dictionary based on the headwords selected from the TDK Türkçe Sözlük and the usage examples from the Turkish National Corpus (TUD). As a result, it was found to be a necessity to determine the pragmatic values of the words for a Turkish learners’ dictionary to be developed and to arrange some items in the Türkçe Sözlük to provide pragmatic information.