Cultural Boxes in Bilingual Dictionaries A New Lexicographic Tool for Compiling Cultural Dictionaries

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

Department of Linguistics, Faculty of Literature, Alzahra University, Tehran, Iran

Abstract

A bilingual dictionary as a “cultural object” covers at least two different cultures and is supposed to fill their gaps. In the modern era of lexicography, the lexicographers provide a tool for their users to get acquainted with the elements of the other culture by using “cultural boxes”. The current descriptive-analytical research aims to review the importance of adding cultural information to dictionaries, to introduce and identify the main features of “cultural boxes”, as well as studying the application of this microstructure component in two English-Persian dictionaries besides a Persian-English dictionary. The study shows that cultural boxes are absent in the aforementioned dictionaries and no strategies are proposed to represent the cultural differences between source and target languages in the dictionaries’ introduction. The literature confirms that using cultural notes for the purpose of decoding lexical gaps between languages can provide a clearer picture of the situational context of the headwords.

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History

  • Receive Date: 26 March 2024
  • Revise Date: 13 August 2024
  • Accept Date: 13 August 2024

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