Reconceptualization of Lexicography: An Analysis of Monolingual and Bilingual Pakistani Dictionaries
Keywords:
• Bilingual lexicography, • Monolingual lexicography, • Contextual ambiguation, Ideological contextAbstract
In some linguistic studies, contextual meanings and cultural connotations have marvelous significance to avoid ambiguity in understanding the actual connotation of words resulting from cultural gaps in the Reconceptualization of lexical items and descriptive cultural instances, varying from monolingual dictionaries to bilingual dictionaries. This study showed how a bilingual dictionary correlates two different cultures to facilitate interlinguistic transmission by bridging semantic and dominant cultural gaps. The current study shows that there is an interface between cultural transposition and translation in the recontextualization of the lexemes / descriptive instances from the monolingual English dictionary into other languages such as Urdu. A corresponding investigation of significant descriptive instances of different categories has been carried out from the dictionaries: Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary of Current English (Hornby, 9th Edition), Oxford English Urdu Dictionary (Haqqee, 2003), and Oxford Urdu- English Dictionary (Salimuldin & Anjam, 2013). This appraisal establishes that the recontextualizers (the dictionary compilers) resituate the linguistic source in a new setting. In this context, the current study significantly contributes to the emerging critical lexicography that invites attention to the ideological, contextual, and cultural designated transfer of meanings in (bilingual) lexicography.
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