Lexicography on the periphery: the case of Brazil.

This article aims at analyzing the cross-roads at which Brazilian dictionary production stands as the result of a specific geographical, sociological and historical situation. Being a so-called 'emerging economy' at the cultural periphery of the Western world, Brazilian dictionary landscape shows a few peculiar features. Rather astonishingly, Brazil has four fully-fledged national dictionaries presently in print. In comparison, bilingual dictionary production is of a more modest range in terms of numbers and clearly concentrates on English. Few publishers have targeted the potential of French, Italian or German audiences of language learners. When one looks at Brazilian dictionary production these last forty years, one finds there was a surge in monolingual dictionary making at the beginning of the seventies which lasted till 2002 approximately. Afterwards this branch seems to have largely run out of steam, either out of complacency or for want of new ideas. Bilingual dictionary publishers, on the other hand, only started functioning seriously around the year 2000, but were applying more modern working standards and are now clearly at the cutting edge. After the monolingual Portuguese dictionaries had put their content on a CD-rom, bilingual dictionaries started experimenting with new media and are likely to set new trends in years to come. The web is of course part of the next big step.

ISBN:978-3-03911-799-4

Jaar van publicatie:2009

Trefwoorden:Lexicography, dictionary