Pragmatic Information In English-Chinese Bilingualized Dictionaries

Pragmatics, as a relatively new branch of linguistics, has been developing rapidly in the past decades. More and more lexicographers abroad and at home have found pragmatics useful and helpful in natural language understanding and have done some studies on its application to lexicography. However, the treatment of pragmatic information (PI) is far from adequate in the existing English-Chinese bilingualized dictionaries (ECBDs). This thesis investigates the types of pragmatic failures (PFs) among Chinese students by means of experiment studies. It is found that the common PFs are mainly reflected on three levels: lexical level, sentence level and discourse level. Therefore, this thesis compares several medium-sized monolingual learners' dictionaries and ECBDs, and analyzes the treatment of PI on these three levels. Based on these studies, this thesis attempts to establish a more systematic model on the treatment of PI in ECBDs in favor of Chinese students.