English-Chinese Language Dictionaries-A Cultural History

The history of English-Chinese language dictionaries can be traced back to the twenties of the nineteenth century when a western missionary Robert Morrison compiled the first English-Chinese bidirectional dictionary A Dictionary of the Chinese Language, in which the third part was an English-Chinese language dictionary. Since then, English-Chinese language dictionaries have entered into their developmental course.Dictionaries are linguistic, cultural and social in nature. Socio-cultural reality catalyzes the emergence, development and forthcoming trends of dictionaries on the one hand, whereas dictionaries as cultural index, faithfully record socio-cultural reality on the other hand. A history of dictionaries can be described as a film consisting of scenes of socio-cultural reality. Therefore, it would be meaningful to unscramble the history of English-Chinese language dictionaries from a socio-cultural perspective. By putting English-Chinese language dictionaries within their social and cultural background, the present study aims at making a profound exploration of the general trends of English-Chinese language dictionaries and also explicating the mutual influential mechanism between dictionary history and socio-cultural evolution.The thesis is composed of six chapters. They are organized as follows:Chapter I makes a theoretical survey of dictionary history and relations of culture, language and dictionary, and presents the significance and organization of the study.Chapter II examines relevant studies on dictionary history by comparing the scientific approaches both at home and abroad and reviewing on previous periodizations. On the basis of these studies, a socio-cultural perspective is initiated, in line with which a new periodization is also proposed: the preliminary stage (1822-1918), the progressive stage (1919-1978), and the booming stage (1979-Present).Chapter III to Chapter V is the main body of the thesis. It presents a systematic history of English-Chinese language dictionaries from a socio-cultural viewpoint. In the first stage, Chinese and western culture began to get in touch in which the latter played a dominant role. Dictionaries in this period were directly translated from one single monolingual English dictionary by western "lexicographers", and most of them were of unsound quality. The second stage witnessed the rapid progress of cross-cultural communication. In order to gain equal status in communication, Chinese people sought to be independent and self-reliant by all means. By the aid of abundant original dictionaries, they began to compile dictionaries of their own. However, they relied on original dictionaries so much that it was knotty for them to formulate an independent and mature compilation style. The third stage started with the implementation of open door policy which ushered us into a harmonious stage of communication and also an unprecedented prosperous era of dictionary compilation.Chapter VI gives concluding remarks on major points of the study, elucidates the mutual influential mechanism between dictionary development and socio-cultural evolution, and also figures out limitations of the study and suggestions for further research in this field.