Abstract
The purpose of the present study is to check how well monolingual learners' dictionaries cope with the sensitive field of mental ill health. The subject is considered worthy of attention in view of the high prevalence of mental health problems among young people, at whom learners' dictionaries are primarily targeted. To obtain a picture of the situation, twelve names of common mental health issues have been looked up in six learners' dictionaries of English (five British and one American). The analysis zoomed in on the choice of genus words, the information value of the definitions and examples, and the potential impact of both on the sensibilities of dictionary users. To resolve occasional disagreements in matters of content, specialist medical sources have been consulted. The treatment is cognitive linguistic in spirit, with the notion of construal — specifically its key component of focal adjustment — serving as the main descriptive tool.
Highlights
Opsomming: Die konstruering van geestesgesondheidsprobleme in Engelse aanleerderswoordeboeke
Given that monolingual English learners' dictionaries (MELDs) are available globally and are consulted predominantly by young people, it makes sense to ask how well they deal with the topic
An attempt has been made in this study to employ the notion of construal, in particular its component of focal adjustment, as an ancillary tool for the analysis of dictionary entries
Summary
Opsomming: Die konstruering van geestesgesondheidsprobleme in Engelse aanleerderswoordeboeke. In die lig van die hoë voorkoms van geestesgesondheidsprobleme onder jongmense, op wie aanleerderswoordeboeke primêr gerig is, verdien hierdie onderwerp aandag. Scholars have long been alert to the dangers of dealing insensitively with sensitive lexicographic material Meaning does not come ready-made, but has to be (re)constructed in the process of communication. This view, widely accepted within the humanities, has been argued for most forcefully by linguists, especially those of the cognitive persuasion. No matter which cognitive linguistic model we consult — e.g., Langacker's Cognitive Grammar, Fauconnier and Turner's Mental Spaces, Fillmore's Frame Semantics, Evans' Access Semantics — one of the pivotal ideas seems to be that individual linguistic expressions are no more than underdetermined prompts for rich meaning construction. Rather than 'encoding' meaning, [they] represent partial building instructions" from which meaning is constructed by the speaker/writer and reconstructed by the listener/reader
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