Cultures et lexicographies éd. par Michaela Heinz

Abstract

pas été altéré—une position dont se moque Arthur Buies (45–46). Pour lui, le véritable problème est l’influence du milieu anglais dans lequel la langue est parl ée: “Ce qui est absolument français dans la province de Québec, ce sont les traditions , le caractère [...] et une manière de sentir, d’agir et d’exprimer qui est propre aux vieux Gaulois. Ce qu’il y a de moins français, c’est la langue” (57). Il accuse les professionnels, plus particulièrement les avocats, qui utilisent “quantité de tours, de phrases, de membres de phrases anglais” (57). Un autre sujet à polémiques qui continuera à animer les discussions bien au-delà du milieu du vingtième siècle est l’usage des locutions familières et des canadianismes. Certains auteurs tels que Pierre Baillargeon (379–80) ou Claude-Henri Grignon (381–82) trouvent légitime de “faire parler en mauvais français les personnages rustiques” (379), car il ne faudrait pas leur imposer un langage qui n’est pas le leur; alors que d’autres tels que Pierre de Granpré prônent un universalisme qui servirait mieux “le prestige intellectuel du Canada” (387) et la réputation des auteurs. Il faudra attendre le prochain volume pour savoir comment la question sera enfin résolue. Auburn University (AL) Samia I. Spencer HEINZ, MICHAELA, éd. Cultures et lexicographies. Berlin: Frank & Timme, 2010. ISBN 978-3-86596-293-5. Pp. 324. 68 a. Alain Rey is the editor in chief of the Robert dictionaries, and his most significant project was the Dictionnaire culturel en langue française (DCLF). Published in 2005 after years of research by over one hundred authors, it consists of four massive volumes containing more than 70,000 words. Rey was honored at a 2008 conference , Actes du colloque international de lexicographie (journées allemandes des dictionnaires), and the present compilation, comprising fourteen papers from the conference, gives an overview of the theory and practice of assembling dictionaries . As Henri Meschonnic explains in his contribution, unlike other dictionaries, the DCLF stresses the intrinsic relationship between dictionary creation and culture . He points out the factors involved in the construction of words, emphasizing that their history, geographical origins, and prosody all contribute to their meaning. Thus, the work of lexicographers is more challenging than one might imagine. The history of the genesis of dictionaries is discussed at length in this volume, especially in Jean Pruvost’s paper. He discusses the distinction between the dictionnaire de l’institution, originated by a government as part of a language policy, and the dictionnaire de l’entreprise privée, which is an individual initiative, such as Rey’s innovative and generally well-received work. In the same chapter, Pruvost raises his concern that the Internet may be harmful to the quality of dictionaries because of the easy and free access to information that may not be entirely accurate. In his piece, Pierre Rézean addresses the absence or lack of exhaustive definitions and use of certain lexicons in dictionaries, as is the case for words perceived as “ugly” and “disgusting,” because they represent a set of contre-culture attitudes, values, and norms. Hirao Koichi provides a contribution outlining the dictionary’s presence in Japan, in which we learn that the first bilingual French/ Japanese glossary was created in 1854. His paper compares two main bilingual dictionaries in Japan: the Dictionnaire général français-japonais by Hakusuisha (1981), which focuses on the history of words and their usage, and the Shogakukan 802 FRENCH REVIEW 85.4 Robert grand dictionnaire français-japonais (1988), which aims mainly at introducing readers to a specific, modern, and popular vocabulary to enable them to understand more clearly the newspaper Le Monde. This compiled work highlights some of the successes but also pinpoints some of the flaws in the field of dictionary making, as André Thibault explains in his critique of Francophone dictionaries from sub-Saharan Africa. Thibault argues that there is an explosion of neologisms that requires documentation in these dictionaries . To do so, fieldwork to collect those neologisms, combined with a deep knowledge of the sub-Saharan field and culture, are indispensable...