INFORMATIONAL POTENTIAL OF THE ENGLISH POLYCODE DICTIONARY ENTRIES

Abstract

The article is devoted to the study of the informational potential of the polycode dictionary entries in English learner’s lexicography. The communicative specificity of learner’s dictionaries consists in their targeting to a clear segment of the readership. These are non-native speakers of English, studying it as a foreign language and living outside the area of its functioning, and, therefore, outside the situational context. The features of users to whom learner’s dictionaries are addressed determine the content and presentation of lexicographic material, which is aimed primarily at expanding the vocabulary of the reader and, moreover, familiarizing him more closely with the culture of Englishspeaking society. The main task of a lexicographic article in an explanatory dictionary is to provide a certain amount of information necessary for the reader to adequately understand a particular word of interest. To solve this problem, compilers of dictionaries resort to using both typesetting and pictorial non-verbal communication means. A polycode lexicographic article is a combination of two definitions of the same sememe, which are made with signs of two different semiotic systems: symbolic (linguistic) and iconic (pictographic). The analysis of the informational potential of polycode articles in English learners’ dictionaries gives grounds to claim that the appearance of the pictographic component in any case optimizes the transmission and perception of information. In addition, the iconic message, as a rule, increases the amount of information conveyed by the verbal message (definition), firstly, by explaining the ontological characteristics of the structure, existence and functioning of the nominated referent in the world, and secondly, by creating clusters semantically and linguistically related lexical items. As a result, new quanta of information appear (absent in the definition) and the information itself is structured into some microsystems that permeate the macrosystem of the dictionary.