NONVERBAL MEANS OF COMMUNICATION IN THE ENGLISH DICTIONARIES

Abstract

The article is devoted to the study of the peculiarities of nonverbal means of communication in the dictionaries of the English language. The research has been done on the material of Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary & Thesaurus and Collins Cobuild Advanced Learner’s English Dictionary. 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 English-speaking society. Lexicographers note that every user of the dictionary faces three problems: how to find the right information; how to understand it (comprehend) and how to apply what you understood. Nonverbal means of communication help in solving the first two problems. In the explanatory dictionaries of the English language, two types of paragraphic characters are used: these are typed and depictive non-verbal means. Typed non-verbal communication means include font accents, background and font color, special icons and symbols (arrows, triangles, rulers, frames) that mark different quanta of information in the article. Depictive non-verbal means of communication include abstract-logical and pictographic ones.