Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 1998. Vol. 2. Eger Journal of English Studies.(Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 26)

Studies - Edit Gaál: Dictionaries and methaphors: a consideration of the presentation of methaphoric usages in a selection of dictonaries

In order to look into the problem and find an answer I have selected a number of words as the subject of my analysis. The words selected are limited in number but two groups of them belong to lexical domains of the human body and animals which are often referred to in relevant literature (see Aitchison, 1994; Lipka, 1992; Lakoff&Johnson, 1980 etc.) as the main resources of metaphors in languages. The choice of the third lexical field, flowers, is more random, but is based on the fact that its members belong to a basic area of human knowledge about the world and are commonly used lexical items in English. The latter was a decisive consideration in the selection of the lexical items in the other two domains as well. My preference fell on the following words: chest, lung, shoulder; donkey, duck, lion; and daisy, lily, rose. 2 General description of the selected dictionaries The four dictionaries on which I based the analysis are the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English (LDCE) (Second edition, 1987); The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Current English (COD) (Seventh edition reprinted in 1987); the Cambridge International Dictionary of English (CIDE) (First edition, 1995); and the CD-ROM version of The American Heritage Dictionary (AHD) (Third edition, 1994). My choice fell on the above dictionaries not only because they are among the most frequently used ones, but also because they were compiled for different purposes and consequently present, besides a basic core, different layers of English vocabulary. COD concentrates on Standard English, LDCE puts more emphasis on colloquial English and CIDE focuses on the learner of English and presents the vocabulary from this perspective, while AHD naturally has a preference for American usage. The general aims of the Concise Oxford Dictionary of Current English (COD) are as J. B. Sykes states in the Introduction "The words, phrases, and meanings given are those current in the English of the present day - either in living use, or familiar through their occurrence in frequently quoted literature of the past, ... the dictionary seeks to record what is found to exist in the educated use of modern English". Undoubtedly, this small, but updated edition contains more quotations and illustrative sentences than the former editions, though it is more conservative in its approach than LDCE, CIDE or AHD. It is relatively small in size, but because it is based on the OED and its Supplements, it is still widely accepted as an authority on the English language. The Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English (LDCE) uses the findings of modern linguistics to give a more precise description of the 102