Italian Learner's Dictionaries from a Sociolinguistic Perspective

Many dictionary types with Italian as their target language carry out a general pedagogical function in accordance with the aspects of sociolinguistics we surveyed in the initial chapters. Whether this is to be regarded as their genuine function can only be established in the case of learners' dictionaries with a specific addressee. These can fulfill their lexicographical role on condition that the supposed needs of the target users are primarily related to their age. A systematic vocabulary representation should otherwise take into account extremely heterogeneous language skills & learning necessities, a task which the mentioned dictionaries are not suited to perform. As far as English is concerned, the lexicographical treatment of relevant phenomena such as borrowings or the linguistic interaction with Italian is often confined to matters of technical terminology. As expected, the selected bilingual dictionaries fail to mention those varieties of the English language which have been recently gaining importance due to globalization, geographical mobility & the rapid expansion of new media. The dynamic sociolinguistic development of English contrasts with the fact that Italian learners' lexicography is still clinging to the mainstream methodological tradition of common bilingual dictionaries. This aspect turns out to be particularly problematic in the case of advanced learner's dictionaries. Furthermore, we pointed out the tendency, present in some publisher's advertising, towards a distinction between dictionaries & other educational materials, a tendency which can be explained by the attempt to make dictionaries available to the widest public possible. As a matter of fact, whenever lexicographical data selection provides insufficient data coverage the support of more flexible educational resources is required. The lack of differentiated responses to specific learning necessities characterizes present lexicography in Italy, contributing to the fact that only few texts can be regarded as genuine learners' dictionaries. Adapted from the source document