Culture in Contrastive Lexicographical Prospects

Abstract

The present paper reports on the problems of culture elements representation in a bilingual dictionary. It is proved that cultural information on a realia is necessary for a dictionary definition. Taking into account cultural value of a feature the following elements of a realia description should be present in a bilingual dictionary: a) attributes (appearance, components, traditions); b) estimation; c) historical markedness (time of usage, actions); d) social status (functions); e) function (purpose, role); f) popularity / unpopularity of a realia; g) symbolic meaning. The article emphasizes the importance to represent the culture of the indigenous people. Certain comments will depend on the proximity of cultures of the languages compared. The article shows, that during lexicographical processing of culture elements for a bilingual dictionary, information selected should be defined by cognitive and contrastive principles to estimate knowledge of a dictionary user and help people of two different cultures understand each other.