The British Empire through the eyes of lexicography

Seminar paper from the year 2003 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: 1,0, Otto-von-Guericke-University Magdeburg (Institut für fremdsprachliche Philologien), course: The British Empire, language: English, abstract: This paper is the attempt to combine the fascinating fields of cultural studies and linguistics with the following question in mind: How do contemporary monolingual English dictionaries deal with and define terms such as colony, colonialism, empire and imperialism? - concepts that we inevitably associate with the British Empire. Thousands of books and articles have been written on Britain's colonial past. Therefore, it is not my design to discover something unexplored or to present new theories but to scrutinise the way lexicographers handle 'imperial' vocabulary. To this end, a number of dictionary entries had been analysed for their wording and accessibility. It should be noted that this paper was written on the basis of predominantly general, non-technical references, hoping to make different lines of thinking easier.

Otto-von-Guericke Universität Magdeburg (D) University of Nottingham (UK)