Inside information : Specialized vocabulary in general-language dictionaries as exemplified by English and Polish equestrian terms

Abstract

The paper aims to discuss the presence and description quality of specialized vocabulary in popular general-language dictionaries. The research herein was carried out by checking selected equestrian terms in English and Polish general-language dictionaries. The results confirm the insufficient state of terminological and lexicographic works on specialized vocabulary as exemplified by this particular subject field: more specialized terms are simply absent, while the specialized meaning of those which also function as general-language words is not mentioned. Moreover, the few definitions present are often imprecise and contain subject matter mistakes. This complies with the difficulties in using LGP products as sources of LSP language and translation aids, such as poor quality of terms and deep nesting of terms in the entries. Therefore, the paper encourages contrastive work on specialized languages, especially those which have thus far enjoyed little attention in linguistics and related disciplines such as lexicography.