The dilemma of grammatical data in travel dictionaries

Abstract

Travel dictionaries are edited with a view to helping international tourists with no or very little previous knowledge of the foreign language. They aim to solve communicative problems in a number of specific situations in which tourists wish to engage in conversation. However, they also have to deal with the absence of the necessary listening and speaking skills of their users. The lexicographic information is normally twofold, as it includes a selection of relevant words and sentences as well as a selection of the grammatical rules that govern the integration of these words and sentences into tourist conversation - from words to utterances so to speak. In this article, we will focus on the selection and presentation of the grammatical data in order to investigate how they contribute to the fulfilment of their primary functions. Our thesis is that the grammatical data have to deal with a dilemma: helping tourists understand and be understood during a conversation while also helping them acquire some basic knowledge of the grammatical system of the foreign language.