Towards a framework for the description and evaluation of dictionary evaluation criteria

Abstract

The reviewing of dictionaries is a time-honoured praxis, but reviewers have often been criticized for only describing the design features of the dictionaries under review and not evaluating these features, for narrowing their reviews down to one or two subjectively chosen design features, and for not explicating their evaluation criteria or indicating their validity. Improving the quality of dictionary reviews is a task that has been delegated to dictionary criticism as a component of metalexicography. In this article, it is proposed that a first step in this direction would be to devise for each dictionary type a set of comprehensive, objective, valid, generally accepted, and operationalizable evaluation criteria. To this end, a general framework for the description and evaluation of dictionary evaluation criteria is developed in this article, using parameters from research on dictionary criticism and the usability of websites.