Le traitement lexicographique du vocabulaire politique Trois études de cas: Nationalisme, nationaliste et nation

Abstract

Our study builds on the metalexicographical studies devoted to the ideological representations contained within dictionaries. While the myth of objectivity of the dictionary keeps prevailing in the general public, many researchers are striving to deconstruct it. Their studies have helped depicting the sometimes subjective nature of the dictionary, particularly when describing the lexicon related to certain topics such as sexuality, religion or politics. Therefore, as part of our study, we wished to confirm the assumption, commonly accepted by researchers in the field, according to which the dictionary conveys ideological representations and subjectivity. The primary objective of our study was to explore and compare the lexicographical treatment of three terms pertaining to politics: nationalism, nationalist and nation, in six standard monolingual dictionaries of three important languages throughout the world, i.e. German, English and French. The dictionaries chosen for this study are: the Deutsches Universalworterbuch (or Duden), Wahrig's Deutsches Worterbuch, the Canadian Oxford Dictionary, the Random House Webster's Dictionary of the English Language, Le Petit Robert and Le Petit Larousse. We have chosen words from the political field since it is considered by many researchers to be conducive of ideological representations. Moreover, the analyses deal with four microstructural components: definitions, examples, usage labels and cross-references. Our second objective was to establish, in the light of the studies carried out, whether the concepts of nation, nationalism and nationalist are addressed objectively in the dictionaries related to the corpus or, on the contrary, whether their treatment lets a certain ideology show through. At the completion of our study, we were indeed able to observe a certain subjectivity in the lexicographical treatment suggested for the concepts of nationalism, nationalist and nation in some of the dictionaries related to the corpus.