Output details

Picture this: how illustrations define dictionaries

The research considers a body of dictionaries that employ illustrations from the 1850s to the present day, and is the first to cover this field. Drawing on an understanding of printing technologies and on a wider view of the history of the design of printed dictionaries developed in Luna’s earlier research, it proposes that illustrations play a key role in providing both concrete information for the reader through elucidating definitions, and also contextual information through their style of drawing, choice of content, and the degree to which they attract the reader to the text. In particular, the survey considers the difference between distributing individual illustrations through the text of the dictionary and grouping illustrations into larger synoptic illustrations; the reuse of illustrations; the graphic style of illustrations; and the role of illustrations in ‘feature-led’ dictionary marketing. It is argued that recent English-language teaching dictionaries have been particularly innovative and graphically successful in their approach to illustration.