General remarks on the dictionary findings

intelligence, although some dictionaries have left them without a warning of negative attitude.

Some of these dictionaries do, however, provide currency labels with terms such as idiot.

Even though the most frequently labelled terms all denote low intelligence of some degree, the rest of the terms on the list are not evenly labelled according to their meaning or whether they are outdated or not. For example, very general terms such as mad and crazy, terms referring to specific mental illnesses and their impact on behaviour such as neurotic, and finally, some slang terms such as schizo and nuts are all among the least labelled terms. In addition, some of them are considered outdated, some not. The differences in the numbers of labels applied to the terms also suggests that, as Norri (2000, 84) also notes, unlike attitude, style is not strictly related to offensiveness. It is apparent that labelling of the terms, and pejoration in general, is primarily determined by other factors than style. The most and the least offensive terms include examples of slang expressions, and on the other hand,

stylistically more unmarked terms.

Finally, although labels are apparently not applied randomly to different terms and there is some indication as to which terms are regarded as the most offensive, there are still vast differences between dictionaries. Retard is the only term which is fully agreed upon.

The labelling of individual terms does not seem to be dictated by the type or the country of publication of the dictionaries. None of the terms seem to be considered offensive only in North America, or only in Britain. British learner’s dictionaries do, however, label crazy while other dictionaries do not. Nevertheless, this can hardly be considered a regional difference as OALD also labels crazy as being especially North-American English.

show that from a general perspective, the learner’s dictionaries do not use labels more often than general purpose dictionaries. However, British learner’s dictionaries, which are targeted at non-native speakers, use labels more frequently than American collegiate dictionaries and British general purpose dictionaires. It is likely that the target audience explains why

COBUILD and OALD label words more frequently than them, and are also the only

dictionaries providing example sentences. Yet, it is the American general purpose dictionaries which indicate attitude more often than American learner’s dictionaries and British general purpose dictionaries. As the above already suggest, like the type of the dictionary, the country of publication is not necessarily a determining factor in terms of labelling in general.

The British general purpose dictionaries both seem to avoid unnecessary labelling, and both dictionaries label the most offensive term retard. These dictionaries only use separate usage labels to indicate attitude, with offensive used in both dictionaries and derogatory in ChD. Both dictionaries also provide currency labels with the medical senses, and especially in COED, stylistic labels are common with the extended senses. In ChD the extended sense is sometimes excluded, while COED sometimes excludes either one of the senses. In these dictionaries, labelling of attitude is rare but not entirely odd for general purpose dictionaries. The two dictionaries clearly rely on the previous knowledge of the reader, and expect the definitions themselves to provide the relevant information. However, some problematic issues were pointed out about the defining policies of these works.

Compared to the British general purpose dictionaries, the two American

publications rarely exclude one of the two senses altogether. Moreover, they use labels often, especially with the words most commonly labelled by all dictionaries. Both dictionaries use the label offensive, and indications of attitude within the definitions are common. In AHD, offensive is only found with words which are also labelled slang, while stylistically neutral terms have an indiction of attitude inside the definition. In EWE the labels insult and highly

offensive are also used. Insult is only found with extended senses, implying that they are used in a more deliberately insulting manner. The use of highly offensive is particularly interesting in EWE, as it is applied to terms not labelled by any other dictionary. As opposed to all other dictionaries, besides MWC, EWE and AHD also use frequency adverbials with some terms.

Generally speaking, labelling in AHD is fairly reasonable, and compared to its British

counterparts, more informative for the user. EWE, on the other hand, is definitely informative, but could also be criticised of an overuse of labels.

The British learner’s dictionaries use labels frequently. In total COBUILD labels the majority of the terms, while OALD has indications of attitude in half the entries. The label offensive is used in both, and COBUILD also uses a special pragmatic label, disapproval, for terms which are either offensive or merely disapproving. In COBUILD, the label offensive is more sparingly used. The selection of terms labelled offensive is somewhat surprising, however, as for example moron is labelled offensive but idiot is not. COBUILD does, however, have a very usage oriented defining style, and along with OALD, it is among the only dictionaries using example sentences with the terms. Also, COBUILD often excludes outdated medical senses, which are perhaps thought as irrelevant for learners of English or not often found in the corpus which COBUILD is based on. OALD uses, besides offensive, labels within the definitions, and separate usage notes. While information on attitude seems to be adequate in general in OALD, the application of different indications of attitude, especially with the label offensive and labels inside the definition, seems slightly inconsistent in some cases. Finally, both OALD and COBUILD use currency and stylistic labels quite frequently.

Of the two American learner’s dictionaries, NWC stands out as only one term, retard, is given an indication of attitude. Compared to the other three American dictionaries, including MWC, the lack of indications of attitude is highly surprising. The dictionary does, however, apply currency and style labels to the terms. MWC, on the other hand, labels the

most commonly labelled terms, and is fairly similar to OALD as regards the frequency of labelling, although the former is targeted at native speakers. What is special about its labelling policy, however, is that all labels are accompanied by frequency adverbials, perhaps to

emphasize the context dependency of offensiveness. Also, an interesting observation was made concerning MWC: there has been an increase of labels, as terms not labelled in the previous edition now receive labels.