LEARNERS DICTIONARIES AS CULTURE INTERMEDIARIES. A STUDY BASED ON MONOLINGUAL DICTIONARIES OF GERMAN AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE (German title - below)

(Title in German - LERNERWÖRTERBÜCHER ALS KULTURVERMITTLER. EINE UNTERSUCHUNG ANHAND EINSPRACHIGER WÖRTERBÜCHER DES DEUTSCHEN ALS FREMDSPRACHE). The present paper aims to investigate whether the selected monolingual dictionaries of German as a foreign language can be treated as bridges between cultures. First, the authoress discusses the significance of culture in foreign language teaching and in lexicography (with special reference to pedagogical lexicography), and then she analyses the front matter, the back matter as well as the middle matter of the seven reference works. As results from the analysis, only some dictionaries (LDaF, PBDaF) in fact provide the user with information on the culture of German-speaking countries. A fully-fledged assessment of the dictionaries, however, can only be arrived at following a more comprehensive study that would take into account other elements of lexicographic description, primarily definitions and illustrative examples.