Multilingual lexicographphical prototypes in action

What is it about?

Translating word as simple equivalents is easy, and sometimes you do not even need to translate as only need slight spelling variations when discussing 'Europe'. Behind this naive approach to language is polysemy within a language and utterly different interpretations of the words leading to the dangerous situation where you think you know what the others mean, but don't. Europe is polysemic with wide range of interlocking and often conflictual meanings. Corpus analysis sets out to show this whilst multilingual lexicographical prototypes, based on monolingual work by Hanks, shows how others actually interpret a word.

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Why is it important?

Methodologically, this is important and being the first clear statement of how multilingual prototypes can help translingual understanding. As regards the content, it show the dangers of simplistic notions meaning and the geometrical variability of meanings of a key word as Europe. It also shows how perspectives can change rapidly over time so that central Europe is seen as a positive element with Eastern Europe being simply ex-communist. It shows how the press uses one or another to send a message of potential market (before the crash) to the second as threat though unemployment (after the crash)

Perspectives