A Functional Approach to User Guides

A Functional Approach to User Guides Sandro Nielsen Centre for Lexicography Aarhus School of Business A1lmost every gadget or household appliance we buy today .comes with instructions for its use. These products all share the same feature, namely that they have been made to be used for particular purposes, and often in particular situations. Furthermore, the producers want us, the buyers, to use their products in a way that best fulfils our needs, so they have done studies diat identify which functions their products must have to satisfy customer needs. Even generic products that have the same general purpose come with their own instructions because they have different practical functions. If I want to operate my DVD player, I need to read the instructions that came widi it, but diose instructions do not automatically enable me to operate my neighbour's DVD player of a different make. The two DVD players have the same generic purpose but have been designed differendy; one has fewer buttons on the front panel than die odier; one has more functions than the other, etc.; in situations like these, we need good instructions that enable us to get the most out of our gadgets and appliances. Dictionaries are lexicographic reference works that can be used for various purposes and in more or less well-defined situations. The typical user is likely to consult a monolingual dictionary in connection with reading and understanding a text, whereas the bilingual dictionary helps the user translate a text. In recent years lexicographic scholars have realized the importance of use instructions in dictionaries, and some even argue that the user guide is the second most important component in a dictionary after the wordlist (see, e.g., Kirkpatrick 1989; Landau 2001, 149). With the advent of Internet dictionaries, good user guides may be even more important seen from the user's Dictionaries:Journal oftheDictionary Society ofNorth America 27 (2006), 1-20 Sandro Nielsen point of view, because of the large use potential of online dictionaries compared to their printed cousins. For instance, the Merriam-Webster's CollegiateDictionary (11th edition, 2004: all subsequent references are to this edition) contains a 15-page text explaining how to use the dictionary . In this paper I will attempt to identify the functions of dictionaries and discuss the impact that these have on the carefully planned dictionary and how a functional approach to dictionary making may affect the preparation of user guides, or the "how-to-effectively-use-thisdictionary " sections, in printed and electronic dictionaries. Identifying Dictionary Functions Some of the best discussions of user guides are found in Kirkpatrick (1989) and in Bergenholtz and Tarp (1995). The latter contains a description and discussion that sets a high standard for user guides in specialized dictionaries as well as general dictionaries. It deals with the two main issues of this dictionary component or section, namely the types of information (or rather data) included in the dictionary and the presentation of the information, and it relates these issues to the needs of the user (Bergenholtz and Tarp 1995, 170-176). The chapter convincingly states that "the purpose of the user's guide is to provide the user with a tool for ready access to the information contained in the dictionary," and the guide should answer the following questions (Bergenholtz and Tarp 1995, 170): • Which information may be found in which components? • How has this information been systematized, i.e., grouped, placed, arranged? • How is the information provided in the individual components interrelated? • Which is the quickest and easiest access to the required information ? However, neither Kirkpatrick (1989) nor Bergenholtz and Tarp (1995) discuss dictionary functions or relate the user guide to functions . Before identifying the functions of dictionaries and relating them to the user guide, it should be pointed out that these functions are different from those of household appliances: dictionary functions are not mechanical or technical functions. Nevertheless, they play a part in designing and using dictionaries. A Functional Approach to User Guides In general, lexicographers should study the human activities mat dieir dictionaries have been designed to address. This will be in line with the trend found in most subject fields, where both researchers and producers...