Problemy definiowania jednostek metatekstowych w słowniku. Między przyjaznością a naukowością
Problems of Defining Metatextual Units. Between Scientificity and Friendliness

Summary/Abstract: The article derives from a need to create rules of defining for the whole language spectrum. The authors are convinced that constraining to rules applying only to one of the language levels is as the result not suitable for describing a language at all. Trying to respond to the mentioned need, the authors provide a catalogue of mistakes appearing in definitions of metatextual language units. These mistakes fall into two main categories: the mistakes well described in lexicographical literature, however showing themselves differently when it comes to metalanguage units and the mistakes characteristic only for language units from metalanguage level. Analysing the mistakes allows the authors to refer to one of a most discussed issues in modern lexicography – whether a dictionary should be scientific or friendly. What the authors believe is that a definition that follows strict rules (namely: 1) what is defined is a real language unit, 2) a definition is built accordingly to the latest linguistic knowledge, 3) and with the use of an a priori chosen metalanguage, 4) a definition itself is adequate, 5) and is created on a basis of a source documentation) is scientific. Therefore so called friendliness – if is meant not to falsify the real picture of a language – can be chosen only to present results of scientific activity as described above. Friendliness equated with being kind and evoking positive emotions, as often used in metalexicography, is nothing more than a publicity stunt which has nothing to do with science.

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