Academic Journal of Modern Philology

doi: 10.34616/ajmp.2025.26.3

ISSN 2299–7164

Vol. 26 (2025)

Special Issue

Open Access. Published by Committee for Philology of the Polish Academy of Sciences, Wrocław Branch and College for Interdisciplinary Studies, University of Wrocław. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Perrine Ciraud-Lanoue

University of Limoges, Research Centre for Semiotics (CeReS)

perrine.ciraud-lanoue@unilim.fr

ORCID: 0009-0009-2775-5271

Dictionaries of Publishing: Analysis of the Contribution of their Paratext to their Role as Bridging Tools
between the General Language and the Specialised Language of Publishing1

Abstract

This paper examines the paratext of a corpus of a dozen English-language dictionaries of publishing. Focusing on what this paratext reveals about the scope of study, the profile of the authors, the intended readership, and the objectives of the authors, the analysis shows how paratextual elements, such as the preface or back cover blurb, shed light not only on the specialised domain of publishing and related specialised community, but also on the relationship between the terms included and their users. Consequently, it is argued that the paratext of the dictionaries studied participates in reinforcing their role in bridging the gap between the specialised language of publishing and general language.

Keywords: specialised dictionaries, dictionaries of publishing, specialised language, dictionarisation, paratext

Introduction

In his introduction to a collection of essays entitled What Editors Do, Peter Ginna, a veteran editor and publisher, remarks on the “[irony] that publishing, a business whose essence is words, has some of the loosest, most confusing, and most contradictory terminology of any industry [he] knows” (2017: 2). Such a comment is not uncommon in the literature about publishing, and therefore it should not come as a surprise that dispelling some of that confusion would be explicitly mentioned as one of the objectives behind the compilation of many dictionaries of publishing terms (henceforth referred to as dictionaries of publishing).

Dictionaries of publishing are specialised dictionaries, a type of dictionary that John Humbley defines as follows:

Specialised dictionaries are defined (…) by the specialised nature of the subjects they treat, focusing on particular subject fields, professional practices or even leisure activities (…) with the aim of helping the user to acquire specialised knowledge, read specialised texts or engage in specialised translation. (2017: 317)

However, these are not the only reasons for taking an interest in specialised dictionaries. As argued by Olga Menagarishvili (2020), dictionaries, whether general or specialised, play a powerful role in our society as key instruments in the creation and legitimation of knowledge. This is especially relevant for specialised communities, which dictionaries actively contribute to establishing “through standardization, signalling that members of such or such group use (descriptive) or should use (prescriptive) the language the way it is defined in the dictionary” (Menagarishvili 2020: §8). As a result, specialised dictionaries not only constitute precious “entry points in the process of characterising this specialised language, [by] provid[ing] access to its lexical specificities” (Cartron 2019: §2), they also provide valuable insights into the specialised community itself by including some of its “cultural and institutional features” (2019: §٤٩). What is more, Michel Van der Yeught shows that specialised dictionaries can be considered as “helpful indicators of the emergence and evolution of [specialised languages]” (2018: §41). He explains that “there comes a time when some languages specialise out of general conversation and the need for specialised word-books, glossaries and dictionaries appears” (2016b: §47). This he calls the dictionarisation process, a key criterion in formally establishing the existence of a specialised language (Van der Yeught 2012: 17; 2016a: §29). Indeed, such publications as specialised dictionaries and glossaries “shed light on the necessity to make specialised terms and concepts accessible to non-specialists, [thus] revealing the underlying need to bridge the gap between specialised and general languages” (Cartron 2019: §2).

Specialised dictionaries are therefore highly relevant for the study of a specialised language, and one feature in particular is of significant interest in understanding their role as bridging tools between the general language and that specialised language: the paratext. Coined by Gérard Genette ([in:] Genette 1982), the term paratext2 refers to the textual elements – author’s name, title, preface, illustrations, etc. – that accompany the text itself, framing it and presenting it ([1987] 1991: 261). As Ruslana Dovhanchyna points out, “paratext is a term initially used in literary interpretation, but G. Genette’s concept has proven to be productive in other fields than literary studies” (2021: 2), including in analyses of specialised dictionaries (see for instance Cartron 2019; Menagarishvili 2020; Trovato 2012). Where these are concerned, paratextual elements – most notably the preface and the blurbs on the flaps and/or back cover – serve, among other purposes, to outline the author’s and publisher’s intentions in publishing such a book and to delineate the scope of study and profile of intended users. This makes the paratext instrumental for specialised dictionaries to find their readership; hence the essential role it can play in their commercial success (Trovato 2012: 59–60). Because they are revelatory of the strategies underlying the conception of a specialised dictionary and aimed at ensuring it is received as intended (Genette [1987] 1991: 261–262), paratextual elements constitute a valuable source of information about the specialised domain3 and community.

This paper analyses some of the paratextual elements of a corpus of English-language publishing dictionaries published over the last fifty years. The study of these elements is particularly relevant here given the heterogeneous nature of the corpus, which therefore does not lend itself to a systematic comparison of entries. Indeed, it makes it possible to identify commonalities, which not only paint a picture of the specialised domain of publishing and related specialised community, but also offer insights into certain aspects of the relationship between publishing terms and their users.

1. Presentation of the Corpus

The corpus consists of a total of 12 dictionaries. It was constituted by performing a search in the online catalogue of the British Library (cf. https://explore.bl.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do [date of access: 15 09 2023]) using the keywords publishing and dictionary in combination and refining the results by subject (“Publishers and publishing – Dictionaries” and “Printing and publishing – Dictionaries”). As shown in Table 1, the oldest dictionary in the corpus was published in 19764 and the newest as recently as 2019. The corpus thus spans a period of 43 years.

Table 1. Overview of the corpus

Title

Author(s)

Date of publication

Nb of pages

Nb of entries

A Pocket Dictionary of Publishing Terms

Henry Jacob

1976

70

Over 600

The Dictionary of Publishing

David M. Brownstone

Irene M. Franck

1982

302

Over 2,400

Printing and Publishing Terms

Martin H. Manser

1988

140

About 1,300

(Pocket Glossary of) Publishing Terms

Tony Feldman

1988

156

About 1,300

Bodian’s Publishing Desk Reference

Nat G. Bodian

1988

439

Nearly 4,000

Dictionary of Printing and Publishing

/

1989

277

About 5,000

The Blueprint Dictionary of Printing and Publishing

John Peacock

Michael Barnard

1990

280

Over 3,500

The Blueprint Electronic Publishing Glossary

Michael Card

Tony Feldman

1992

152

About 1,350

Dictionary of Printing and Publishing 2nd edition

/

1997

351

Over 9,000

Dictionary of Printing and Publishing 2nd edition

John Peacock

Michael Barnard

2000

216

Over 6,500

Dictionary of Publishing and Printing 3rd edition

/

2006

305

Over 8,000

A Dictionary of Publishing (Oxford Quick Reference)

Adrian Bullock

Chris Jennings

Nicola Timbrell

2019

/5

Over 260

With half the books in the corpus published between 1988 and 1992, it seems that the publication of dictionaries of publishing peaked at the end of the 1980s and beginning of the 1990s. The books published during this period turn out to be quite diverse in nature:

Printing and Publishing Terms (1988) and The Pocket Glossary of Publishing Terms (1988) are very basic, with only a limited number of entries, in keeping with the fact that they are both presented as “compact”6 or “quick”7 reference guides. The main reason why they are included in the corpus is that their mere existence is indicative of the multiplication of such publications at the time.

Bodian’s Publishing Desk Reference (1988) and The Blueprint Electronic Publishing Glossary (1992), on the other hand, stand out because they have a much more specialised focus than the other dictionaries in the corpus, on “book marketing and bookselling”8 for the former, on “technological terms most used in the printing and publishing industries”9 for the latter. Still, both are expressly presented as publishing dictionaries, hence their inclusion in the corpus.

Finally, The Dictionary of Printing and Publishing (1989) and The Blueprint Dictionary of Printing and Publishing (1990) are more representative of the rest of the corpus. Both are distinguished for having been republished in subsequent editions. A second edition of The Dictionary of Printing and Publishing was published in 1997 and a third in 2006, under the title The Dictionary of Publishing and Printing, so with printing and publishing reversed. Both the second and the third editions have been included in the corpus. Also included is The Dictionary of Printing and Publishing, the second edition of The Blueprint Dictionary of Printing and Publishing (1990), which was published in 2000. Blueprint was dropped from the title when the imprint disappeared after Pira International bought its list.

The number of pages and, more significantly, the number of entries per dictionary indicate that the three editions of The Dictionary of Printing and Publishing (1989, 1997, 2006) are the most comprehensive with as many as 9,000 entries in the 1997 edition. The second edition of The Blueprint Dictionary of Printing and Publishing (2000) also appears to be fairly complete with around 6,500 entries. The newest dictionary in the corpus, A Dictionary of Publishing (2019), only contains some 260 entries – not even half as many as the oldest dictionary, the Pocket Dictionary of Publishing Terms (1976) – but it should not come as a surprise since it is part of Oxford’s online Quick Reference series. It therefore aims to offer “information on key terms and concepts” (cf. https://explore.bl.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do [date of access: 15 09 2023]) while the Pocket Dictionary of Publishing Terms (1976) strives to provide short definitions of as many terms as possible within the constraints of its very compact format.

Table 2 presents the general structure of the different dictionaries in the corpus, which gives a useful indication about some of the paratextual elements present in each of them.

Table 2. Structure of the dictionaries

Dictionary

Structure

A Pocket Dictionary of Publishing Terms (1976)

Preface

Acknowledgements

Foreword

Entries

Short bibliography

The Dictionary of Publishing (1982)

Preface

Entries

Appendix

Printing and Publishing Terms (1988)

Preface

Entries

Appendix

(Pocket Glossary of) Publishing Terms (1988)

Introduction

Entries

Bodian’s Publishing Desk Reference (1988)

Contents

Preface

Entries

Appendices

Index of Names, Titles, Companies and Organizations

Dictionary of Printing and Publishing (1989)

Preface

Entries

Supplement

The Blueprint Dictionary of Printing and Publishing (1990)

Introduction

Acknowledgements

Entries

The Blueprint Electronic Publishing Glossary (1992)

Introduction

Acknowledgements

Entries

Dictionary of Printing and Publishing 2nd edition (1997)

Preface to the first edition

Preface to the second edition

Entries

Supplement

Dictionary of Printing and Publishing 2nd edition (2000)

Introduction

Entries

Appendices

Dictionary of Publishing and Printing 3rd edition (2006)

Preface

Pronunciation guide

Entries

Supplements

(Oxford Quick Reference) A Dictionary of Publishing (2019)

How to search for terms

Alphabetical list of entries

Contents

Preface

List of entries by subject

Entries

Bibliography

All dictionaries include at least a preface or an introduction. These vary greatly in length, from just a few lines for all three editions of the Dictionary of Printing and Publishing (1989, 1997, 2006) to up to three full pages for Bodian’s Publishing Desk Reference (1988). This text usually repeats elements from the blurb that is almost systematically found on the back cover10 while adding to them or elaborating on them. Some of the dictionaries in the corpus11 were published as hardbacks with a dust jacket, in which case additional blurbs can be found on the flaps. As can be noted, a number of them also include appendices or supplements, and two even provide the reader with a bibliography.

As stated in the introduction, for the purpose of this study, the focus has been placed on what has been deemed the most interesting elements of the paratext of the dictionaries in the corpus. They are the preface (or introduction), the back cover blurb and the flap blurbs where present.

2. Scope of Study

One of the most important types of information supplied by the paratext concerns the scope of study of each publication. For instance, the Pocket Dictionary of Publishing (1976) announces on both its front and back covers that it defines and explains terms used “in the preparation, production and distribution of books,” thus putting the term book on centre stage, while the term publishing remains in the background as it is only mentioned at the end of the list of all the areas covered12. This dictionary is the only one in the corpus to place the main focus on the book in such a manner.

The Dictionary of Publishing (1982) aims at being far more comprehensive, as signalled by the use of the adjective thorough in the presentation that features on its front flap. Its preface begins by stressing the specific nature of publishing terminology, stating that it includes “terms drawn from the special language of publishing13,” an expression that echoes the sentence “publishing has a language of its own” which is found on the front flap. The scope of study is far wider since the authors have made the decision to include numerous terms from related fields such as “printing, journalism, art, photography, computer science, sales, marketing, and bookselling.” But they specify that such terms, for instance relating to old and rare books or new technologies, are only defined “as they relate to the publishing process” and that only the library terms “most often encountered by people involved in the publishing process” have been included.

The Dictionary of Printing and Publishing (1989), too, aims at being comprehensive as indicated by the use of this very adjective in the preface to its first edition. Its back cover also emphasizes the wide range of areas it covers14 and its preface draws attention to the presence of terms and expressions from “other allied trades.” Most interesting is the fact that after the addition of “electronic publishing, multimedia publishing and publishing on the internet” to the list of areas covered on the back cover of the second edition, the third edition moves all the examples most closely related to the work of the editor to the front of that list15. This choice seems consistent with the inversion of printing and publishing in the title of the dictionary mentioned earlier.

Although Oxford’s Dictionary of Publishing (2019) only contains some 260 entries, it too claims to be comprehensive. However, both its “List of Entries by Subject” and its preface suggest a narrower focus, in so far as it does not concern itself with related or allied fields, but only with the different aspects of how the contemporary publishing industry works. From that perspective, the way the “List of Entries by Subject” is structured is quite informative in itself, each “subject” corresponding to a sub-domain, specific function or particular process. They are:

authorship

business and finance

design

digital

distribution and bookselling

editorial

environmental

legal

printing and binding

production and manufacture

sales and marketing

sector or genre

typography

workflow

Finally, Bodian’s Publishing Desk Reference (1988) offers an even narrower focus, as suggested by its subtitle: “A Comprehensive Dictionary of Practices and Techniques for Book and Journal Marketing and Bookselling.” Both the front flap blurb and preface elaborate on it, providing the user with an extremely detailed list16 of all the functions and processes involved in the rather specific area of publishing this publication covers.

All the elements of information supplied by the paratext thus allow readers to apprehend the full complexity of the domain of publishing and enable them to acquaint themselves with the many facets of the publisher’s work and the close links with related fields that this work involves. In doing so, paratextual elements participate in the delineation of the specialised domain of publishing by providing some clarification as to what does or does not belong to it, thereby introducing what could be considered an onomasiological point of view that somewhat counterbalances the semasiological approach of the dictionary proper, as suggested by one of the reviewers of this paper. Moreover, the fact that the term book is only granted prominence in the paratext of the oldest dictionary in the corpus confirms the shift in perspective within the specialised community alluded to earlier (cf. note 5), which concerns the way this community views and defines itself. This shift in perspective can be correlated with the use of the term industry on the back cover and/or preface of most of the dictionaries in the corpus.

3. Profile of Authors

The different paratextual elements also provide information about the authors of the dictionaries that constitute the corpus. Some are seasoned publishing professionals, having worked at one or several publishing houses in different capacities for decades17. Others have a less specialised profile, with experience not only in the publishing sector, but in other sectors as well; for instance, in business and finance (as is the case of David Brownstone, which could explain why The Dictionary of Publishing (1982) includes numerous terms encountered in those fields) or teaching as is the case of Henry Jacob18. The latter also happens to have done some research in linguistics, which makes him the author with the most eclectic background. Quite a few of the compilers have also authored other books on a variety of printing and publishing subjects19. Finally, it should be noted that all three of the authors of Oxford’s Dictionary of Publishing (2019) – Adrian Bullock, Chris Jennings and Nicola Timbrell – are, or were, lecturers on the publishing course at Oxford Brookes University, thus tying this particular dictionary to the field of Publishing Studies, a field which has considerably developed in the last twenty years or so (Baverstock 2020a: 2) and has now firmly established itself as an academic discipline in its own right (Baverstock 2020b: 450)20. All in all, even though the authors’ degree of expertise varies between the different publications, this expertise cannot be denied. It is what guarantees that the content of these dictionaries is accurate and authentic, and gives them both their credibility and their legitimacy (Cartron 2019: §27). Hence the fact that this expertise is systematically highlighted in the paratext, as part of the “commercial strategy meant to attract the potential reader’s attention” (ibid.).

4. Profile of Intended Users

As emphasized by Audrey Cartron, “specialised dictionaries (…) aim to make specialised content accessible” (2019: §32). Where our corpus is concerned, to whom is more or less explicitly stated in the paratext of most dictionaries, even in the most basic such as Printing and Publishing Terms (1988). The exact wording may vary but it makes it clear that the intended users of these publications are mainly current or future members of the specialised community, that is to say experts or future experts of the domain. There is thus a definite division of the target readership into two distinct but closely related “classes of user”21. Only one dictionary, Oxford’s Dictionary of Publishing (2019), is less restrictive, mentioning a third class of intended users, people who are simply “interested in (…) publishing today.”

Two dictionaries stand out, that provide very detailed lists of intended users: The Dictionary of Publishing (1982) and Bodian’s Publishing Desk Reference (1988).

Table 3. Lists of intended users

(1982)

“publishers, authors, secretaries, copywriters, editors, sales and marketing representatives, agents, printers, production staff and anyone else involved in the publishing industry” (back flap)

“all those directly involved in the publishing process, including authors, journalists, free-lance writers, editors, publishers, artists, printers, compositors, sellers, marketers, administrators, administrative assistants, word processors, and those on the business-handling side of publishing” (Preface: v)

“many others who need to know the language of publishing, including librarians, students, teachers, and the many professional practitioners concerned with publishing matters” (Preface: v–vi)

(1988)

“publishers, editors, copywriters and creative staff, sales rep and college travellers, booksellers and book outlets, wholesalers and jobbers, independent distributors, literary agents, librarians, mailing houses, printers, mailing lists sources, trade and professional associations, advertisers and their agents, catalog houses, information specialists” (back cover)

As can be seen in Table 3, The Dictionary of Publishing’s presentation of its target readership reads like an inventory of the different professionals that make up the publishing industry, coupled with a no less exhaustive catalogue of experts in related fields. However, although the list is long, there is no doubt that the target readership is made up solely of experts and professionals and does not include the general public. As for Bodian’s Publishing Desk Reference, its presentation of the intended users, too, is akin to an inventory, not only of publishing professionals per se, but also of all the professionals involved in the marketing and dissemination of books. The paratext of both dictionaries thus contributes to defining the specialised community of publishing by specifying who its members are.

5. Objectives and the Dictionarisation Process

Finally, with descriptions of the objectives of the authors in compiling their dictionaries, the paratext offers yet another essential piece of information. Although they are often expressed fairly succinctly, these self-assigned objectives can prove quite enlightening as illustrated by the following passage from the preface of Oxford’s Dictionary of Publishing (2019):

There is, therefore, a perceived need for an authoritative and broad-scoped body of content that is able to provide someone interested in, someone studying, or someone working in publishing today with easy access to an understanding of how the publishing industry operates at the beginning of the twenty-first century.

The QR Dictionary of Publishing has been compiled to fill this gap; (…).

It explicitly emphasizes the notion that access to the specialised domain of publishing is neither a given nor straightforward, and highlights the need to facilitate such access. With the phrase “an authoritative and broad-scoped body of content,” the authors claim that role for their publication.

A few of the other dictionaries in the corpus actually elaborate on those ideas, and even link them more or less directly to what we earlier referred to as the dictionarisation process. In their introduction to The Blueprint Dictionary of Printing and Publishing (1990), Barnard and Peacock explain that their “intention is to enable the reader to understand what the trade generally means by a term.” The italics are theirs and show that they fully acknowledge the domain’s specialisedness22 and firmly place their dictionary within it.

The Pocket Dictionary of Publishing Terms (1976) also recognizes the domain’s specialisedness since Jacob points out in the first lines of the preface that “the entries cover terms which publishers have made their own, often differing from or additional to their dictionary meanings,” adding that:

Language should be regarded as a living instrument of communication, (…) defining, ever more precisely, connotations which, out of context, might remain incomprehensible to those outside the industry and to many within it.

The specialised nature of the terms gathered in this dictionary is therefore emphasized unequivocally by its author, and so is the opacity that can derive from it.

Similar ideas are developed extensively in the introduction of The Blueprint Electronic Publishing Glossary (1992).

The majority of media professionals responsibly restrict the use of jargon to a reasonable level, but it remains a fact that use of technical terminology is frequently unavoidable, often essential and, indeed, is often employed as efficient verbal shorthand. It is also a fact that people understandably derive a sense of satisfaction from being ‘in the know’ and make full use of the technical terms of their discipline to draw attention to their expertise, forgetting sometimes to expand and explain when dealing with others less enlightened.

The point made by Michael Card and Tony Feldman is of crucial importance as what they refer to is the use of the specialised language of publishing as a “status indicator” (Van der Yeught 2018: §31). While those “in the know” as they call them, can “claim [that] they are members of [the] specialised community because they master its language code” (Van der Yeught 2018: §32), those “less enlightened,” who do not display the same fluency in the language (ibid.), suffer from a lack of status within that community. Since belonging to the specialised community comes with “rights, permissions and entitlements” (ibid.), novices need to learn the specialised language in order to progress in the community and improve their status. As is made quite clear by the paratextual elements we have examined, it is the role of specialised dictionaries to help them achieve that goal. Indeed, because they “create a bridge between specialised and general languages” (Cartron 2019: §29), they make specialised content accessible to all23.

Conclusion

As has been shown in this paper, analysing the paratext of dictionaries of publishing affords valuable insights into the specialised domain of publishing, to the delineation of which this paratext actively contributes. This is made possible by the fact that the authors of those dictionaries are all established members of the specialised community, a characteristic which is almost always put forward since the credibility and legitimacy of the dictionaries derive from it. The intended users, on the contrary, can be divided into two categories: on the one hand, experienced users of the specialised language who need to keep up with its evolution (Van der Yeught 2018: 32), and on the other hand novices who need to master it to gain full access to the specialised domain and its related specialised community.

By emphasizing the specialised nature of the language used in publishing, the paratext of dictionaries of publishing not only reasserts that English for Publishing is indeed a specialised variety of English, it also draws particular attention to the gap between that specialised language and general language. It thus reinforces the role of dictionaries of publishing in bridging that gap, in the process cementing the status of competent users of the terms as members of the specialised community.

References

Corpus

Bodian, Nat G. (1988) Bodian’s Publishing Desk Reference: A Comprehensive Dictionary of Practices and Techniques for Book and Journal Marketing and Bookselling. Phoenix: Oryx Press.

Brownstone, David M., Irene M. Franck (1982) The Dictionary of Publishing. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold Company.

Bullock, Adrian, Chris Jennings, Nicola Timbrell (2019) A Dictionary of Publishing (Oxford Quick Reference Online). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Card, Michael, Tony Feldman (1992) Blueprint Electronic Publishing Glossary. London: Blueprint.

Dictionary of Printing and Publishing (1989). Teddington: Peter Collin Publishing.

Dictionary of Printing and Publishing, 2nd edition (1997). Teddington: Peter Collin Publishing.

Dictionary of Publishing and Printing, 3rd edition (2006). London: A & C Black Publishers Ltd.

Feldman, Tony (1988) Publishing Terms. London: Blueprint.

Jacob, Henry (1976) A Pocket Dictionary of Publishing Terms. London: Macdonald and Jane’s Publishers Ltd.

Manser, Martin H. (1988) Printing and Publishing Terms. Edinburgh: W & R Chambers.

Peacock, John, Michael Barnard (1990) The Blueprint Dictionary of Printing and Publishing. London: Blueprint.

Peacock, John, Michael Barnard (2000) Dictionary of Printing and Publishing. Leatherhead: Pira International.

References

Baverstock, Alison (2020a) “Introduction.” [In:] Alison Baverstock, Richard Bradford, Madalena Gonzalez (eds.) Contemporary Publishing and the Culture of Books. Oxon: Routledge; 1–21.

Baverstock, Alison (2020b) “What Significance Does Publishing Studies Have Right Now?” [In:] Learned Publishing. Vol. 33(4); 449–452. Retrieved from: https://doi.org/10.1002/leap.1319 on 30 April 2024.

Bergenholtz, Henning, Sven Tarp (1995) Manual of Specialized Lexicography. The Preparation of Specialised Dictionaries. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

Bouyé, Manon, Fanny Domenec, Mathilde Gaillard, Claire Kloppmann-Lambert, Aude Labetoulle, Philippe Millot (2023) “L’anglais de spécialité en 30 mots.” [In:] ASp [online]. Vol. 84. Retrieved from: https://doi.org/10.4000/asp.8718 on 30 April 2024.

Cartron, Audrey (2019) “The Process of Dictionarisation in English for Police Purposes: Dictionaries, Glossaries and Encyclopaedias as Entry Points in the Specialised Language and Communities of Policing and Law Enforcement.” [In:] ASp [online]. Vol. 75. Retrieved from: https://doi.org/10.4000/asp.5842 on 15 September 2023.

Cop, Margaret (1989) “Linguistic and Encyclopedic Information not Included in the Dictionary Articles.” [In:] Franz Josef Hausmann, Oskar Reichmann, Herbert Ernst Wiegand, Ladislav Zgusta (eds.) Wörterbücher. Dictionaries. Dictionnaires: Ein Internationales Handbuch Zur Lexikographie. An International Encyclopedia of Lexicography. Encyclopédie Internationale de Lexicographie. Vol. 1. Berlin, New York: Walter de Gruyter, 761–767.

Dovhanchyna, Ruslana (2021) “Translating Paratextual Elements of Online News Texts from English into Ukrainian.” [In:] SHS Web of Conferences. Vol. 105. Retrieved from: https://doi.org/10.1051/shsconf/202110503005 on 15 September 2023.

Genette, Gérard (1982) Palimpsestes. La littérature au second degré. Paris: Éditions du Seuil.

Genette, Gérard, Marie Maclean ([1987] 1991) “Introduction to the Paratext.” [In:] New Literary History. Vol. 22(2); 261–272.

Ginna, Peter (2017) “Introduction. The Three Phases of Editing.” [In:] Peter Ginna (ed.) What Editors Do: The Art, Craft, and Business of Book Editing. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press; 1–13.

Humbley, John (2017) “Specialised Dictionaries.” [In:] Pedro A. Fuertes-Olivera (ed.) The Routledge Handbook of Lexicography. London: Routledge; 317–334.

L’Homme, Marie-Claude (2020) Lexical Semantics for Terminology. An Introduction. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company.

Menagarishvili, Olga (2020) “Dictionaries of Science and Technology and Issues of Power.” [In:] ILCEA [online]. Vol. 40. Retrieved from: https://doi.org/10.4000/ilcea.10614 on 15 September 2023.

Nielsen, Sandro (2018) “LSP Lexicography and Typology of Specialized Dictionaries.” [In:] John Humbley, Gerhard Budin, Christer Laurén (eds.) Languages for Special Purposes: An International Handbook. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter Mouton; 71–95. Retrieved from: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110228014-004 on 30 April 2024.

Saber, Anthony (2023) “Letter to the Editors: Tricolor ESP.” [In:] ASp [online]. Vol. 84. Retrieved from: https://doi.org/10.4000/asp.8404 on 30 April 2024.

Trovato, Loredana (2012) “Remarques sur le rôle stratégique du paratexte dans les dictionnaires du cinéma.” [In:] Studii şi cercetări filologice. Seria Limbi Străine Aplicate. Vol. 11; 56–71.

Van der Yeught, Michel (2012) L’anglais de la bourse et de la finance : description et recherche. Paris: Ophrys.

Van der Yeught, Michel (2016a) “Protocole de description des langues de spécialité.” [In:] Recherche et pratiques pédagogiques en langues de spécialité [online]. Vol. 35(spécial 1). Retrieved from: https://doi.org/10.4000/apliut.5549 on 15 September 2023.

Van der Yeught, Michel (2016b) “A Proposal to Establish Epistemological Foundations for the Study of Specialised Languages.” [In:] ASp [online]. Vol. 69. Retrieved from: https://doi.org/10.4000/asp.4788 on 15 September 2023.

Van der Yeught, Michel (2018) “Studying the Diachronic Dimension of Specialised Languages through an Intentional Approach to their Social Ontology.” [In:] Textes et contextes [online]. Vol. 13(2). Retrieved from: http://preo.u-bourgogne.fr/textesetcontextes/index.php?id=2329 on 15 September 2023.

1 The author would like to thank her colleagues Ramon Marti-Solano and Benjamin Perriello for their helpful suggestions, as well as one of the anonymous reviewers for their particularly detailed comments which have led to the clarification of a number of points.

2 The term paratext has been preferred to that of outside matter, which is commonly used in metalexicography “to designate all information outside of the main body” of a dictionary (Cop 1989: 761), as it encompasses not only the dictionary components traditionally referred to as the outside matter – i.e. components “which are not part of the word list, including preface, user’s guide, encyclopedic section, dictionary grammar, etc.” (Bergenholtz, Tarp 1995: 15) – but also the components which are not part of the dictionary per se, in particular the blurbs that may be found on the dust jacket flaps and/or the back cover.

3 As explained by L’Homme (2020: 5), “the notion of ‘special subject field’ [or domain] is defined rather loosely in terminology and often corresponds to a scientific discipline (e.g. biology, economics, or linguistics) or a technology (e.g. Internet, imaging, or auto mechanics)”. She adds that “economic sectors can also be considered special subject fields (…) as well as schools of thought [and] even sets of objects” (ibid.). For French specialists of English for Specific Purposes (ESP), a specialised domain (‘domaine spécialisé’) is “the body of knowledge and practices that serve a collective, professional or disciplinary purpose. As such, specialised domains have a repertoire of terms, linguistic or stylistic devices, or discourse genres specific to a profession, a discipline or a field of social interaction” (Bouyé et al. 2023) (our translation). As can be seen, although they are not incompatible, these two definitions proceed from vastly different perspectives. The orientation of this paper being more linguistic and ethnographic than purely terminological, the term domain will here be used as defined by French ESP.

4 This is not to say that dictionaries of publishing did not exist prior to this date. Further research in the British Library catalogue has revealed a number of earlier dictionaries, whose titles do not actually include the term publishing but rather book or a term derived from book (for instance, The Bookman’s Glossary or the Glossary of the Book). Although there can be no doubt that these publications are indeed dictionaries of publishing, they are revelatory of a tendency not to establish a distinction between publishing and the book, and instead consider that the former is encompassed in the latter. A shift in perspective appears to have occurred at the end of the 1970s since all the more recent dictionaries do include publishing in their title. The decision was made to use this distinctive feature as a selection criterion for the corpus, which is thus made up of all the English-language dictionaries containing publishing in their title that were found in the British Library Catalogue.

5 Not applicable since this dictionary was published in electronic format only.

6 Cf. Preface to Printing and Publishing Terms.

7 Cf. Introduction to The Pocket Glossary of Publishing Terms.

8 Cf. page v of the Preface.

9 Cf. back cover blurb.

10 The Pocket Glossary of Publishing Terms is the only publication in the corpus missing this blurb, as far as we can tell based on the one copy we could access.

11 The Dictionary of Publishing, Bodian’s Publishing Desk Reference and The Blueprint Dictionary of Printing and Publishing.

12 Cf. “entries include proof correction; paper sizes; typesetting, printing and binding processes, techniques and machines; blockmaking and platemaking; as well as the various sales, editorial and administrative functions performed in publishing” (back cover).

13 The emphasis is ours.

14 Those include “paper and papermaking, ink, printing and binding machines, typesetting, desk-top publishing, editing, commissioning, contracts and rights.”

15 It reads as follows “editing, commissioning, contracts and rights, desktop publishing and design, electronic publishing and publishing on the Internet, typesetting, papermaking, printing and binding.”

16 “Here is the language of book and periodical marketers, advertisers, copywriters, publishers and editors, field sales representatives, booksellers and jobbers, librarians and information professionals, scholars and researchers, mail-order entrepreneurs and their suppliers and resources, promotion printers and compositors, mailing houses and lettershops, mailing list sources, and computer experts” (v-vi).

17 Such is the case, for instance, of Irene M. Franck (The Dictionary of Publishing, 1982), Michael Barnard and John Peacock (The Blueprint Dictionary of Printing and Publishing, 1990 and Dictionary of Printing and Publishing, 2000), and Nat G. Bodian (Bodian’s Publishing Desk Reference, 1988).

18 The author of A Pocket Dictionary of Publishing Terms (1976).

19 One example is Michael Barnard who, according to the back blurb of The Blueprint Dictionary of Printing and Publishing, is the author of several books “including Magazine and Journal Production, Introduction to Print Buying, Making Electronic Manuscripts, The Publisher’s Guide to Desktop Publishing (with Wilson-Davies and St. John Bates) and The Print and Production Manual (with Peacock and Berrill).”

20 As explained by Baverstock (2020a, 2020b), what characterises Publishing Studies as an academic discipline is that it is a “profession-orientated field” (2020b: 451) in which academic reflection is used to “explor[e] professional practice” (op. cit.: 405) and analyse “what publishing means” (2020a: 18). As a result, the professional and academic communities are closely intertwined (see Van der Yeught 2012: 31).

21 Cf. Introduction of The Dictionary of Printing and Publishing 2nd edition (2000).

22 The term specialisedness is borrowed from Michel Van der Yeught who introduces it to refer to “the character of what is specialised” (2018: §9). Anthony Saber (2023: §8) also uses “this neologism to translate the French expression ‘le spécialisé’.” For him, coupled with “a significant development of epistemological proposals on ESP” (ibid.), it constitutes one of four “areas where French ESP has developed very original contributions and a highly specific scientific posture” (ibid.). Manon Bouyé et al. (2023) define ‘le spécialisé’ as “a set of meanings and social functions specific to a milieu or specialised domain, whose linguistic manifestations present typical characteristics and regularities that can be observed at the discourse level (…)” (our translation).

23 It must be pointed out that the dictionaries in our corpus do not explicitly specify the lexical functions they fulfil. However, from the objectives they mention – which put the emphasis on understanding and learning the specialised language of publishing, it can be inferred that their lexical functions are primarily cognitive, i.e. these dictionaries are mostly concerned with helping users “learn something specific about special-language usage or [the] subject field so that [for instance] they will be prepared for discussions with colleagues” (Nielsen 2018: 77). Only Bodian’s Publishing Desk Reference indicates “aim[ing] to serve [a] double purpose” (1988: v) and alludes to a communicative function.

Received:

15.09.2023

Reviewed:

16.03.2024

Accepted:

30.04.2024