La parasinonimia nel dizionario giuridico francese e inglese

The present study provides a preliminary qualitative investigation into the presence and treatment of near-synonymy in selected articles from the Vocabulaire Juridique (VJ) and the Oxford Dictionary of Law (ODL), two compact paper dictionaries currently available on the market. Both dictionaries target native speakers (French and British users, respectively) with various expertise (mainly non-experts and semi-experts). Lemmas are organized in a semasiological structure, and micro- and medio-structures are used to explicitate the semantic relations between terms (e.g. via integrated and non-integrated cross-references).
A comparison of the meaning descriptions and cross-referencing systems in VJ and ODL suggests that most near-synonyms are pragmatically motivated. They comprise stylistic, diachronic and diatopic variants, as well as acronyms (e.g. from the Incoterms), borrowings and legal transplants, and instances of francisation. Reference device and near-synonym may constitute the only segment in the meaning description, be integrated in the meaning description, or account for separate additions. However, the data suggests that the cross-referencing system and the cross-references devices and conventions adopted in VJ and ODL are inconsistent and may thus fail to assist dictionary users retrieve information that serves their needs.