Law dictionaries across languages: different structures, different relations between communities of practice?

This paper concentrates on the inclusion and representation of borrowings from French into English and from English into French within the latest editions of English and French desk law dictionaries (Oxford Dictionary of Law, 2006 [ODoL] and Longman Dictionary of Law, 2007 [LDoL]; Vocabulaire Juridique, 2007 [VJ], Vocabulaire du Juriste Débutant, 2007 [VdJD]), which, according to their Prefaces, would seem to address the same or similar target user groups. After some preliminary remarks on the macrostructure of the dictionaries, we shall contrast their medio- and, most importantly, microstructures, with a focus on the lexicographic (as against terminological) definition of recent borrowings from and into the two languages. Wiegand’s (1992, 2003, 2005) theory of dictionary form will enable us to highlight striking differences across English and French dictionary entries. Whereas this might be accounted for in terms of their highly culture-dependent nature and, therefore, of the two different underlying legal systems (cf. e.g. the extended representation of estoppel or abatement in ODoL, as against estoppel and abattement in VJ), the same doesn’t hold good for recent borrowings from commercial law, international regulations (e.g. Incoterms 2000) or European law (e.g. copyright [ODoL] vs. copyright [VJ], or CE [ODoL] vs. Communautée Europeenne [VJ]). Most importantly, they seem to depend on two factors, whose interaction ultimately results into and motivates the observed differences at the macro-, medio- and microstrutural levels: a. different presuppositions on users' profiles and the special needs of target user groups (Bergenholz and Nielsen 2006) as related to Wiegand's (1998:52) notion of genuine purpose, which do systematically underpin the initial stages of any dictionary design or dictionary revision projects; b. differences in disciplinary cultures within communities of practice (Wenger 2008) and, possibly, national cultures (Katan 1999).