Learners’ dictionaries and an English cultural keyword

Abstract

Among culture-bound vocabulary items, we typically find names of realia, but also lexemes not immediately identifiable as such, but which are perhaps even more important as indications of culture specificity: words that reflect the ways of thinking and acting deemed appropriate in a given cultural milieu. This paper deals with one such item, which, according to Anna Wierzbicka (2006, 2014), is an essential component of Anglo values: the adjective fair in its moral sense. The analysis is meant to establish how successful dictionaries for learners of English are in rendering its nuances of meaning.