A pioneering volume addressing issues related to cultures, ideologies, and the dictionary. A cross-cultural and cross-linguistic study with focus on selected Western and non-Western languages. A number of in-depth case studies illustrates the dominant role ideology and other types of bias play in the making of a dictionary. The volume includes invited papers of 40 internationally recognized scholars.

Contents: B.B. Kachru, Ladislav Zgusta: The Illinois Years. - Bibliography of Publications by Ladislav Zgusta. - B.B. Kachru, Introduction. - I: Contextualizing Culture: D. Bartholomew, Otomí Culture from Dictionary Illustrative Sentences. - P. Corbin, Un Film, Deux Linguistes et Quelques Dictionnaires. Un Regard Particulier sur "Simple Mortel" de Pierre Jolivet. - J.A. Fishman, Dictionaries as Culturally Constructed and as Culture-Constructing: The Reciprocity View as Seen from Yiddish Sources. - F.J. Hausmann, Allusions Littéraires et Citations Historiques Dans le "Trésor de la Langue Française". - L.F. Lara, Towards a Theory of the Cultural Dictionary. - W.P. Lehmann, The Spindle or the Distaff. - Y. Malkiel, The Principal Categories of Learned Words. - E.A. Nida, Lexical Cosmetics. - II: Lexicography in Historical Context: F. Karttunen, The Roots of Sixteenth-Century Mesoamerican Lexicography. - T.B.I. Creamer, The Current State of Chinese Lexicography. - D.A. Kibbee, The 'New Historiography', The History of French and 'Le Bon Usage' in Nicot's Dictionary (1606). - N. Dinh-Hoà, On Chi-nam Ngoc-âm Giai-nghia: An Early Chinese-Vietnamese Dictionary. - G. Stein, Chaucer and Lydgate in Palsgrave's "Lesclarcissement". - III: Ideology, Norms and Language Use: M.A. Ezquerra,Political Considerations on Spanish Dictionaries. - D.M.T.Cr. Farina, Marrism and Soviet Lexicography. - C. Marello, Florence like Athens and Italian like Greek: An Ideologically Biased Theme in the Forewords of Some Italian Thesauri of the 19th Century. - A. Wierzbicka, Dictionaries and Ideologies: Three Examples from Eastern Europe. - R.D. Zorc, Philippine Regionalism versus Nationalism and the Lexicographer. - IV: Pluricentricity and Ethnocentricism: J. Algeo, British and American Biases in English Dictionaries. - C.W. Kim, One Language, Two Ideologies, and Two Dictionaries: The Case of Korean. - B. Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk, Worldview and Verbal Senses. - C. Poirier, De la Soumission à la Prise de Parole: Le Cheminement de la Lexicographie au Québec. - J. Whitcut, Taking it for Granted: Some Cultural Preconceptions in English Dictionaries. - V: Dictionaries across Languages and Cultures: Y. Kachru, Lexical Exponents of Cultural Contact: Speech Act Verbs in Hindi-English Dictionaries. - R.J. Steiner, The Bilingual Dictionary in Cross-Cultural Contexts. - VI: Language Dynamics vs. Prescriptivism: A.P. Cowie, The Learner's Dictionary in a Changing Cultural Perspective. - R.H. Gouws, Dictionaries and the Dynamics of Language Change. - F.E. Knowles, Dictionaries for the People or for People? - VII: Language Learner as the Consumer: G.M. Dalgish, Learners' Dictionaries: Keeping the Learner in Mind. - VIII: Structuring Semantics: F.F.M. Dolezal, The Dictionary as Philosophy: Reconstructing the Meaning of "Our Father". - M. Ritchie Key, Meaning as Derived from Word Formation in South American Indian Languages. - J.P. Louw, How Many Meanings to a Word? - IX: Ethical Issues and Lexicologists' Biases: D.L. Gold, When Religion Intrudes into Etymology (On "The Word: The Dictionary that Reveals the Hebrew Source of English"). - T. McArthur, Culture-Bound and Trapped by Technology: Centuries of Bias in the Making of Wordbooks. - X: Terminology across Cultures: Z. Polácek, Amharic Lexicography and the Dynamics of Sociopolitical Terminology. - G.O. Richter, Grammatical Indications in Chinese Monolingual Dictionaries. - XI: Afterword: B.B. Kachru, Directions and Challenges.