As potencialidades pedagógicas do Dicionário Olímpico

Abstract

The use of dictionaries in mother language teaching is a standard practice, since, for a long time, this tradition was rooted in the checking of word spelling and in the limited exploration of meanings. With the advent of Pedagogical Lexicography, it became clear that the classroom dictionary offers “a privileged place for lessons about language” (KRIEGER, 2012). Facing this scenario, this body of work intended to reflect upon the possible application of Dicionário Olímpico [Olympic Dictionary] (CHISHMAN et al., 2016), also known as DO, in Portuguese language teaching when it comes to the productive and oriented use of dictionaries in schools. The main objective was to investigate the DO’s pedagogical potential from the theoretical-methodological background of Pedagogical Lexicography (PL) and Frame Semantics. In order to accomplish this, the methodology was divided in two stages: i) critical appraisal of the DO in the light of the PL principles and the lexicographic proposals of the Type 4 collections present in the work Com licença à palavra: dicionários em sala de aula [Excuse the Word: classroom dictionaries] (BRASIL, 2012), prepared by PNLD Dictionaries, in order to verify similarities and divergences; ii) the development of a didactic activity using the DO to illustrate its pedagogical potential. The results reveal that the Olympic Dictionary relates to most of the criteria proposed by Pedagogical Lexicography, closely aligning to some more than to others. Besides, it was observed that the DO has didactic features, since its theoretical basis provides a structural organization which enables the understanding and learning of the different semantic extensions of a word, since meaning is understood from an encyclopedic point of view. This study has also indicated the possibility of new investigations about the rise of Digital Pedagogical Lexicography and the development of an Activity Guide with the DO. This would promote the use of the dictionary as a valuable tool for Portuguese language classes.