Médiation linguistique et culturelle dans les dictionnaires: le cas des idiomes.

International audienceThis paper discusses the treatment of idioms in general dictionaries: its specific focus is on French. The problem is addressed from the didactic point of view. It concentrates on the place dictionaries occupy in foreign language acquisition. Section 1 attempts to make clear what is an idiom and the problems that idioms pose from the didactic point of view simultaneously from reception and production. Once these problems are defined, the ways in which the French idiom copains comme cochons (friends like pigs) is represented in monolingual dictionaries are considered. It is shown how dictionaries treat this idiom and to what extent the foreign language learner needs are taken into account. Section 3 describes the experience with FFL students and explains the reasons of the particular place that examples take in the teaching idioms. A short assessment of how far these dictionaries provide account of idiom phenomena and perspectives for future research are made in the end