Lexical Repertoires, Linguistic Adaptation and Contrast of Variants on Some Dictionaries of American and European Spanish

Abstract

This study focuses on a case of intralinguistic translation, as we will be examining the lexicographical resources that enable a speaker to switch from one variety to another within their own language. To this end, we analyse a differential dictionary, such as the Diccionario de americanismos (ASALE), and a comprehensive dictionary of a single variety, such as the Diccionario del español de México; this contrast is reinforced by a comparison with two other synchronic dictionaries of European Spanish: the DEA (comprehensive dictionary) and the DLE (pan-Hispanic dictionary). Our aim is to determine which resource proves most effective for lexical selection across different varieties. For this comparison, we have selected lexical units from three different domains: means of transport, nominal and pronominal forms of address, and verbs from the semantic field ‘to grasp’, which we compare across these corpora by evaluating their potential functional performance in promoting lexical adaptability between intralinguistic variants within the Spanish-speaking world.