نشریه مطالعات دانشنامه نگاری
پیاپی 2 (پاییز و زمستان 1400)

Natural and basic sciences, are important because of their importance in development and progress of the human society, as well as their basic role in other sciences such as medicine, agriculture, technology and engineering. They are used to improve the quality of life of human societies and help to solve economic, social, and environmental and health problems. it is necessary to invest in basic science and research, engineering, technology development and innovation; and direct them to achieve the right products, services, business, social processes and patterns to achieve the best living conditions, superior technology, business and new industries,In order to achieve the future progress, besides investing, it is important to classify and organize science and technology and collect them from ancient times to the present in various aspects. One of the main ways to achieve such a goal is by compiling various encyclopedias in the field of general information and specialized sciences.  Mankind has felt the need to have such encyclopedias from a long time ago and has noticed that they are the main sources of any research. So it is necessary to prioritize the production of different encyclopedias along with the development of science and technology.

Observance of the appropriate state of the addressee is the main subject of semantics and In addition to the eloquence of speech and the coherence of the components of the sentence, one of the conditions for the discourse to reach the status of rhetoric and accessibility. In the present study, this rhetorical principle has been studied in the "encyclopaedia of Children and Adolescents" as the first encyclopaedia written in Persian for children and adolescents. The main purpose of this article is to show the effect of observing the appropriate situation of the children and adolescents in the language and writing of encyclopaedia. In order to achieve this goal, the introduction of 4 volumes (1،6،10،12) of the encyclopaedia at the levels of basic knowledge, interventions, calligraphy and in particular, language and expression, including words and sentences were analysed. Findings indicate that simplification and simplicity of language and expression, which is expressed in the form of short sentences, avoidance of complex and incomprehensible vocabulary and the use of Persian words, is one of the characteristics of the writing style of this encyclopaedia, which origins from the audience-centric nature of this work. The authors of encyclopaedic articles, considering their audiences, always observe the principle of simplicity of language and expression; as in the study of vocabulary level, the frequency of 3-syllable words (41%) is remarkable and at the sentence level, it has been observed that sentences with less than ten words (80%) and sentences containing a single message (47.5%) have a higher frequency.

The aim of the present study is to assess the linguistics encyclopedias of the last two decades (2000-2020) based on content and structural analysis. For this purpose, this research was conducted by survey method using content and structural analysis. The statistical population of the study includes 10 PhD students in linguistics and the chosen corpus are encyclopedia of linguistics (2004), encyclopedia of language and linguistics (2005) and the Routledge encyclopedia of linguistics (2010). The tool for assessing encyclopedias and data collection is a questionnaire consisting of seven content and structural criteria. The research data were analyzed as descriptive statistics. Findings showed that base on content analysis of the given encyclopedias, the criteria of linguistic main fields, the criteria of linguistic sub- fields, the criteria of linguistics branches and the criteria of articles are faced with shortcomings. Based on the structural analysis, all three encyclopedias have some shortcomings in the criterion of entries, the criterion of authors and the criterion of encyclopedia organization. However, by comparing the content and structural analysis of the three linguistics encyclopedias, it was found that the rate of fulfillment of structural criteria is more than content criteria. Therefore, it was concluded that encyclopedias of the last two decades in linguistics cannot yet be considered as specialized and reference sources in terms of the content.

This paper draws on a simple language to introduce the history of the origins of encyclopedias, their diachronic developments, and the evolution of the science of encyclopediagraphy. Encyclopediagraphy, as a scholarly way of retaining human knowledge, has sought to collect, document, keep, and transfer human knowledge since ancient times. Its incremental evolution has continued through the dark ages, into the renaissance era, further into the age of the print technology, and still further into the age of electronics so that today we can consider encyclopedias as a unique genre. The paper argues that dictionaries, lexicons or encyclopedic dictionaries, as well as encyclopedias cannot be considered different entities, but that they are in an inclusional distribution of the type already well known in the algebra of sets. Ramifying human knowledge into the three categories of linguistic, conceptual and encyclopedic knowledge types, the paper suggests that clear borders can be drawn among dictionaries, lexicons, and encyclopedias. It is also argued that the term encyclopedia has come about as the result of the misreading of the phrase ‘enkyklios paedia’ on the part of scholars during the renaissance. A short description of Akashic Records has also been presented at the end of the paper.

Encyclopedias are reference books or books providing summaries for all branches of human knowledge or a particular one. Entries of encyclopedias are much more different than those of dictionaries. Encyclopedic entries are arranged alphabetically by names or by categories. Encyclopedias have a long history, even more than 2000 years which have evolved considerably. Digital and open source versions have also developed vastly. The first aim of this paper is to investigate the famous international encyclopedias, namely; Americana, Britannica, BSE, and in particular, Da'eratolmaa'ref-e Farsi (Mosaheb) to review the entry of “Mathematics” and inspect the development of this subject and its applications in other disciplines. In the second part, our aim is to examine some of the encyclopedias of mathematics, two of them subjected to applied mathematics. In particular, we introduce the Encyclopedias of Mathematics in details, those that are translated into Farsi by Iranian mathematicians.

Generally speaking, dictionaries are still the only most valued tool for language learners. More specifically, the monolingual learners’ dictionaries (MLD), as a variety of dictionary dedicated to meet the needs of non-native language learners, are an authoritative source for learners of English. In fact, the foundations of the MLD were laid down in the 1920s and 1930s by some British academics; thus it is above all a British phenomenon. Random House Webster’s Advanced English Dictionary (RWAED) is “the first Webster's dictionary truly written for advanced learners of English”. The present article aims to explore English leaner’s dictionaries, to present the evolution of such dictionaries through history, and to introduce their defining characteristics in detail through examining the best known and most influential instances of such a trend. In doing so, two well-established and frequently used British learner’s dictionaries; namely, Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary (OALD) and Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English (LDOCE) along with RWAED are introduced and compared in terms of their macrostructures, mediostructures, and microstructures, as well as textual structures, addressing structures and metalexicographic methods. More specifically, the front materials, the dictionary body, the back materials and the accompanying resources were all assessed in terms of format and content.