Open Access

Carolin Müller-Spitzer, Sascha Wolfer

• As a rule, dictionaries are compiled to facilitate communication between people speaking different languages or language varieties as well as to provide information on individual linguistic phenomena when there is a need to look things up. In this way, dictionaries count as functional objects; in other words, their actual purpose is to be used to deal with language tasks. Research into dictionary use, which is the topic of this chapter, is concerned with the practice of using lexicographic reference works and also, more generally, with the solving of linguistic problems with the help of reference works. The goal of research into dictionary use is to discover more accurately in which situations, in what way, to what success, etc. lexicographic tools are used. This knowledge can then serve to adapt future dictionaries better to the needs of users. This chapter is structured as follows. In the first part, we provide an introduction to the topic. User research concerns itself with actual user activity or, to put it more generally, with the experience and observations of dictionary use and is, as such, empirically oriented. As a result, user research has to look to methods from empirical social research, and the foundations of this are the subject of the second section. The third part is devoted to user research in relation to Internet dictionaries, the subject which stands at the heart of this volume.