L’avènement du train, l’essor de la modernité : représentations et images du train dans les dictionnaires du XIXe et XXe siècle

Abstract

The advent of the train is probably one of the most important technological innovations of the nineteenth century, and becomes in a certain way a symbol of modernity that enters the daily life of the masses; to what extent dictionaries, conceived as a mirror of social developments, receive and describe this amazing invention? How are concepts and terms related to this new field of knowledge recorded in the lexicographical text? What is their treatment in the macro-structure and microstructure of French dictionaries of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries? We will attempt to provide some elements of response to these questions through an analysis of the lexical field of train and railway in the main dictionaries of the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth, in particular through the analysis of a lexicographical and cultural milestone such as Larousse’s Grand Dictionnaire Universel du XIX siècle.