Intertextuality, dialogism, and democracy in dictionaries

Intertextuality is inherent to the dictionary. In fact, the definitions which follow the entries are illustrated with examples, such as discourse fragments, including those that were produced by the lexicographer from the citations. The result is therefore a dialogic text where the lexicographer’s discourse meets the Other’s discourse. The aim of this study is to follow this principle of textual analysis, mainly in the word democracy, in some dictionaries from the 17th century until now.