A graphic illustration as a means of cemantizing a term in monolingual defining and special dictionaries

The paper is concerned with a graphic illustration as a means of representing the semantic content of a term. The expedience of using graphic illustrations is substantiated on the basis of monolingual defining dictionaries and dictionaries of special terminologies. As a rule, illustrated in these dictionaries are entries represented by three parts of speech: nouns, verbs, and adjectives, which is confirmed by the results of the analysis carried out on the basis of the English defining dictionary "The Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English". He paper cites the classifications of graphic illustrations suggested by Russian and foreign specialists, determines their functions as well cases where the usage of graphic illustrations as means of term semantization is impossible. Moreover, the paper raises the problem of typographic formats of illustrations and regards some principles of creating the maximal effect from a specially formatted illustration. The paper presents the results of the analysis of several special dictionaries with conclusions on the use of illustrations and on their absence.