‘To the interest and glory of their country’: business and power in late 18th-century British dictionaries of trade and commerce

The general aim of this contribution is both a close examination of the lexis of trade and commerce and a discussion on its cultural assumptions as they emerge from the paratextual apparatus, and from a selected number of entries. The approach is mainly qualitative, but a preliminary corpus-based quantitative approach to collect data by a concordancer is required. The starting point for the selection of entries and further in-depth qualitative analysis is the word business. The investigation will demonstrate how the word business is able to identify lexical, ideational, and ideological networks which are significant components of 18th-century British hegemonic discourse(s). Sources: British dictionaries of trade and commerce: Postlethwayt’s (1751-17551st, and later), Rolt’s (17561st, 17612nd), and Mortimer’s (1766).