1.1. Communicative Situations

In this first type of situation, the ducks run into problems related to communicating with other people or with animals, often as part of a larger course of events, e.g. when they search for the philosopher’s stone. In the Donald Duck comic stories, these situations most often concern translation, but they could also be connected to producing or understanding texts. The following three examples illustrate situations in which communicative needs occur.

In one of the stories, Huey, Dewey, and Louie are in Scotland, and they are being chased by the criminal Beagle Boys. Suddenly, they see the Loch Ness Monster in the water. It is singing a beautiful tune and by looking in the Junior Woodchucks’ Guidebook, the nephews are able to translate the song. The Guidebook also helps them ask the monster for help to get rid of the Beagle Boys; according to the book, the monster is only able to understand them if they ask simultaneously in its native language, which the book explains how to speak.

In another story, Uncle Scrooge, Donald Duck, and the three nephews are looking for a pirate ship, and their search takes them to Crete where they search for the entrance to a labyrinth. They find an inscription in a language that they do not understand, but luckily, the Guidebook describes this language and thereby helps them translate the text.

In a third story, Donald Duck and his nephews are in a jungle, looking for rare plants they can bring home and sell. They run into a gorilla that chases Donald, who escapes by running up a tree and hiding in it. The gorilla says something to the nephews, and they use the Guidebook to translate what it says and to speak with the gorilla. The animal says “zpuna zona,” which means that it would like to help them pick flowers.

1.2. Cognitive Situations

In the second type of situation, the three nephews need to gain knowledge about something they are unfamiliar with as for example in the first story below where they see a bird and want to know what type of bird this is. The acquired knowledge is sometimes used later in the same story, but this is not the crucial point: Huey, Dewey, and Louie have a need for knowledge, which they want to solve in the given situation; that they remember this knowledge for later situations is a possible outcome, but this is not the actual need.

In one of the stories, Uncle Scrooge, Donald, and Huey, Dewey, and Louie are searching for gold in an Australian desert. There are numerous giant kangaroos, but at some point they also see a large bird which makes a loud noise that scares off all the kangaroos. Louie says that according to the Junior Woodchucks’ Guidebook, it is a so-called gold vulture, and these birds feed on gold. This knowledge is very useful to them in the given situation because there is no point in searching for gold when the vulture has already eaten it.

In another story in which the ducks are looking for the philosopher’s stone, Uncle Scrooge tells the nephews that pirates in the 1400s resided on Crete. This piece of information makes the nephews want to know more about Crete, so they take a look in the Guidebook, which tells them that pirates lived in the labyrinth, which in the old days was possible to access, but not possible to leave afterwards. After having gained this piece of knowledge, the nephews know that they should look for the entrance; and this takes us back to the second communicative situation described above in Subsection 1.1.

In a third story, the ducks are visiting an Arabic country where Uncle Scrooge wants to buy a carpet. The salesperson claims that the carpet which Uncle Scrooge is interested in buying is a flying carpet and therefore very expensive. Scrooge does not believe in the existence of flying carpets, but Huey, Dewey, and Louie read in the Guidebook that they are indeed real and that there is a certain way of identifying them: They have wing-shaped symbols in their pattern.

1.3. Operative Situations

The type of situation that Huey, Dewey, and Louie most often end up in is one where either they do not know how to solve a problem or they do not know how to get out of a dangerous situation. This is also the case in the story about the flying carpet mentioned above. The ducks have gotten their hands on a flying carpet, but they do not know how to make it fly. According to the Junior Woodchucks’ Guidebook, you just need to pour water from a specific natural spring on the carpet and then you can order it to fly wherever you want it to go.

In another story, Scrooge, Donald, and the three nephews dive down to a shipwreck which Scrooge thinks contains a large amount of gold coins. However, when they reach the wreck, they find that an enormous octopus is blocking the entrance. Scrooge and Donald give up their hunt for gold, but Huey, Dewey, and Louie instead consult the Guidebook in which it says that if you get into a battle with an octopus, you need a powerful source of light in order to scare it away. Therefore, the ducks take out their camera and use the flash to scare away the octopus, which makes it possible for them to collect the coins from the shipwreck.

There are many more stories containing operative situations in the Donald Duck series: The ducks come across a large bull and do not know how to get out of the situation, but the Guidebook tells them what to do: They should run for their lives. A similar simple solution is suggested by the Guidebook when the three nephews want to fish for their dinner: It is best to fish where the water is not too deep. And the Guidebook provides another simple solution when the ducks are stuck in the desert without water; while Donald tries (unsuccessfully) to use a willow twig, the Guidebook tells the three nephews to look for water in the container used for washing the windows of the car in which they are travelling. However, in one of the stories, the Junior Woodchucks’ Guidebook cannot help Huey, Dewey, and Louie solve their problem in the given situation: The nephews have been teasing their Uncle Donald to a point where he has had enough and starts chasing them with a stick. They start running and simultaneously consult the Guidebook, but it turns out that the Guidebook does not contain data about what to do when running away from a furious uncle.

3.1. What are Lexicographical Information Needs?

The focus on information needs (also called user needs) in lexicography is still relatively new. Not until a classic conference on lexicography held in the United States in the 1960s did lexicographers start talking about users and their needs instead of focusing on dictionary content isolated from the intended users, cf. Householder (1967, p. 279), who in his summary report wrote that “[d]ictionaries should be designed with a special set of users in mind and for their specific needs.” However, even though lexicographers started focusing on what they considered information needs or user needs, many actually focused on data needs (i.e. what types of data do people look for in dictionaries). This can clearly be seen in the many user studies carried out within lexicography in the last few decades in which users – typically in questionnaires and interviews – are asked about their need for data types, not about the needs for information that have led them to consult dictionaries. Thus, even though these studies are meant to study users’ information needs, they instead focus on data and only identify what users are familiar with from existing dictionaries.

User needs never occur in isolation, but are connected to two other components: (1) the dictionary user in whose mind the need occurred and (2) the pre-lexicographical situation in which the need occurred. Together, these three components – user need, user, and user situation – determine the function of a dictionary according to the lexicographical function theory (see e.g. Bergenholtz & Tarp, 2003, p. 176; 2005, p. 12). When we look at user needs from this perspective, another problem occurs with the many user studies being carried out in lexicography as almost none of these focus on the social situation in which a need occurs – the needs are analyzed in isolation.

Tarp (2009a, p. 279) argues that lexicographical needs make up a subset of human needs in general, and furthermore provides characteristics of a lexicographical information need (2009a, pp. 279-283), which have been summarized in the following list:

1. It is objective (not subjective)

2. It is historical-cultural (not natural)

3. It is genuine (not artificial/constructed)

4. It is recognized by the dictionary user; an information need may not always be recognized, in which case he will not use an information tool and then it will not be a lexicographically relevant information need

5. It is concrete (not abstract), i.e. it is related to a specific user in a specific user situation

6. It can be met by consulting a lexicographical tool

7. It is a need for information

8. It is either a (primary) function-related need or a (secondary) need related to the use of an information tool

The sixth point is problematic as it results in a tautology: A lexicographical need is met by consulting a lexicographical tool, and a lexicographical tool is designed to accommodate lexicographical needs. Therefore, this one should be excluded from the list. The one that is of particular interest in this article is the second point: that lexicographical needs are historical-cultural. In the preceding section it was explained that many typologies of information needs in information science are connected to all human needs, but here it is made explicit that the only types of needs that are of interest are the ones connected to a human being’s social life, not his natural state, cf. the second point. A human being’s need for food, air, water, etc. (i.e. biological and physiological needs) are not information needs related to a person’s historical and cultural life. The eighth point is very important to emphasize as there is an important difference between function-related and usage- related needs not realized by many lexicographers: The function-related needs occur in the pre-lexicographical situation and are the ones that (potentially) lead to a lookup situation; usage-needs occur in the lexicographical situation, i.e. when users are actually using a dictionary and need to find certain data in this specific dictionary. To the seven points (having excluded the sixth one above), we can add the following two points:

• It can be either simple or complex (cf. Bergenholtz & Tarp, 2003, p. 177; Dorner et al., 2015, p. 32)

• It is punctual (not global) (cf. Tarp, 2009b, p. 264)

According to Dorner et al. (2015, p. 32), it is possible to construct a simple spectrum of needs, ranging from simple to complex, e.g. from finding out when the next train to a specific city leaves to finding out how to change the manner in which elections are held. However, Dorner et al. make it sound as if the simple needs are related to the individual, whereas more complex needs are related to a wider context, but this is not necessarily the case, at least not from a lexicographical perspective. Here, a simple need could for example be the need to understand the meaning of a certain word, whereas a complex need could be to find out how to build a cupboard. There is clearly a difference in the complexity of these two needs, and they are both individual needs. According to Bergenholtz and Tarp (2003, p. 177), simple needs are solved with one or a few lexicographic data items, whereas complex needs are met by a combination of different sorts of lexicographic data.

If we zoom in on the types of needs a dictionary user may experience, we can look at them from a rather general perspective or a more specific perspective:

General level – information about

• The native language

• A foreign language

• A special subject field

• Culture and the world in general

• The native LSP

• Etc.

(Bergenholtz & Tarp, 2003, p. 175)

Specific level – information about

• Meaning of lemma

• Meaning of idioms

• Meaning of proverbs

• Pragmatic and cultural restrictions

• Orthography

• Variants of collocations

• Etc.

(Tarp, 2008a, p. 75)

The needs mentioned here and in all meta-lexicographical contributions are linked to communicative and cognitive situations, but as will be shown in the next section, many more diverse user needs could and should also be accommodated in lexicographical information tools (e.g. needs related to acting in a certain situation). When we look at needs at the specific level, it is again important to keep in mind that user needs should not be mistaken for data type needs, cf. the typical focus of lexicographical user studies mentioned above. The data incorporated into a specific lexicographical tool is selected according to the function of the dictionary, i.e. among other things the needs of the user. A few user studies have tried to focus on these needs, cf. e.g. Müller-Spitzer (2014), but the problem with this study is that it relies on the user’s memory and, most likely, it will not result in the production of innovative information tools as the informants’ responses are based on what they are familiar with, i.e. the needs they know that traditional tools are applied to solve, and therefore they may not comment on needs that traditionally have not interested lexicographers. So far, function theorists have suggested using a deductive approach to the identification of user needs (see e.g. Tarp, 2009a, p. 293; Fuertes-Olivera & Tarp, 2014, p. 53), but methods for collection of empirical data are still lacking in this area because it is not possible to know beforehand when a specific need will occur in a certain situation and therefore it is difficult to observe.

As mentioned above, a dictionary need is connected to a given user type and a given user situation, and these components make up what the function theory calls a dictionary function. Thus, when we need to determine the different needs that a user can have in a lexicographical context, we first need to look at both the different user types and user situations. The needs mentioned above should not be seen in isolation, but should be related to a specific type of user in a specific situation. In this article, we will elaborate on situations since, as argued by Bergenholtz and Tarp (2003, p. 176), the determining element in a dictionary function is the situation because there is greater difference between dictionaries conceived for different situations than for different user types; this is also why functions are frequently named after the corresponding type of user situation.

The lexicographical work process

1. Identify user situation and user type

2. Identify user need based on user situation and user type

3. Identify and select the relevant data based on the user situation, user type, and user need, i.e. the intended dictionary function

3.2. Dictionary Functions, User Situations, and User Needs

The cornerstone in the lexicographical function theory (for more details on this theory, see e.g. Bergenholtz & Tarp, 2002; 2003; 2005) is the dictionary function. Of course, this theory is not the first to apply the word function in lexicographical literature, but it is the first one to clearly define the term and connect it to the three specific components of user, user situation, and user need. The German meta-lexicographer F. J. Hausmann was the first meta-lexicographer to talk about dictionary functions in connection to types of user situations. In his famous Einführung in die Benutzung der neufranzösischen Wörterbücher from 1977, Hausmann makes a typology of Wörterbuchfunktionen in which he distinguishes between learning and consultation; in the latter case, he also distinguishes between reading and writing. However, Hausmann is not the first lexicographer to talk about functions (or purposes) – this can also be seen in e.g. Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm’s Deutsches Wörterbuch (1854) and Ladislav Zgusta’s Manual of Lexicography (1971). In Grimm’s dictionary, the lexicographers write the following in their foreword:

Was ist eines Wörterbuchs Zweck? nach seiner umfassenden Allgemeinheit kann ihm nur ein großes, weites Ziel gesteckt sein. Es soll ein Heiligtum der Sprache gründen, ihren ganzen Schatz bewahren, allen zu ihm den Eingang offen halten (XII).

[What is the purpose of a dictionary? According to its comprehensive universality, it can only be a great, broad purpose. It is to establish a sanctuary of language, to preserve all its treasure, to keep the entrance open to him.]

This is a very general statement, but the authors indirectly do speak with a functional understanding of the dictionary purpose when they later say that a person can use a dictionary if s/he cannot remember a word s/he wants to use, and when a father and his son want to improve their vocabulary; i.e. they mention different specific situations, but they do not establish a typology of situations.

In his Manual, Zgusta says that “the purpose for which a dictionary is intended is a powerful determining factor” (1971, p. 214) and “[t]he decision concerning the purpose or the combination of purposes of a planned dictionary is one of the most important ones” (1971, p. 216). He then argues that a dictionary should be planned to serve e.g. one’s scholarly colleagues, students, or the man in the street – i.e. the user – and furthermore mentions that the purpose depends on whether the dictionary is descriptive or prescriptive. In terms of the first part, we see some similarities to the current understanding of dictionary function; however, interestingly, nowhere else in his book does he focus on the dictionary user – he mainly focuses on the incorporation of data without relating it to the user. As for the second part, Zgusta clearly has a different understanding of the word purpose since function theorists would say that the approach, i.e. whether a dictionary should be descriptive or prescriptive (or proscriptive, cf. Bergenholtz, 2003; Bergenholtz & Gouws, 2010), will depend on the purpose of the dictionary.

The German meta-lexicographer H. E. Wiegand is famous for having put the user into focus – cf. his statement about “der bekannte Unbekannte” [“the known unknown”] (1977, p. 62) – and in his many contributions, Wiegand also talks about user situations; see e.g. Wiegand (1977; 1998). However, he does not discuss these situations from a theoretical perspective, but simply takes them as a point of departure for other theoretical discussions without contemplating their importance. Consequently, in his work, he ends up focusing on usage situations instead of user situations, i.e. on the situations in which users use actual dictionaries instead of the situations in which the information needs occur (Bergenholtz & Tarp, 2004). These examples show that users, functions/ purposes, and situations are mentioned either directly or indirectly in earlier lexicographical literature, but these concepts were not connected and incorporated systematically into a lexicographical framework before the lexicographical function theory was conceived in the 1990s.

With Hausmann’s distinction between learning (reception and production) and consultation, the foundation was made for a distinction between communicative and cognitive functions, which were initially argued to be the two main functions in the lexicographical function theory. However, only the communicative function – which is the one that lexicography traditionally has dealt with – has been investigated in depth and a number of sub-situations have been identified (reception, production, and translation), but cognition remains somewhat unexplored. Tarp (2008a, p. 45) writes that a cognitive situation is when you need knowledge about a certain topic, but in his book and in most of the subsequent literature on the function theory, he and other functional lexicographers leave out learning from the characterization of this function. Tarp (2008a, p. 46) does divide cognition into two main types: sporadic and systematic, but apart from this not much else is known about this function.

In his later work, Tarp introduces a new function called the operative function (2007) and another function called the interpretive function (2008b). Tools with an operative function are designed to satisfy needs for instructions or advice in relation to acting, and tools with an interpretive function are designed to satisfy needs for understanding non-linguistic signs.Interestingly, following these two articles, no one has actually researched these functions, but simply accepted the fact that they are useful lexicographical categories in the functional framework (a number of meta-lexicographical contributions mention these functions, but do not elaborate on them, and only a few try to incorporate them into their dictionary concepts). Ten years later, Agerbo (2017b) investigates the interpretive function and argues that it is not an actual function because it is not based on a certain need occurring in a certain situation in a certain user, but only on a distinction between linguistic and non-linguistic signs. Agerbo therefore rejects this function and argues that the function theory contains not four, but three main functions: communicative, cognitive, and operative. Suggestions for other functions have been made – see e.g. Simonsen (2012) and Gallardo (2013) – and Simonsen even argues that the function theory takes a much too narrow view on functions; that there are many more situations in which information is needed. However, the situations suggested by Simonsen (2012, p. 566), e.g. information related to entertainment and when forming new social relations, cannot be related to the types of needs described earlier in this section – these are not actual information needs (what needs for information would occur in these examples, and is it possible to talk about an entertainment situation in the same way as we talk about operation and cognition?) and therefore not lexicographically relevant needs.

As mentioned in the earlier section, the lexicographically relevant needs commented on in the meta-lexicographical literature and the ones incorporated into existing dictionaries have been the ones occurring in communicative situations and in a few cases cognitive situations. But with the incorporation of the operative function into the function theory, needs occurring in operative situations must also be considered. Agerbo (2017a) analyses twelve existing dictionaries ranging from the 18th century to the 21st century with the aim of showing that these dictionaries actually have an operative function. Some of the user needs that can be extracted from these tools are for example the need to: carry out a physical exercise, cook a meal, plant a flower, do some calculations, and buy a house in a foreign country. For some readers, these needs may appear strange in a lexicographical setting, but this is only because lexicography over the years has been pushed onto a narrower linguistic pathway. As the analysis of these investigated dictionaries shows, for many years, lexicographers have dealt with other needs than only communicative needs.

Specific needs are typically not connected to main situations (communication, cognition, and operation), but rather sub-situations. For example, a native speaker may experience a need for understanding the meaning of a word in a text in a reception situation, not a communicative situation; and a native speaker may need to understand how to inflect a word in a production situation, not a communicative situation. However, for cognition and operation, no sub-situations have yet been described and therefore it is difficult to make a description of the needs related to these functions (cf. Tarp, 2008a, who only comments on communicative needs in detail, not cognitive needs). The following section therefore suggests some newly identified sub-situations related to these functions.

4.1. Communicative Situations

As mentioned, communicative situations have been well researched – especially because these are the ones that traditionally have been focused on in lexicography – but up until 2017, the needs connected to these situations have only been related to linguistic signs. According to Agerbo (2017b), communicative situations should also be connected to needs where a person has trouble regarding non-linguistic signs. The following are examples of needs related to the three sub-situations of communication.

Reception

• Sub-situation 1: James, who is a native speaker of English, is reading an English newspaper article and comes across the word post-factual. He has never heard or read this word before and therefore does not know what it means. In this case, he wants to know what it means so he can understand the text he is reading; he therefore has a reception need.

• Sub-situation 2: Tina, who is a native speaker of English, is visiting a public swimming pool. Standing next to the medium-sized pool, she sees a sign on which is portrayed a person jumping from the edge into the pool and it also has a red diagonal line crossed over the image. Tina is not quite sure what it means: Could it be that she is not allowed to swim in the pool? Is she not allowed to jump into the water? Or is she not allowed to jump with her head first into the water? In this situation, she experiences a reception need.

Production

• Sub-situation 1: Linda, who is a non-native speaker of English, wants to write a text in English about global warming for school. She is not quite sure if greenhouse effect can be written in the plural or only in the singular, i.e. she is unsure about inflection; she therefore has a text production need.

• Sub-situation 2: Sam, who is a native speaker of English, wants to write a text message, but he is not quite sure how to express with an emoji that he finds something hilarious; he therefore has a text production need (he needs to find out which emoji to use in a specific sentence).

Translation

• Sub-situation 1: Tim, who speaks Danish as his mother tongue and speaks English as his second language, is writing an article for an English music magazine. He is not sure what the translation of the Danish word ørehænger is and needs to find its equivalent; he therefore has a translation problem.

• Sub-situation 2: Anne, who was born and raised in Denmark, is on holiday in Egypt. She is having a conversation in English with a local woman, who at some point in the conversation makes a certain gesture with her hand where she presses all fingers together and holds them upwards (swaia), which Anne does not understand; she therefore has a translation problem (both if this were to be translated into a Danish linguistic sign or a similar gesture used by Danes, this would be a translation problem).

Tarp (2008a, pp. 75-77) has already discussed a large number of different information needs that a person may come across in these sub-situations, and therefore we will not go into further detail with these. However, Tarp only recognizes linguistic needs and does not comment on needs related to non-linguistic signs. As shown in the three sub-situations that constitute the communicative situation, all of these could involve needs related to either linguistic (sub-situations 1) or non-linguistic signs (sub-situations 2). Thus, the table of needs provided in Tarp (2008a) clearly needs to be expanded.

4.2. Cognitive Situations

Bergenholtz (1997, pp. 20-21) writes about the cognitive situation that “the most important point is that the data in the dictionary is not applied to help understand or translate a text, but that it is the data itself that is the goal of the lookup” (our translation). Tarp (2008a, p. 45) furthermore writes that a cognitive information tool seeks to accommodate needs to gain new knowledge in a great number of pre-lexicographical situations. However, he does not go into much detail with these situations compared to his descriptions of communicative situations, nor does he provide as detailed a typology of sub-situations as he does for communication. He unsystematically mentions some social situations in which a person experiences cognitive needs (2008a, p. 45) – e.g. when you suddenly wish to know more about a certain question while you are reading a text, or through processes in your sub-consciousness where you suddenly get inspiration to investigate something – and he furthermore argues that there are two sub-situations into which the cognitive situation can be divided:

• Systematic cognitive situation

• Sporadic cognitive situation

In both of these situations, a person wants to gain knowledge. However, what is actually meant in terms of “systematic” and “sporadic” is not completely clear and no other meta-lexicographical contribution has expanded on this division. We instead suggest that the cognitive situation should be divided into the following two sub-situations:

• Knowledge expansion

• Learning

In the first type of sub-situation, a person may be interested in finding out when Napoleon was born (a punctual problem); in the second type of sub-situation, a person may want to learn as much as is relevant for writing a school paper about the Napoleonic Wars (an information problem to be solved systematically). Other potential needs related to knowledge expansion could be:

Knowledge expansion

• I have cancer and therefore I want to know more about it, e.g. how many people die of cancer?

• Who is the current president of the United States?

• What is the etymology of the word apple?

In some situations of knowledge expansion, the need may be rather punctual, cf. the president example mentioned above, or it can be a more comprehensive one, cf. the cancer example mentioned above. We often find that a need such as wanting to know the etymology of a word is supported by data in traditional communicative dictionaries. However, this need has nothing to do with communication, but is rather an example of a cognitive need. Thus, the inclusion of etymological data in communicative tools seems misplaced and is not useful for people who look in a communicative tool to solve a communicative need.

Learning (see e.g. Hausmann, 1984), on the other hand, is always a systematic acquisition of knowledge or skills with a specific purpose in mind. Some potential needs related to learning could be:

Learning

• I want to learn how to play cricket

• I want to learn all irregular verbs in German

• I want to learn how to breed minks

• I need more knowledge (i.e. learn) about traffic rules in preparation to get a driving license

Learning may take place in the form of classroom learning, often a controlled learning situation, but may also take place as learning on one’s own – it could also involve a mix of both situations. The purpose is to gain desired knowledge or skills, e.g. in order to pass a test as in the examples with the traffic rules above: When you want to get a driving license, you need to attend classes as well as learn from a textbook and from a list of traffic terms.

4.3. Operative Situations

Agerbo (2017a) analyses twelve dictionaries, which she argues could all be considered operative tools. Some of the information needs identified in these tools are listed in Table 1.

Based on these findings, it is possible to extract two basic types of operative sub-situations:

• Advice: What should I do in this situation? → if you experience x, do y

• Instructions: How should I carry out this act in this situation? → to do x, do x₁, x₂, and x₃

It is important to notice the distinction between what and how: In the former case, a person needs to find out in what way s/he should act or react in a specific situation, and in the latter case, a person needs to know how to carry out this act. For example, if a person wants advice on what to do in a certain situation, e.g. what to bring when going whale fishing or what to do if you get bitten by a snake, he is not interested in being told how to do it; but in the case of performing a physical exercise, a person wants instructions on how to actually do the exercise step by step. In some situations, a person may both want to know what to do and how to do it.

Some of the information needs mentioned in the table may be argued to occur in cognitive instead of operative situations, e.g. attacking the enemy and playing a sport. Though these two needs are connected to acting, the end goal is clearly a result of learning (and practice), i.e. they are not needs that can be solved via dictionary consultations. If we compare the two needs related to playing a sport versus playing a game such as rock-paper-scissors, we find that the former requires learning, whereas the latter is solvable with a look-up in an information tool. Thus, the former is a cognitive need, and the latter is an operative need.

4.4. An Overview

Below is an overview of the three main situations and eight sub-situations described in this article. It is important to note that the word text should be understood very broadly. It is not necessarily a piece of written text, but could also be for example a traffic sign or a natural sign.

Communicative situations: the need to get information which in a specific situation is necessary in order to accomplish successful communication

• situation in which a person needs help to understand parts of a text

• situation in which a person needs help to formulate parts of a text

• situation in which a person needs help to translate parts of a text

Operative situations: the need to know in a specific situation how to carry out a certain act or which act to carry out

• situation in which a person needs advice on what s/he should do

• situation in which a person needs to know how s/he should solve a problem, i.e. the person needs instructions

Cognitive situations: the need in a specific situation to acquire knowledge which you do not already have

• situation in which a person needs to acquire knowledge about a specific (singular) phenomenon or about a more complex theme

• situation in which a person has a goal-oriented need to learn something, either on his/her own or by being taught by someone

As these boxes show, the point of departure for the analysis of information needs is the situation in which this need (experienced by a person with a certain user profile) occurs. The function of an information tool is to satisfy these specific type(s) of need that a specific type of user experiences in a specific type of situation. Some tools may have more than one function, i.e. they are polyfunctional, and some tools may try to accommodate more than one type of need. It is not until such points have been settled that it is possible to discuss what kinds of data are useful for satisfying the users’ need for information.

Even though lexicographers for many years have focused too much on the communicative situation, lexicography has theoretically been better at working with information needs than information science has, since a much more useful classification of situations has been produced. We believe that the typology of situations applied in lexicography – especially in its expanded version that includes communication, cognition, and operation – can also be applied in information science and beyond, i.e. that it can be used in many different fields in order to understand the information needs that people in today’s information society may experience.