The two competing notions of encyclopædic versus dictionary models of cultural competence have long been a central issue in modern semiotics and semantics. According to Umberto Eco [Eco 1984] a dictionary model of a language is a series of items explained by a concise definition, usually composed by a finite set of semantic universals, that cannot be further analysed. In this perspective for instance, man means "animal human male." Such items can be combined according to a finite set of syntactical rules. Some earlier semantically oriented research in Artificial Intelligence [e.g. Minsky 1974, Winston 1977, Schank 1975, Schank & Riesbeck 1981, van Dijk 1977] has demonstrated that in order to understand a text a machine must be provided with information structured in the format of an encyclopædia [see also Eco 1979; Eco & al. 1988 for discussion of these topics]. Eco's encyclopædic model of cultural competence is based on the assumtion that every item of a language must be interpreted by every other possible linguistic item which, according to some previous cultural conventions, can be associated with it. Every sign can be interpreted by another sign that functions as its interpretant. The interpretants of the verbal item man can be a synonym, a simple definition, a long explanation which takes into account the biological nature of human beings, the history of our species, every piece of information connected with the past, present, and future of mankind, every inference that can be drawn the very idea of man. For the meaning of every lexeme there has to exist in memory a node which has as its parent the term to be defined - a type. The ideal structure of a complete memory would form a vast aggregation of planes, each consisting entirely of token nodes [in this case, lexemes which are interpretants of the type in question] except for its head node [the type itself]. Eco's model is based on the principle of unlimited semiosis which implies that: "From a sign which is taken as a type, it is possible to penetrate, from the center to the farthest periphery, the whole universe of cultural units, each of which in turn can become the center and create infinite peripheries" [Eco 1994, pp. 143-144] . A dictionary may consequently be considered a form of disguised encyclopædia: a potentially unordered and unrestricted galaxy of pieces of "world knowledge" [see Eco 1984, pp. 46-86].
From a purely pragmatic perspective, the purpose or function of conventional [paper-based] encyclopædias is to make accessible for some kind of broadly defined potential readership this kind of "world knowledge". In real terms this involves the materialization of systematised, taxonomically organised summaries of current [canonical] culturally, textually and linguistically constituted norm systems which represent and explicate some "core" sample or "canon" of accepted understandings of word-meanings, historical and current affairs and various domains of scientific knowledge, situated in what we may call an "authoritative" context. Interpretants are activated intentionally by the empirical reader during an interactive semiosis with the encyclopædia whereby information made accessible there, and perceived as salient in relation to his or her own reader-specific contexts and areas of usage is accessed, interpreted and reinterpreted as he or she "navigates" through the work at hand. The idea of authority seems necessary here in order to explain why such a reader might choose to give priority to this particular form of representation of knowledge over other possible sources such as other people, literature, television, films, radio, newspapers, public libraries or the Internet.
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