Marginal Glosses

Marginal glosses are a standard feature of foreign-language readers. The few data-based studies on them, however, provide evidence that challenges their effectiveness.

:::Background:::
Genette groups glosses along with other elements such as the title, preface, and illustrations under the rubric"paratext." The function of the paratext is to facilitate the reception and consumption of the actual text. The practice of glossing dates from the Middle Ages, when a scripture verse, for example, would be surrounded by notes smaller than itself. It was then common for the gloss to occupy much more space than the text itself. In the sixteenth century, marginal glosses explicating specific segments of a passage were first utilized ; in the eighteenth, notes were moved to the bottom of the page.

Genette devotes and entire chapter of his lengthy essay to an analysis of the function of glosses in a fictional text, read in the first language. This investigation was limited to those glosses which are intended as aids during-reading in a foreign language.

Glosses are commonly used in foreign-language readers. Textbook writers maintain that glosses are necessary for fluent reading of a foreign-language text.

Glosses from eleven college French readers published from 1942 until 1988 were examined (Appendix). The table provides suuch information as how an item in the text is signaled as being glossed and what the editors tell the user about how and why they glossed the text. The almost half century represented by the readers in the table shows very little evolution in gloss format. The indication of a glossed term remains in 1988 as it was in 1942, a superscripted number. Notes are positioned at the bottom of side of the page.