The Culturally Authentic Pictorial Lexicon (CAPL) was created in 2003 by Michael Shaughnessy and Jason Parkhill at Washington & Jefferson College in Washington, PA. The initial pilot project created a dictionary database of over 1,000 unique entries for the German language.

CAPL-German doubled its offerings in April 2005 thanks to numerous supporters around the globe! For more information on contributing our pictures, email capl@washjeff.edu.

Our usage policy is simple:

The pictures in this database may be viewed, downloaded, linked, manipulated, copied, displayed, and redistributed free of charge for educational non-commercial as specified by the Creative Commons license. Please cite CAPL@washjeff.edu as the source.

Principles of CAPL

Several principles are behind the creation and growth of CAPL. Starting with German, these principles make CAPL unique and more applicable in language acquisition that other visual dictionaries

Authenticity: The pictures in CAPL are authentic primary sources, taken within the language specific context they are found. The pictures are neither staged nor manipulated to suit.

Language Specific Source Dictionary: CAPL is unique to other picture collections because the pictures are not merely "street scenes." Each picture represents a dictionary entry. This entry must originate in the source language. The translation is secondary to the source and sometimes may not officially exist according to standard orthographic authorities.

Objective Depiction: The object depicted must be easily understood without a caption. In doing this, mostly nouns will constitute this database. The subjectivity of a visual representation for adjectives such as "beautiful" creates linguistic, political, racial, economic, philosophical, etc. : problems that the creators of CAPL would like to avoid. Also, no derogatory nouns will be depicted in CAPL.

No absolute representative visual depiction possible: We do not argue that there can be one picture of a German Markt that totally encompasses the platonic ideal of German "Market-ness" Nevertheless, if one picture in one context can assist in understanding of what a German market is, then it should be included. If a different picture in a different context adds to another understanding, we are interested in adding it.


For the construction and expansion of CAPL, the following principles apply:


Representative Samples: A minimum representative sample is necessary for the inclusion of a category. Orphan words might not be added to the database.

Context is crucial: New additions should be provided with a context. For example, a picture of a ticket machine for busses should be a ticket machine within a bus. This allows for cultural comparison that may appear at a later date.

Monitored expansion: Expansion is important, especially to include regional cultural items, out of the way places or unique cultural entries that may not be in the database. CAPL gladly adds pictures that are not represented, but all submissions undergo an editorial process. We are not interested in thirty depictions of one item / place unless warranted.

Contact:

Editor in Chief
Michael Shaughnessy, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of German
Washington & Jefferson College
60 South Lincoln St.
Washington, PA 15301
724-223-6170
CAPL@washjeff.edu

Technical Director
Jason Parkhill
Associate Director for Academic Technology
Washington & Jefferson College
60 South Lincoln St.
Washington, PA 15301

Associate Editor
Nikhil Sathe, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of German
Ohio University


 

There are currently 2,602 active records in CAPL