Abstract

Learners’ dictionaries play a key role in connecting linguistic knowledge with language use and have long been a focal topic in second language (L2) teaching and vocabulary acquisition research. To examine recent developments in this field, this study employs CiteSpace to conduct a visualized analysis of literature published between 2010 and 2025 indexed in China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) and the Web of Science (WOS). The findings indicate three major trends: (1) a theoretical shift from traditional lexicography toward functional and multimodal paradigms; (2) a methodological transition from introspection to empirical approaches based on eye‐tracking and corpus data; and (3) an increasing research focus on multimodal semantic representation, context‐aware design, and user experience optimization. Online, converged‐media, and embedded learners’ dictionaries have consequently captured recent research interests. The study also identifies what some CNKI research overlooked, including an imbalance between theory and practice and insufficient empirical evidence. By visualizing the knowledge structure of research on learners’ dictionaries, this study provides a systematic overview of the field and offers implications for the compilation of Chinese learners’ dictionaries and their application in international Chinese language education.

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