중국 북경 지역의 상호(商號)에 대한 사회언어학적 연구

Abstract

This study examines closely the linguistic characteristics of trade names(street commercial signs) on outdoor billboards collected in Beijing, the center of politics and economy of China. The summary of the research is as follows: 1. As for the languages used in the signs, people use both Chinese and English. In some cases, Chinese is used exclusively; in other cases, the mixed form of Chinese and English is used. However, the rate of using Chinese exclusively is not very high. Seeing from the point of shop types, clothing shops use English much more frequently than food shops. In the field of clothing, foreign goods are estimated higher in quality and in brand power, so even chinese original brands and commercial signs are advertised in English, emphasizing their stylish images by presenting themselves as foreign products. On the other hand, the preference for local food culture seems to remain strong. 2. As for the number of syllables, 4 syllable words are most frequently used, and 3 and 5 syllable words followed them. Seeing from the point of shop types, 3 syllables are most frequently used in clothing shops. In food shops, there are many 3 and 4 syllable words. There are differences according to shop types in the number of syllables. According to the questionnaires, consumers memorize trade names which are made up of smaller than 3 syllable words. This implies the possibility that trade names can be abridged. 3. In the case of tone, an interesting case that tone has a great influence on the development of trade names is found. Largely in trade names, 4th tone characters are used a lot; on the other hand, 3rd tone characters are used conspicuously little. The reason is that first, as external factors, it receives an effect on the quantity of numbers of characters using a tone, and second, as internal factors, the length and the beat of sound have an effect on the choice of characters used in trade names. 4. Examining the frequency of Chinese characters used in trade names, we know that there are two factors working when developers of trade names choose Chinese characters. One is the relationship of the shop type and the place where the shop is located. The other is the image of foreign brand. 5. I examined the degree of difficulty of Chinese characters used in trade names, applying the standard of Chinese character level list made by HSK office. The proportion of Chinese characters within the range of most commonly used Chinese characters is 95.21% and that of outside the range is 4.79%. Among the characters used in trade names, the possibility of choosing the characters often used in everyday life is high, but the characters of low frequency in everyday life are not avoided. It can't be said that the degree of difficulty of the characters which are not used in common is always high. All things considered, it can be said that the degree of difficulty of characters used in trade names is not high.