Stylistic Analysis of English Tourist Guidebooks Available at Local Airports in Japan

Abstract

In order to understand a state of "language service" to foreign tourists, we investigated what metrical linguistic characteristics can be found in English tourist guidebooks available at Komatsu Airport and Toyama Airport. In short, frequency characteristics of character- and word-appearance were examined. These characteristics were approximated by an exponential function. Furthermore, we calculated the percentage of Japanese junior high school required vocabulary and American basic vocabulary to obtain the difficulty-level of each material. As a result, it was clearly shown that English tourist guidebooks available at local airports in Japan have a similar tendency to English literary writings in character-appearance, and the difficulty-level for them is low.