Abstract
Ishikawa Prefecture is located in the Hokuriku region in Japan. One of the main targets of the tourism industry in Ishikawa is to increase the number of tourists from foreign countries. In order to achieve this goal, it is necessary to provide foreign tourists with “language service.” In this study, in order to understand the state of language service provided to foreign tourists, what linguistic characteristics can be found in English guidebooks at Komatsu Airport and Toyama Airport, which are local airports in Japan, were investigated and compared with guidebooks available at international airports in Japan and the U.S. In short, frequency characteristics of character- and word-appearance were investigated using a program written in C++. These characteristics were approximated by an exponential function. Furthermore, the percentage of Japanese junior high school required vocabulary and American basic vocabulary was calculated to obtain the difficulty-level as well as the K-characteristic of each material. As a result, it was clearly shown that English guidebooks available at airports in the Hokuriku region have a similar tendency to literary writings in the characteristics of character-appearance. Besides, the values of the K-characteristic for the guidebooks are high, and the difficulty level is low in terms of the American basic vocabulary.
