Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research, volume 329 4th International Conference on Contemporary Education, Social Sciences and Humanities (ICCESSH 2019) An IWEB-based Study of Shaanxi Cultural Image* Hua He Menglong Sun School of Foreign Languages Cultural Tourism Corporation Northwest University Qinhan New City Xi'an, China 710127 Xi'an, China 710200 Abstract—Based on IWEB corpus, this paper studies the corpus. The author first retrieves the lemma Shaanxi, selects overall image and cultural image of Shaanxi province in China, its noun collocates by frequency, and classifies those so as to find out the cross-cultural transmission effect of collocates into categories so as to figure out the overall Shaanxi culture. The significance of the study is to promote a image of Shaanxi province in cross-cultural transmission. corpus-based study of Chinese cross-cultural transmission and Next, within the culture-related category, the author specifies provide a feedback for project design and policy-making in Shaanxi cultural image. Particularly, Shaanxi folk culture is cross-cultural transmission of Chinese regional culture. studied, since folk culture concerns the life style of local residents, which is most likely to arouse outsiders’ interests Keywords—Corpus-based; cross-cultural transmission; and thus has an important role to play in cultural Shaanxi culture transmission. The significance of the present work is to promote the study of Chinese cross-cultural transmission I. INTRODUCTION effect on a corpus basis as well as provide a feedback for The international influence of China has been seen in project design and policy-making in Chinese regional cross- recent decades with the improvement of its global cultural transmission. competitive capacity. For a better worldwide communication, China has been endeavoring to promote its global cultural II. IWEB CORPUS AND RETRIEVAL METHOD transmission, such as through setting up Confucius Institutes, encouraging Chinese teaching and constructing international The series of corpora from Brigham Young University websites. now have the largest group of users worldwide. IWEB corpus, as one of the most efficient one from BYU, was Within this background, most related researches have released in May, 2018. The reasons why the author chooses been focusing on cultural transmission strategies, while IWEB as the study corpus are as follows. First, IWEB corpus cultural transmission effect are not much emphasized [1]. is web-based. Website is seen as the best carrier of cross- Besides, corpus-based researches about Chinese cultural cultural transmission information for its fast speed, terms and transmission are rare [2]. The author retrieved the convenient click and abundant users, so a web-based corpus word Corpus within the discipline of culture on CNKI net is capable of revealing the transmission effect. Second, (China National Knowledge Infrastructure). Only 6 relevant IWEB has brilliant capacity of words. It contains about 14 articles were found. Researcher He investigated the features billion words in 22,388,141 web pages from 94, 391 of Chinese culture transmission through analysis of 40 websites, which makes it one of only 3 large web-based Chinese cultural terms [3]. Zhang & Liu analyzed the corpora. Besides, those websites were chosen in a systematic American perception of 17 Chinese cultural terms [4]. The way instead of the random way that other large corpora have other 4 articles are about Chinese regional cultural typically done. Third, the retrieval speed on IWEB is fast. In transmission in the English world, concerning Guangxi less than 10-20 seconds, the results would be shown or the province [1], Henan province [5], Anhui province [6] and virtual corpora could be created. The last reason is that Jiang’nan area [7]. Shaanxi province is world famous for its IWEB is online free of charge and easy access is possible abundant historical and cultural heritage, and its capital city, anytime. Xi’an, has been ancient capitals for 13 dynasties. Many researchers as well as Shaanxi government have been On the retrieval page of IWEB, the author searches for working hard on effective strategies in the promotion of local the noun collocates of the lemma Shaanxi. The span range is cultural transmission. However, the author hasn’t found any 5 words from both sides which is the maximum for a free research dealing with Shaanxi cross-cultural transmission search. Results show there’re only 3 words with per million effect on a corpus basis. frequency reaching 0.01(province 0.05; museum 0.01; capital 0.05), and the rest remain as 0. So the author chooses In this paper, the author aims to find out the global 47 nouns collocates of Shaanxi with a raw frequency above transmission effect of Shaanxi culture based on IWEB 10 and classifies them into 6 categories as shown in Figure 1. Within each category, the lemmas are written in brackets and *Fund: Shaanxi Social Science Fund — Corpus-based Analysis of the number after each lemma refers to its raw frequency. Shaanxi Folk Culture Transmission Effect from a Cross-cultural Perspective (2018M27) Copyright © 2019, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/). 1175 Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research, volume 329 The principle of categorization is first by classifying the home of Chinese historical culture, so the lemma [home] those lemmas with explicit references, such as [mountain], is classified into the category of history & culture. The [culture] and [university], and for those with implicit lemma [part] in the 2nd category, [point], [game] & [rebound] connotation, the author reads the KWIC lines and classifies in the 3rd category and [development] & [group] in the 5th them by their reference in the context. The categorization of category are all classified in the same way as what the author the following lemmas needs to be mentioned. KWIC lines of does with the lemma [home] ("Table I"). most of the words [home] in the 1st category refer Shaanxi to TABLE I. CATEGORIES OF NOUN COLLOCATES OF THE LEMMA SHAANXI 1st 2nd 3rd 4th 5th 6th Administrative History Nature Science, Economic Others Zone &Culture &Landscape Education Development &Sports [PROVINCE] (680) [MUSEUM] [MOUNTAIN] (26) [UNIVERSITY] [AIRCRAFT] (20) [PEOPLE] [CAPITAL] ( 82) (103) [EARTHQUAKE] (57) [COMPANY](14) (16) [CITY] (67) [HISTORY](57) (24) [INSTITUTE] (21) [DEVELOPMENT] [DAY](15) [GANSU] (33) [HOME](17) [RIVER] (23) [POINT] (13) (11) [YEAR](15) [COUNTY] (31) [DYNASTY] [VALLEY] (14) [RESEARCH] (12) [GROUP](11) [SIDE](11) [AREA] (20) (16) [FARMER] (14) [GAME] (12) [CHINA] (19) [SITE] (16) [MOUNT] (12) [REBOUND] (12) [GOVERNMENT] (17) [RELIC]( 12) [COAL] (10) [REGION] (17) [ART](10) [PANDA] (10) [PLACE] (14) [CULTURE](10) [VILLAGE] (10) [PART] (13) [OPERA](10) [TOWN] (12) [CENTER] (10) [ROAD] (10) [BUREAU] (10) 15 lemmas 9 lemmas 9 lemmas 6 lemmas 4 lemmas 4 lemmas development is not a prominent image of Shaanxi compared III. THE OVERALL IMAGE OF SHAANXI PROVINCE with its history, culture and research institutions. Within this By both frequency and number of lemmas, the category category, the word aircraft is the most frequent one and of Administrative Zone tops the list. Then follow respectively Shaanxi Aircraft Company, Aircraft Organization, Aircraft History & Culture, Nature & Landscape, Science, Education Manufacturer are mentioned a lot. As we know, Yanliang & Sports, Economic Development as well as Others. Results District in Shaanxi province has been the largest Aviation show that in cross-cultural transmission, Shaanxi is Base in China for aircraft design, manufacturing, testing and mentioned mostly as a province, area or part of China. The research. word province hits the list, because Shaanxi and province are Two points need to be discussed from the results above. a close collocation in the sense of administrative division. Its The first one is about the history and culture image of cities, counties, towns and neighbors like Gansu province are Shaanxi province. As shown in Figure 1, except that Shaanxi, introduced as well. Then comes the mention of history, as part of China, is naturally perceived as an administrative culture, nature and landscape in Shaanxi, among which, zone, the most prominent image of Shaanxi province in museum and history are mostly mentioned. Shaanxi cross-cultural transmission is its history and culture. Besides, Historical Museum has been mentioned very frequently since though the 3rd category is about Nature and Landscape, many it’s a place for tourists to get an overview of Shaanxi history words like mountain, valley and village are concerned with and culture. Though less frequently, famous rivers and information of Shaanxi history and culture. Through mountains are mentioned a lot as well, such as Qinling observation of the lemmas in the 2nd category, it’s seen that Mountain, Hua Mountain, Yellow River and Wei River. Shaanxi is a place with lots of museums, relics, art, historical Within the category of Nature and Landscape, the word sites, cultural resources, and it has been an important place earthquake hits frequently as well, because there was once a through many dynasties in Chinese history. Furthermore, one catastrophic earthquake in 1556 in Shaanxi province, killing word needs to be noticed is opera, which is the only word 830,000 people. Another earthquake in Wenchuan, Sichuan referring to a specific