Corpus-Based Research Of Chinese Dish Names

Taking the representative dish names of eight big cuisines of China as its research objects and based on a full description of dish names from phonological, structural and rhetoric point of views, this paper makes a full range of analysis on language features of Chinese dish names while integrating cultural elements into the research. The research of Chinese dish names carried out in this paper not only explores the general principles of dish names as a linguistic phenomenon, but by using research methods of corpus linguistics, it also devotes itself to decoding the implied meaning and cultural elements in Chinese dish names in the broad context of humanities so as to offer some suggestions, from linguistic points of view, to the standardization of dish names and the construction of famous brands for traditional catering cultures.Chapter one, Classification of Chinese Cuisines, briefs the origins and specialties of each cuisine.Chapter two, Phonological Analysis of Dish Names, concludes the distribution patterns of syllables in dish names and basic rhythmic types by making analysis and using statistics. It also tries to explain the formation causes of those patterns and types from the perspective of consumption psychology.Chapter three, Structural Analysis of Dish Names, starts from analyzing structures of dish names, stating that the main structure of dish names are phrases in the form of modification phrases, joint phrases, verb-object phrases and subject-verb phrases. Then it goes on to analyze the semantic relations of dish names according to the different words used for ingredients, cooking methods and cookers. After that, it analyzes the special structures in dish names, trying to explain the complexity of dish names with this structural analysis.Chapter four, Rhetoric Analysis of Dish Names, makes comments on the rhetoric effects of dish names by analyzing the figure of speech used.Chapter five, Standardization of Dish Names, points out some existing problems in the forms and contents of dish names, explains the principles of standardizing dish names and offers some suggestions to the problems.