The Peking Opera or the Beijing Opera? An International Usage Frequency Analysis Based on the Corpus of Global Web-based English (GLoWbE)

Abstract

The regional differences in the frequency of synonym use reflect the social cognition of various speech groups. Both Peking opera and Beijing opera refer to an identical Chinese cultural entity, but they differ considerably in international usage frequency in the GLoWbE where disparity can be manifested among 20 English-speaking communities. Beijing opera enjoys a slightly higher frequency than Peking opera in total, and several Asian and African countries even have no relevant data concerning this art. Besides, we explore some potential reasons for interpreting these phenomena.