이 연구는 충청남도 공무원의 행정 용어 사용 실태를 점검하는 한편 일반 국민을 대상으로 행정 용어에 대한 이해도·선호도 및 인지도 조사를 통해 행정 용어의 문제점을 진단하는 것이 목적이다. 행정 용어에 대한 이해도ㆍ선호도 조사에서는 ‘동법, SOC, 태스크포스, 동법’ 등의 정확한 뜻을 알고 있는지 살펴보았다. ‘SOC’는 85.1%의 국민이 정확한 뜻을 모른다고 대답했고, ‘태스트포스’는 79%, ‘동법’은 55.6%의 국민이 정확한 뜻을 모른다고 대답했다. 공문서에서 어려운 행정 용어를 사용하는 것에 대해서는 82.9%가 “좋지 않다.”라고 응답했고, 쉬운 행정 용어를 사용하는 것에 대해서는 52.8%가 “좋다.”라고 응답했다. 충청남도 공무원들이 쉬운 행정 용어를 얼마나 사용하는지, 문화체육관광부가 선정한 312개 행정 용어 순화 대상어의 사용 실태를 분석한 결과, 270개의 행정 용어가 사용되었으며 ‘파일’, ‘동법’, ‘투어’, ‘소요’, ‘유관기관’, ‘이벤트’ 등의 사용 빈도가 높게 나타났다.
This study aims to examine the usage of refining target words by civil servants of Chungcheongnam-do, and to diagnose problems caused by those terms through an investigation of public understanding, preferences, and awareness of the administrative terms and related problems, in order to lay the foundation for improvement. For the investigation of the public understanding, preferences, and awareness of administrative terms, the expressions such as ‘dongbeop (same law), SOC, Mecca, landmark, task force, roadmap, fam tour and voucher’ were selected to find out whether the general public know their exact meaning. As a result, 85.1% of the respondents answered they did not know the exact meaning of ‘SOC’, and 79% answered the same for ‘task force’, 55.6% for ‘dongbeop’, 53.6% for ‘fam tour’ and 53% for the term ‘voucher’. In contrast, 53.7% of the people answered they roughly knew the meaning of ‘landmark’, and 46% said the same for ‘roadmap’, and 58% of the respondents said they knew exactly what ‘Mecca’ meant. When asked about the usage of administrative terms originated from Chinese characters and foreign words in official documents, 82.9% of the respondents answered it was “not good”, and for reasons behind it, 54.7% said “Hangeul alone is enough to convey meaning”. When asked about official documents with expressions that are easy to understand without difficult administrative terms, 52.8% of the respondents said “good”. People"s preference for the use of simple and easy expressions instead of challenging administrative terms, was explained by the reason picked by 72.1% of the respondents, which was “because it is easy to understand the meaning of the word”. In order to find out the frequency of refining words for official administrative terms used by the civil servants of Chungcheongnam-do, an analysis was conducted on the usage of 312 refining words selected by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism. And as a result, 270 of them were used and the total frequency turned out to be 327,175. And the word with the highest frequency turned out to be ‘file’ which was used 32,251 times, followed by ‘dongbeop’ with 24,099 times, ‘tour’ with 20.945 times, ‘soyo(required)’ with 15,615 times, ‘relative institution’ with 14,323 times and ‘event’ with 12,431 times in sequence. Among the refining words for administrative terms, there were some that have not been used at all, whereas, in certain cases, other refining words have been used much more frequently than the target terms to be refined. Therefore, it would be more effective to put continuous efforts to refine administrative terms rather than to impose regulative actions to make people “use refining words whenever possible” through official notices by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism as in current situation.