A Study Of English Euphemisms Based On Adaptation To The Communicative Context Of The Adaptation Theory

As an indirect linguistic behavior, euphemism exists in different languages and communicative activities, which is widely used by people with different cultural backgrounds. It is not only a very important device to coordinate interpersonal relationship, but also an indispensable part of daily communication in the development of modern society. So far, linguists and scholars at home and abroad have made studies on euphemisms from the perspectives of rhetoric, semantics, social psychology, sociolinguistics, fuzzy linguistics, literature translation, and pragmatics. The result of euphemism study has been enriched and people's field of vision on euphemism phenomenon is widened greatly, which has a great value for people to know euphemism correctly and study euphemism deeply.Verschueren's Adaptation Theory which is put forward under the concept"pragmatic perspective"provides a comprehensive and scientific angle for studying euphemism. According to Verschueren, language use can be taken as a continuous process of making of linguistic choices by adapting to the relevant contextual elements. And euphemism is a linguistic strategy to achieve certain communicative goal adopted by the language users in communicative processes. On the basis of Verschueren's Adaptation Theory, the thesis attempts to study euphemism from the perspective of communicative context and proves that the choice of English euphemism in communication activities is the result of adaptation to language users, the social world, the mental world of the speakers and the physical world in order to achieve communicative goal. The study of euphemisms in communicative context is to help know more about what is going on in people's mind, in their language and culture, to help smooth over cultural barriers and shed light on intercultural communication and English language teaching and learning. As for the organization of the thesis, it is designed to accomplish five chapters. Chapter One is the introduction. Chapter Two reviews the literature of euphemism. Chapter Three discusses Verschueren's Adaptation Theory, the theoretical framework of this thesis. And Chapter Four is the main part of the whole study. It gives an analysis of how euphemisms adapt to communicative context with some examples. And chapter Five is the conclusion.In this thesis, euphemism has been studies from a new and comprehensive pragmatic perspective, which may help people comprehend, apply and acquire this speech act better and achieve successful communication. Of course, while euphemism study is based on Adaptation Theory, there are still some problems left for further study.