A Study Of Political Euphemism In The State Of The Unior Addresses Of The U.S. Presidents In Light Of Adaptatior

Euphemism is found in all cultures in the world, which has long become the study focus of linguistics. Political euphemisms are often used in government documents, political speeches, the media, etc, to achieve certain goals. As a sub-stream of euphemism, political euphemism hasn't attracted enough attention as it should be. Most of the previous researches focus on the use and principle of communication of political euphemism. These studies are typically short of theoretical support. Few pragmatic studies of how political euphemisms are produced.The present thesis is different in that it explores mechanism of generation of political euphemism based on Linguistic Adaptation Theory,. This paper selects euphemisms from Union Addresses of six American presidents covering economic matters, social problems, government issues, military conflict, and international affairs. In accordance with Adaptation Theory, language use is regarded as a continuous process in which linguistic choices are made by means of adaptation to the relevant contextual elements. The decisive factors are correlates of adaptability in context because the language users adapt to them when they choose certain linguistic structure. Statesmen use euphemism to achieve political purposes in communication. Therefore the present study investigates political euphemisms from the communicative context perspective.From the angle of communicative context, the present study analyzes how political euphemisms in the State of the Union Addresses of American presidents adapt to elements of communicative context:language users, the mental, social and physical world, in order to achieve certain political goals, such as to please the public, to hide the truth, to polish the ugly reality, to gain political identity, to drum up congressional support, and to push political programs.This research is significant in both theory and application. As the theoretical framework of this thesis, the Adaptation Theory provides a new pragmatic perspective—a comprehensive pragmatic perspective—to analyze other language phenomena. This research is also meaningful to English language teaching.