A Comparative Study Of Euphemisms In English And Chinese From The Pragmatic Perspective

As a significant aspect of politeness phenomena, euphemism has been studied in disciplines such as sociology, anthropology, socio-linguistics, pragmatics and discourse analysis by both linguists at home and abroad, yet so far there has been no systematic investigation of euphemisms in different languages from a pragmatic perspective.This thesis is a tentative endeavor to synthesize the merits and to make up for the deficiencies of the achievements in euphemism studies thus far made in China and the English-speaking countries, with a focus on study of euphemisms in Chinese and English from a pragmatic perspective. To address that topic, a comparative approach is employed as general framework for the research work.Taboo is a common cultural phenomenon of human society. Reflected in thinking and manifested in language communication, this phenomenon displays itself in the form of verbal taboo. In real life, people try not to mention those taboo areas and to avoid using taboo language. In many cases, however, people have to discuss those sensitive areas, to which they can not give direct and explicit expressions. To carry on communication and to avoid violating certain taboos, people speak out their mind in implicit and roundabout ways. This way of expression is euphemism. Euphemism and taboo are the two faces of the same coin: different looks of equal value.In the long period of evolution and practice, human beings have been perceiving and remarking the objective world, and in the meantime they have been establishing and developing their own languages and cultures, thus forming various language patterns and cultural communities. The language patterns and cultural communities of different peoples differ from, interlock and overlap one another.The same is true of euphemism.So, in this thesis, the author first distinguished two kinds of euphemism: euphemism in the narrow sense and euphemism in broad sense. The former concerns those conventionally established euphemistic words and expressions restricted to the lexicon; the latter relates to grammatical ways(negation, tense, voice, etc)of euphemizing and ways of euphemizing on the level of discourse. As a result, the range of euphemism study is widened, and the ways of euphemism formation are enriched. The euphemisms explored in this thesis belong to the latter.Then, the author explores the relationship between euphemisms in English and Chinese and three pragmatic principles, with a conclusion that these two types of euphemism adhere to the Politeness Principle and the Self-defense Principle, on the basis of violating the Cooperative Principle, though there naturally exist some differences as euphemisms are the products of different cultures as well as of different modes of thinking.In addition, the author also investigates the psychological bases for people in using euphemisms. Psychologically, people prefer the things that look good sand sound pleasant. In speech action, people want to save face, to be polite, to seek for a shield against the fearful, the offensive, and the distasteful, to find substitutes for taboo, and to make the unpleasant sound better and even to conceal the unpleasant truth. On this occasion, euphemism can serve this function. Therefore, people of all countries employ euphemisms in their communication widely, not only out of the psychology of avoiding taboos or vulgarities, but also out of the psychology of showing politeness and elegance.There is still another special way of expression in language. This is" politicians speech" or " political language", which is used for political purposes. More often than not, this kind of language is characteristic of obscuring, disguising and deceiving, but not exclusive of its political or diplomatic tactfulness.Language is the product of both society and psychology. Studying from the pragmatic perspective, we can find that though English speaking countries andChina differ from each other in politics, economy, culture, etc. to a certain degree, both native English speakers and Chinese speakers are almost out o...