A Pragmatic Study Of English Euphemism In The Desperate Housewives

Euphemism is a common linguistic phenomenon in different cultures. It is a perfect approach for people to achieve a successful social communication. Therefore, euphemism plays an important role in our daily life. It is used in communication to protect faces of hearer or speaker. Thus the study of application of euphemism will be important for English learners in cross-cultural communication.This thesis consists of five chapters. Chapter one is an introduction, which gives a general account of euphemisms including research background, rational purpose and organization of the paper. Chapter two reviews the study of euphemism from the linguistic perspective, which gives the definition, origins and classification of English euphemisms. Chapter three gives a detailed case study of the application of euphemism and the pragmatic function of euphemism. As a case study, the essay will analyze the application of euphemism in a popular American series The Desperate Housewives. The series is mainly talking about the daily life of the four housewives. The tone of.the series is full of humor and euphemisms. As a language case study, the conversation of the ordinary people is very suitable and more vivid. For this reason I choose this series as my case study. So some daily conversations in American people's life are chosen and analyzed from the pragmatic view. All examples quoted will be classified and analyzed in detail to find the features of English euphemism. Meanwhile, the functions of euphemism including taboo, politeness, tactical and humor will be analyzed to get the psychological and social reasons of euphemism use. Chapter four studies the motivation of euphemisms and offers politeness theories including Cooperation Principle and Politeness Principle to illustrate why people like to and how to use euphemisms in conversations. The detailed analysis of the concerned examples will show how CP and PP are observed or violated in euphemism. Chapter five concludes the whole thesis, pointing out the purpose of using euphemisms, giving some suggestions on the application of euphemism. At the same time, some limitations of the study are proposed and some suggestions for further research on English euphemisms are given. From the above research, it can be seen that euphemism is the product of politeness, and the ultimate purpose of using euphemism is to show politeness, to protect faces of both speakers and addressees and even the third party. Therefore, the correct application of euphemisms can improve one's communicative ability and achieve a successful cross-cultural communication.