A Contrastive Study Of Euphemism In English And Chinese Physiological Phenomena And Its Implications In Teaching Chinese As A Foreign Language

With the fast pace of world globalization and the prosperity of China,"Chinesehot" is popular in the world. Teaching Chinese as a foreign language is important forthe development of our country and the prosperity of our nation. The ultimate goal ofTCFL is to cultivate foreign students’ inter-cultural communication abilities. Being theessence of a language, euphemism contains some elements that reflect the history,culture, thinking, value, and psychology of a nation’s language, thus it is one ofcriteria to judge foreign learners’ inter-cultural communication abilities and to judgewhether they can use Chinese euphemism properly or not.Physiological phenomenon euphemism, related to all human being’sphysiological behaviors, is the representative one among all euphemisms and properlyreflects Chinese psychic features and cultural tradition. In this dissertation, the authortakes physiological phenomenon euphemism as a specific research target from theperspective of inter-cultural communication and does some research under the guidingof cultural transfer theory. Firstly, the author systematically concludes theeuphemism’s definition, classification, features and principles of formation, thenintroduces some concepts related to inter-cultural communication such as therelationship between culture and language, the relationship between culture andeuphemism, the relationship between inter-cultural communication and euphemismand the theory of cultural transfer. On the basis of cultural transfer theory, the authorcollects87items of English euphemisms and73items of Chinese euphemisms, totally160items, and divides them into five major categories: birth, age, illness, death andexcretion according to human being’s physiological features. Then, in form of tables,the author makes some comparative researches on euphemism categories that cancause positive or negative cultural transfer, and explores its cultural reasons fromperspective of inter-cultural communication. Finally, the author discusses the effectsof the research results on euphemism teaching in TCFL.Through a comparative study on specific physiological phenomenon euphemism,the author hopes that it can throw a light on the learning of Chinese euphemism forforeign learners, and hopes that it can help them learn more about Chinese culture andacquire Chinese cultural sense. Through the analysis of differences and similaritiesbetween English and Chinese culture, they can form a kind of cultural identification, which finally promotes their abilities in inter-cultural communication.