Sui And Tang Epitaphs Euphemism Study

Euphemism is an important rhetoric in Chinese,and euphemisms, formed by various figures, are euphemistic phrases with particular meanings. Euphemism, as a language form, possesses both the rich cultural deposits and the flavor of era, and its composition and language usage is worth further investigation. Epitaph is an important style, and the research on epitaph is significant to study Chinese history. Epitaph's corpus is no doubt exceptionally rich. Because of the their own particularity, euphemisms, however, are used in every piece of epitaph. Therefore, intensive study on the euphemism appearing in the epitaph is significantly and universally meaningful.In this paper, euphemisms appearing in the Sui and Tang epitaphs are selected for systematic study. After the development during the Northern and Southern dynasties, epitaph in Sui and Tang dynasties reached a mature stage, formed a more uniform shape, and established the basic writing format, which all had profound impact on later epitaphs. Moreover, Sui and Tang dynasties' epitaphs surpassed the predecessor in the scope of social communities involved, the depth of social reality reflected, and the richness and flexibility of language used. These all enrich the linguistics study.This paper is divided into three parts:â… .IntroductionThis section introduces the study purpose and significance of this paper, analyzes the history of epitaph euphemism and its present situation, and proposes the necessity and importance of study on the Sui and Tang epitaph euphemisms.â…¡.The study classifies the euphemisms of the Sui and Tang epitaphs, from the point of the word(phrase) euphemism, into three categories:1. Death euphemism2. Burials euphemism3. Other Euphemismsâ…¢.The conclusion sums up the study situation.