The formation of English euphemism
英语语言学 张俏
Abstract: Euphemism is a linguistic phenomenon in English language, as well as a cultural phenomenon in English-speaking society. People u euphemism to avoid speaking taboo language or something unpleasant, impolite or vulgar. This thesis would focus on the formation of English euphemism and from this analyze, we could get more understanding of English in this perspective, contrasting with Chine euphemism.
Key words: euphemism, formation, principle
摘要：委婉语不仅是英语语言中，也是英语社会里一个语言现象。人们使用委婉语来避免一些类似禁忌、不礼貌、不愉快或者粗俗的用语。这篇论文侧重于分析英语委婉语的构成。通过细致的了解委婉语的大致构成和构成原则，我们能够更好的了解英语委婉语并从委婉语的角度了解英语这门语言。
关键词：委婉语、构成、原则
Basically, a euphemism is usually a polite way to say something which is embarrassing or unpleasant. Euphemism is widely ud in daily life to replace another word or phra which is thought of as too direct or rude. Lexically, Western linguists think that the word “euphemism” is compod of “eu” and “pheme”, the first morpheme “eu” here means “good” while the cond one refers to “speech”, so it literally means “good speech”, “words of good omen”, or “the gilded words”.
The formation of English euphemism is various and it can be analyzed from five different perspectives:
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. Phonetic means. Phonetic means can widely ud to produce euphemism in English. Some unpleasant sounds or word-forms can be omitted or hidden. Phonetic means mainly refers to phonetic omission and phonetic distortion:彭真子女
1. Phonetic omission. It refers to omitting some parts of the sound to make pronunciation shorter and less unpleasant. For example, we could omit lavatory to lav, or brassiere to bra.
2. Phonetic distortion. In order to avoid violating taboo, the speakers make some alteration in spelling and pronouncing of the taboo words. For example, very religious people consider it a sin of using the name of God in a disrespectful way, so “God” is distorted to “Gosh” or “Golly”! It generally includes: Abbreviation. For example, tuberculosis always distorted to TB. Jesus Christ could be abbreviated as JC. Reduplication, which reduplicate some syllables or letters of the words to form euphemism. For example, “sis-sis”, “pee-pee” or “wee-wee” replace “piss”. Distortion of the pronunciation. For example we could pronounce “bloody” as “blurry” in some occasion.什么的故事
. Lexical means. This can be further divided into three sub-means as below:
1. 熬受Vague means. It refers to the generalization of the specific meanings to alleviate the bad effect of fear, shames or anxiety. For example, we could say “You’ve lost licen” instead of “Your fly is open” or we always u “partner” to mean “x-companion”.
2. Synonym replacement. Making u of the subtle differences of synonyms in emotional
color is another common way to make the euphemism, which is more polite and acceptable. For example, we could say someone “went to sleep” instead of saying he was died. We also could u some words like “slim” or “slender” to show somebody is really skinny.
3. Borrowing loanwords. In the development of English language, English absorbs large amount of vocabulary from other languages. People u the borrowing words to express some taboo. For example, “to have a yen” means to make love, and the word “yen” is reprent for “yin” in Chine.
. Rhetorical means. Some rhetoric of speech can make the language more exact, vivid and implicative. Some figures of speech can make the language more exact, vivid and implicative
The following are four major types of figures of speech with its identical examples.
1. Metaphorical transfer. For example, we could say “the flowers or mother nature” to m
ean the “mens”. And when we express somebody was died, we’d better to say that someone is cead to think, avoiding rudeness. 好冷的图片
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2. Synecdoche transfer. This means we could u the whole thing instead of some embarrasd parts in some occasion. For example, when we take physical examination, we always u the word “chest” instead of “breast”.洗衣机甩干桶不转怎么修
3. Metonymical transfer. For example, we could u the gray hair to mean the old men, the cradle to mean the childhood.
4. Understatement. This is always ud to express some unpleasant things and easier to be accepted by the listener. For example, we could say “your socks are smelly” means “they are really stinking”. And when we’d like to go to the toilet, we’d better say “we want to go to the restroom or powder room”.
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. Grammatical means. American linguist, Bollinger Dwight once pointed out: “Euphemism is not restricted to the lexicon; there are grammatical ways of toning something down without actually changing the content of the message.”(Rawson, 148) Afterwards, the grammatical ways of forming euphemism such as negation, ten, voice, and mood and so on were carefully attended to. For example, in daily communication we usually say that “could you plea…?”. Such expressions are very polite compare with the imperative ntences. The grammatical means can be classified into the following ways:
