Adaptation Of Euphemism To Context And Its Implications For TEFL

As a common phenomenon in all languages, euphemism is a kind of roundabout and indirect expression that one uses to fulfill desired communicative goals. Up to now, many scholars at home and abroad have probed into its causes, essential characteristics, pragmatic functions and so on from perspectives of semantics, pragmatics, sociolinguistics, fuzzy linguistics, rhetoric, etc. and have made a lot of brilliant achievements. But compared with Adaptation Theory proposed by Verschueren, all these approaches are more or less not universally acceptable. Now that euphemism is a kind of linguistic choice made by the language user to adapt to the context and a linguistic strategy to achieve certain communicative goal, it is necessary to use Adaptation Theory to make a systematic analysis of it.According to Adaptation Theory, language use must consist of the constant making of linguistic choices consciously or unconsciously, and the choice of language must adapt to the context. Only with the appropriate choice can the expected aim and result be fulfilled in communication. This thesis begins with an introduction of the origin and definition of euphemism and the purpose of the study, then presents that the choice of euphemism adapts to such communicative context factors as the language users, the social world and the mental world of the language users on the basis of Adaptation Theory, and then make some suggestions about language teaching and further research. The study shows that the adaptation-based approach can reduce pragmatic failures, ensure a smooth communication, enrich the common linguistic theories, shed light on other subjects like cognitive science and give some enlightenment on other correlative questions. The author hopes that these findings can be applied to intercultural communication and to language teaching and learning.