A Prototypical Study Of Euphemism In Desperate Housewives

Euphemism is a very common linguistic phenomenon in our daily life. Therefore, it is extensively used to get rid of impoliteness, embarrassment and some other unpleasant entities. It is not exaggerating to say that euphemism is a safeguard for people to achieve successful communication.The importance of euphemism makes scholars both in western countries and in China focus their attention on this linguistic phenomenon for a long period of time. However, few scholars attempt to connect this special linguistic phenomenon with people’s cognition, which is a demerit of previous studies. Recently, cognitive linguistics has become a prevalent branch of linguistics. Therefore, this thesis has a try to combine euphemism with people’s cognition and interpret this linguistic phenomenon within the framework of prototype theory.Through this research, three conclusions are made. Firstly, taboo and its corresponding euphemisms can form a category. Taboo belongs to the prototype because it shares more family resemblance features and requires fewer cognitive efforts to process. However, euphemistic expressions act as peripheral members. They are not salient in cognition and need more time to understand. Therefore, euphemistic expressions can help people achieve successful communication by avoiding unpleasant situations. Secondly, members in one category are not static but dynamic. In other words, a euphemistic expression may come nearer and nearer to the prototype after being used frequently while some taboos may become common expressions with time goes on. Thirdly, there are three cognitive motivations of producing euphemistic expressions: the evolution from prototypical meaning to marginal meaning; the decentralization of prototypicality in family resemblance; the destruction of gestalt structure. In conclusion, the author expects that people can have a deeper understanding of the nature of euphemism.