Research On Chinese Euphemism About Oldness

Chinese euphemism about oldness refers to the linguistic phenomenon that when people need to mention the state of oldness or specific age in social verbal communication and in literary creation,they do not directly talk about oldness or age,but use metaphor or metonymy to talk euphemistically by means of vocabulary,pronunciation,grammar,text,etc.This paper focused on the narrow sense of Chinese euphemism about oldness,i.e.,referential euphemism vocabulary for oldness,combining synchronic description and diachronic analysis,alternatively using theories of semantics,cognitive linguistics and social linguistics.This paper studys its basic types,main characteristics,diachronic rheological,cognitive mechanism and generating reasons.Chinese euphemism about oldness is suitable for being divided into two categories: general and definite.The former explicitly refers to oldness but does not refer to the specific age,while the latter refers to the specific age.On the basis of this classification,this paper investigates the individual evolution of general reference and definites reference of euphemism about oldness,namely,investigates the occurrence,development and change of each vocabulary from various perspectives,such as the generating time,being-used frequency and context of euphemistic semantics,the general period of being-used and the evolution of euphemistic semantics.On the basis of individual rheological analysis,this paper makes a general diachronic rheological analysis of the two types of euphemism with the help of statistical chart.Subsequently,this paper analyzes the cognitive mechanism.The results show that: Firstly,euphemism about oldness is mainly generated through metaphor and metonymy,especially through the latter.The generating process of euphemisms about oldness conforms to the rules specified by the relevant theories of cognitive linguistics represented by the Idealized Cognitive Model(ICM).Secondly,the basic principles for the construction of euphemism--principle of distance and principle of relation--are well embodied in Chinese euphemism about oldness.Chinese euphemism about oldness differs from other euphemisms in that it has distinctive characteristics: it is basically written language;there is no significant gender difference in the referents;it serves the replacement of literary and cultural images.In terms of generating reasons,it is the product of many factors in a certain historical period and political system,cultural status and economic level each plays an important role.