A Study Of Political Euphemism In Obama’s State Of The Union Addresses From The Perspective Of Relevance Theory

Euphemism is a linguistic and cultural phenomenon and serves as a lubricant to regulate people’s daily communication.As one branch of euphemism,political euphemism is widely used in political occasions,government documents and political news reports.In the past few decades,the studies on political euphemism by scholars at home and abroad mainly focus on classification,rhetoric,culture and pragmatics and so on,but there are not many cognitive-pragmatic studies on political euphemism.Therefore,this thesis mainly explores the cognitive-pragmatic phenomena of political euphemism from the perspective of relevance theory.This thesis mainly selects Obama’s State of the Union Addresses as data source.By means of the qualitative analysis,27 examples are chosen for research.The main points of relevance theory are used to analyze the ostension and interpretation of political euphemism,aiming to explore the cognitive process of political euphemism in the State of the Union Addresses.This thesis attempts to offer answers to these three questions:(1)From the ostensive-inferential aspect,how communicators use political euphemism to realize communication?(2)How do speakers make assumptions about the cognitive environments of themselves and their hearers?(3)From the perspective of the relevance principle,what a cognitive process do the hearers undergo?To answer the above questions,the thesis makes an analysis of the selected data from the perspective of relevance theory,and draws the following conclusions:Firstly,from ostensive-inferential point of view,the communication of political euphemism is the process in which speakers convey ostensive stimuli,which triggers a series of contextual assumptions of the hearers and consequently the hearers infer the speakers’ intentions from their cognitive environments.In the State of the Union Addresses,Obama chooses political euphemism as the ostensive stimulus to convey his communicative intentions.Then the hearers infer his intentions in terms of the ostensive stimulus.Once the cognitive environments of both parties manifest each other,the communication will be successful.Secondly,the choice of political euphemism is the process in which the speakers make assumptions about the hearers’ cognitive environments.With the help of relevance theory,the speakers need to make cognitive assumptions about themselves and their hearers in order to achieve the optimal relevance.As far as the State of the Union Addresses are concerned,Obama employs political euphemism as a stimulus to convey intentions,which requires assumptions about personal conditions,social background,social psychology,as well as the situation of the hearers.Finally,the interpretation of political euphemism is a cognitive process for the hearers to search for relevance,especially for optimal relevance.Because political euphemism conveys implied meanings,it is difficult for the hearers to use the literal meaning of utterances—the maximal relevance,to infer the speakers’ intentions correctly in a short time.Driven by the expectations of relevance,the hearers need to expend more cognitive effort to coordinate the relations between the new information and the cognitive environments.In other words,the hearers are required to search their cognitive environments again,and find a more suitable context to achieve optimal relevance.Therefore,the interpretation of political euphemism is the process in which the hearers seek the relevance from the seemingly unrelated utterance.This thesis uses relevance theory as a framework to analyze the cognitive process of understanding political euphemism.On the one hand,the research offers some enlightenment to cognitive-pragmatic studies on political euphemism.On the other hand,it helps readers get a better understanding of political euphemism.