A New Study Of Euphemistic Expression

The study of euphemistic expression has a long history. As a language phenomenonwhich is known by people, euphemistic expression is widely used. Focusing on this generallanguage phenomenon, linguists from home and abroad investigated it from four perspectives.The first is the study of traditional linguistics. In this area, scholars mainly paid attention tothe definition, the history of development, the process of evolvement, and the forming deviceof euphemistic expression in English and in Chinese. The second is the study ofsociolinguistics. The scholars analyzed the cultural connotations and social functions ofeuphemistic expression from the perspective of sociolinguistics. In particular, they thoroughlyelaborated the influence from racial and religious factors, personal relationship, socialconvention, and geographical environment upon the creation and use of euphemisticexpression. The third is the study of pragmatics. In this field, the scholars mainly discussedthe pragmatic functions, context reliance and communicative principles of euphemisticexpression. The fourth is the study of cognitive linguistics. Scholars mainly interpreted theproductive process of the meaning, the generating and understanding mechanism ofeuphemistic expression with some related theories. In this dissertation, we will mainlyinvestigate the productive process of euphemistic expression. During the research, we discussthe productive process and features of euphemistic expression through the study of subject’sconsciousness from the perspective of the philosophy of mind. Hopefully, we can give a moresufficient and deeper illustration to this language phenomenon.The main objectives of this study are to find out the starting point of the productiveprocess of euphemistic expression, to make clear the specific productive process ofeuphemistic expression, and to explore the features of euphemistic expression and the explanation of the features.The study consists of eleven chapters. Chapter One is an introduction, mainlyconcerning the motivation, aim, theoretical approach, data resources and the composition ofthis dissertation.Chapter Two is literature review, which surveys the precious studies of euphemisticexpression, mainly including the definition, historical and cultural background, socialpsychology, classification, formation, pragmatic aspect and cognitive aspect of euphemisticexpression. On the basis of former studies, the main emphasis of the current research is tocombine the former achievement with the analysis of this paper. Meanwhile, our furtherconcern is to bring forth new ideas based on the previous research.Chapter Three puts forward the theoretical framework of the present research. In orderto establish the framework, we are going to answer the following three questions: what iseuphemistic expression; why is euphemistic expression possible; how is euphemisticexpression possible. The answer to the last question can help the fulfillment of the first twoobjectives of this study, which can also build a foundation to answer the third objective.Meanwhile, there are certain relationships among these three questions. More specifically, weshould give euphemistic expression a definition from the perspective of the philosophy ofmind in this research, and we should deal with the first question in virtue of intentionality,which can be viewed as the key element to answer the second and the third question.Consequently, these three questions are not isolated, whereas they closely connect with eachother. Finally, we can obtain the productive framework of euphemistic expression accordingto the answer to the third question, and we can put forward the theoretical framework, i.e. thetriangle of euphemistic expression.Chapter Four discusses the subject’s consciousness while euphemistic expression isproduced. After discussing, we can find that the process of language usage is accompanied by the process of subject’s consciousness, so we can analyze the former one with the help of thelatter one, which can be viewed as one of the distinctive features in this dissertation. Thediscussion in chapter four can lay a foundation for the discussion of chapter five, in which weare going to investigate the productive process of euphemistic expression. At the beginning ofthis chapter, we will find out the process of consciousness on the basis of previous researches,taking specific euphemistic expressions as examples, and the process can be described as“perception-the first choice-the second choice-feeling”. Then, from the perspective of thephilosophy of mind, we can elaborate the process of subject’s consciousness throughoutspecific expressions, i.e.“primary consciousness experience-the first choice-the secondchoice-reflective consciousness experience”. Next, we can find out the correspondingrelationship between the above-mentioned two processes. Finally, in accordance with thetheory of selective attention model in cognitive psychology, we can divide the process ofconsciousness into two stages, i.e.“perception-the first choice” and “the secondchoice-feeling”. As a result, we can divide the process of consciousness into two stages fromthe perspective of the philosophy of mind, i.e.“primary consciousness experience-the firstchoice” and “the second choice-reflective consciousness experience”, which can lay afoundation for the analysis in the next chapters.Chapter Five is concerning the whole productive process of euphemistic expression andthe study in this chapter is based on the discussion in chapter four. Specifically, from theperspective of the philosophy of mind, we can elaborate the process of subject’sconsciousness throughout specific expressions, i.e.“primary consciousness experience-thefirst choice-the second choice-reflective consciousness experience”. Here, both primaryconsciousness experience and reflective consciousness experience are terms related withconsciousness. When we study euphemistic expression, we need concepts which are not onlyrelated with consciousness, but also related with language expression, i.e. event and usage event. Then we can find the corresponding relationship between these two pairs of terms andthe productive process of euphemistic expression can be concluded as follows: event-the firstchoice-directional usage event-the second choice-usage event, and usage event includes twoforms, i.e. pre-language form and language form. Then we can divide the process into threestages, i.e.“event-the first choice-directional usage event”,“directional usage event-thesecond choice-usage event (pre-language form)”, and “usage event (pre-language form)-euphemistic expression”. Here, euphemistic expression can also be viewed as usage eventwith language form. The first two stages correspond with the process of consciousness inmind, and in the third stage, usage event is conceptualized into euphemistic expression.Besides, in the process from event to usage event, intentionality plays a key role and we aregoing to give a general interpretation about the role in this chapter. Finally, with the effect ofintentionality, the process from event to usage event is not real, which is different from theactual event and usage event with language form. The process and intentionality, which existas virtual objects, are the main concern in this research.The analysis of Chapter Six is based on the research of chapter four and chapter five.Through the research, we can divide the productive process of euphemistic expression into3stages, i.e.“event-the first choice-directional usage event”,“directional usage event-thesecond choice-usage event”, and “usage event-euphemistic expression”. This chapter ismainly concerning the first stage, namely, the beginning stage. During the analysis, the coreand important content is “selection”, and we should respectively answer the following threequestions: who does select (focusing on the subject), what is selected (focusing on the object),and how is selected (focusing on the process). More specifically, the subject selects under theeffect of intentionality, and the subject owns intentionality, which is the starting point of anythinking activities. When the issue is concerning the productive process of euphemisticexpression, the subject selects the outer object which is unpleasant to say under the effect of intentionality. In this sense, intentionality can be viewed as the starting point of the productiveprocess of euphemistic expression. Till now, we fulfill the first objective in this dissertation.The object which is being selected is the physical property of unpleasant event, and afterselecting, the directional usage event can be obtained. In this stage, supervenience governsover the process, and we can find out the specific process of the beginning stage. Finally, theproductive model of the beginning stage of euphemistic expression can be constructed.Chapter Seven mainly focuses on the second stage, i.e. the inheriting stage, of theproductive process of euphemistic expression. In this stage, we still pay more attention to thesubject’s selection, just like the beginning stage, but there is a slight difference: the selectionin the beginning stage is the result of the orientation of intentionality, while in the inheritingstage, intentionality also controls over the process and the selection is exerted by subject’sperception. So in this chapter we mainly discuss the following questions around perception:how does subject’s perception analyze, and why is the analysis possible. The first questionmainly focuses on “how”, and the second question mainly focuses on “why”. Specifically, theways of analysis involve association and imagination, and the basis of perception is the gestalttransformation in the subject’s mind, which has a close connection with the formation ofeuphemistic expression. Finally, we can construct the productive model of the inheriting stageof euphemistic expression.Chapter Eight is mainly concerning the third stage, i.e. the integrative stage, of theproductive process of euphemistic expression. This stage accompanies the process duringwhich the subject conceptualizes euphemistic expression with linguistic signs. In this chapter,we pay close attention to three aspects: the relationship among three stages, the differencesamong them, and the productive model of the integrative stage of euphemistic expression.After the discussion, we can analyze the specific euphemistic expressions about their wholeproductive process, including three stages (the beginning stage, the inheriting stage, and the integrating stage). Till now, we finish the discussion of the productive process of euphemisticexpression and fulfill the second objective in this dissertation.Chapter Nine discusses emergence and the features of euphemistic expressionaccompanied by the emerging of consciousness. Here we need to notice that emergencemainly refers to the emergence of consciousness, which only appears in the first and thesecond stages because these two stages accompany the process of consciousness. In theintegrating stage, emergence doesn’t appear, but the emergence in the first two stages willinfluence the result of the third stage, i.e. euphemistic expression. In this chapter, we mainlydiscuss the following three questions: what is emergence, what are the emergence ofconsciousness and the features of it, and the influence upon euphemistic expression exertedby the emergence of consciousness. Till now, we fulfill the third objective by exploring thefeatures of euphemistic expression and explaining the reason of the features.Chapter Ten is concerning the analysis of the effect of frequency and the correspondingchange of euphemistic expression. In this chapter, we firstly give a brief introduction to theeffect of frequency. Then we are going to discuss the role of frequency in constructinglanguage, especially the influence upon euphemistic expression. So we not only discuss theproductive process of euphemistic expression, but also analyze the actual use of this kind oflanguage phenomenon.Chapter Eleven is the conclusion, which includes the main findings in this research andthe direction and some thoughts for further study. The main findings are as follows: thestarting point of the productive process of euphemistic expression can be viewed as thedirection and selection of the unpleasant object by the subject under the influence ofintentionality, and the subject changes the direct expression of this object into an indirect one;the specific process of the production of euphemistic expression can be divided into threestages, the beginning stage, the inheriting stage, and the integrating stage, besides there is no boundary among them; euphemistic expression will be affected by the emergence ofconsciousness, and have the features of novelty and hierarchy.What deserves our consideration is that our study is preliminary with some limitations.We still need to think about some questions. For instance, we adopt the abductive reasoningduring the research, which provides space for further study. Besides, the conceptualization ofeuphemistic expression involves some language rules (including semantic rules andgrammatical rules), which are too complicated to clarify in the present research, and we canimprove it later. Meanwhile, during the study of the philosophy of mind, intentionalityoccupies the central position and it deserves more attention in the further study. At last, thisdissertation is the theoretical analysis and discussion of euphemistic expression, and we don’tpay close attention to the actual use of the expressions, which can be improved in the future.