A Study Of Three Dimensions Of Euphemism

Euphemism refers to polite word or expression that people use when they aretalking about something which they or other people find unpleasant or embarrassing.It originated from word fetishism in the early stage of human civilization anddeveloped into a significant means of coordinating interpersonal relationship. Fromthe antiquity, in particular in recent decades, scholars of different academicbackgrounds paid extensive attention to its inherent semantic features and socialfunctions from different points of view. Their work on euphemism, though greatlyinspiring us in terms of its methodology, fails to give us an integrated view of how thedifferent dimensions of euphemism, namely, semantic, pragmatic and grammaticalparameters, correlate to fulfill the communicative need of its users. Therefore, it isnecessary and feasible to carry out a study on euphemism within an integratedframework, as is done in the current thesis. The paper, based on theThree-dimensional Theory, takes comparative and historical approaches to threemajor parameters of euphemism, using an enormous number of examples fromseveral languages, especially English and Chinese. Discoveries of great significancehave been made with regards to the semantic features, pragmatic functions,grammatical forms of euphemism and the interaction of three parameters. Withreference to semantics of euphemism, it is found that euphemism demonstrates thecharacteristics of semantic fuzziness, semantic elevation, semantic degradation andhas connotative meaning, social meaning, affective meaning and collocative meaning.Nevertheless, euphemism is not static in its meanings for it is used in the contexts ofsituation to serve the communicative functions including that of being evasive, that ofbeing polite, that of concealing the truth, and that of being elegant. Furtherexamination shows that euphemism is not homogeneous in its grammatical forms.Instead, it employs a number of grammatical means by which it is formed. A casestudy of a newly created subclass of Bei Construction in Modern Chinese which iseuphemistic in character indicates that there is a close correlation of semantic,pragmatic and grammatical parameters in question. To put it explicitly, the passive Bei Construction in Chinese has undergone a change in its construction meaning fromexpressing the patient as a subject affected by the action of the verb to expressingdoubt about, or even distrust in the state of affairs owing to the conversationalinferencing.