A Contrastive Study Of English Euphemism And Chinese Euphemism

Taboo is a common cultural phenomenon of human society. Reflected in thinkiiTg and manifested in language communicanion, this phenomenon displays itself in the form of verbal taboo. In real life, people try not to mention those taboo areas and to avoid using taboo language. In many cases, however, people have to speak of those sensitive areas, to which they cannot give direct and explicit expressions. To carry on communication and to avoid violating certain taboos, people speak out their mind in implicit and roundabout ways. This way of expresion is euphemism. Euphemism and taboo are the two faces of the same coin: different looks of equal value.Psychologically, people prefer the things that look good and sound pleasant. In language, many expressions are pleasant and easily accepted not out of avoiding taboos or vulgarities but out of being polite and tactful.There is still another special way of expression in language. This is 'politicians' speech' or 'political language', which is used for political purposes. More often than not, this kind of language is characterstic of obscuring, disguising and deceiving, but not exclusive of its political or diplomatic tactfulness.In the long period of evolution and practice, human beings have been perceiving and remaking the objective world, and in the meantime they have been establishing and developing their own languages and cultures, thus forming various language patterns and cultural communities. The language patterns and cultural communities of different peoples differ from, interlcck and overlap one another. The same is true of taboo and its other face euphemism. In terms of taboo items, taboo customs, taboo psychology, etc., different peoples have their peculiarities, and euphemisms are characterized by national or regional differences and similarities, or in other words, the unity of the two.The English language and the Chinese language have been established and developed by the British and American people and the Chinese people in their long period of practice activities and social-cultural development. In the social-cultural backgrounds and psychological conditions of the two, there exist both particularity and generality. The same is the case with the area of taboo and euphemism. In terms of language, English euphemism and Chinese euphemism have differences and similarities as well.To speak in concrete terms, English euphemism and Chinese euphemism are different and similar in definition, classification, the range of use, means of formation and so on, which reflects the peculiatiries and universals of the two in social culture, values, national psychology, etc..Western scholars restrict the study of euphemism mainly to the lexicon, and hence define it on the lexical level. Yet the American linguist Dwight Bolinger (1981) points out: Euphemism is not restricted to the lexicon, there are grammarical ways of toning something down without actually changing the content of the message. In his A Dictionary of Euphemisms and Other Doubletalk , Hugh Rawson (1981) considers the sentence-level understatement a means of euphemizing. Therefore the sphere of study of euphemism can be expanded.IVPreviously, Chinese scholars studied euphemism mainly in the perspective of rhetoric, which broadened the concept of euphemism to the level of sentence and discourse, thus breaking the limitation of euphemism study to the lexicon on the part of Western scholars. So euphemism can be defined on two levels: euphemism in the narrow sense and euphemism in the broad sense. The former refers to euphemisms restricted to the lexical level; the latter refers to euphemisms both on the lexical level and on the non-lexical level (for instance, sentence, discourse, etc.). In the aspect of classification, euphemisms are diveded into various types by British and American scholars according to different norms, hi term of whether the things that are expressed are connected with taboo items or not, euphemisms can be classified into two kinds: traditional euphemisms and stylist...