A Comparative Study Of Euphemisms In English And Chinese

Euphemism, as a linguistic phenomenon, has its unique origination and formation, and abides by a certain development principle. It is also a cultural phenomenon at the same time, reflecting different convention, custom and social psychology in China and the western countries. Euphemism is a common phenomenon in the process of language using. It is a more polite usage when people are talking about something unpleasant and embarrassing. In fact it is a cultural phenomenon more than a social linguistic one. With the social and the civilization development, euphemism accompanies the whole process of the social speech communication, performing a very strong speech communicative function. Due to the wide application in English, understanding the communicative functions of euphemism plays a great part in the English learning and the effective cross-cultural communication.Both English and Chinese have a lot of euphemisms. They have similarities, but they have grown from different cultural roots. In order to display the universality as well as the special characteristics of English euphemism and Chinese euphemism, this thesis, based on the theories of Psychical Distance, Cooperative Principle and Politeness Principle, attempts a comparative analysis of the English euphemism and the Chinese euphemism: analyzing the euphemism originating foundation, explaining the similarities and differences between the two language phenomena in the field of the pragmatic nature and researching the discrepancy reasons between the English euphemism and the Chinese euphemism from the angle of the national culture and psychology.