Seeking Common Ground To Bridge The Gap

As a universal linguistic phenomenon, the creation and application of euphemisms have been studied rather thoroughly. This thesis attempts to synthesize the merits and make up for the deficiencies in euphemisms thus far made in China and English-speaking countries, with a focus on the isomorphs between Chinese and English euphemisms. To address this topic, a comparative approach is employed as the general framework for this research work.The general layout for this thesis is as follows: Part One is a brief introduction, Part Two and Part Three discuss the main points, and Part Four is the conclusion.In Part two, the thesis draws an elaborate comparison of the isomorphs between the euphemisms in terms of their origins, categories, means of formation, principles of formation, and laws of evolution in Chinese and English languages. First, whether in China or in western countries the emergence and development of euphemisms is closely related to man's social life and social mentality. Generally, euphemisms came into being in ancient times when human beings were in their infant stage with blind faith, worship, and even horror in supernatural things and phenomena. This is the so- called "fetishism," and is usually referred to as "taboo" in English and "避讳" in Chinese. Few euphemisms appear when the economic development is in depression. On the other hand, euphemisms increase relatively when society tends to be prosperous and steady and when people attach great importance to polite manners. In addition, a woman's social status exerts influence on the development of euphemisms to a certain degree. The application of euphemisms embodies a human's mentalities of defense, politeness, and concealing. Talking about the frightening things and the topics which are believed to violate social and moral conventions, people are apt to use euphemisms,. This reflects a human's defense mentality deposited in the depth of the cultures. In order not to offend others in communication, people may utter some "kind words." A motive for this euphemizing may be a person's desire to conceal truth. Second, generally speaking, people have a tendency to use euphemisms when talking about birth, aging, disease, death, sex, body parts, excretion, etc. People's mystery towards birth,worry about aging, and fear of disease and death, especially the latter two, contributes to emergence of euphemisms concerning these subjects. Sexual behavior and the parts of the body closely related to it always wear a mysterious veil—euphemisms. Fashions in body parts and their sizes may keep changing, but talking about the aromas and excretions the body produces and even the places where the private parts are exposed have never been fully socially acceptable either in China or English-speaking countries. As a result, a considerable large number of expressions are created to deal with these topics. Third, the formation of euphemisms follows the principles of distance, relevance, and ear-pleasing effect. As a matter of fact, the making of euphemisms depends on a kind of mental distance (束定芳, 1989) . Namely, new expressions can make the kind of distance between the new language sign and the referent, which makes it not as closely related to the referent as the original taboo word. This is the principle of distance. People cannot create a new euphemism at will. It ought to be relevant to the sign to a certain extent so as to supply a clue for people to understand it. This is the so-called " principle of relevance." The ear-pleasing effect principle means a better connotaion rather than a beautiful voice, which can bring about a better association to people. Fourth, there exist some isomorphs in formation means between English and Chinese euphemisms. Phonetics means mainly refers to assonance. Lexical means chiefly includes loan words, metonymy, personification, ellipsis and so on. Tense and negation are frequent grammatical means. Pragmatic means actually refers to the indirect speech act. Finally, the evolution of euphemisms is characterized by metabolism. According to Hugh Rawson, the development of the euphemisms is governed by two laws: Grasham's law and the law of succession (Rawson, 1981).After documentation of the isomorphs between English and Chinese euphemisms, the paper expounds the translatability and the difficulties in translating them from the angle of the isomorphism in Part Three. On one hand, the identity of the referent of the knowledge and that of thinking form constitute two essential prerequisites that get through the channel for message transferring in the translation of euphemisms. In addition, the cross-cultural infiltration provides the social channel for message transferring. Hence, euphemisms are generally translatable. On...