Euphemism, An Indispensable Social Element

The word "euphemism" is derived from the Greek "eu" (good) and "pheme" (saying), and means literally "to speak with good words or in a pleasant manner" (Neaman et al, 1983:1). Though the recorded use of euphemism is verifiably found no later than the 11th century B.C., the term "euphemism" was first proposed by George Blunt in the early 1580s to refer to "a good or favorable interpretation of a bad word" (ibid.)In the past, the study of euphemism has been mainly confined within three areas: rhetoric, semantics and dictionary compiling. The rhetorical view treats euphemism as a figure of speech, closely related to taboos while mentioning social influence only in passing. The semantic analysis regards euphemizing as an "associative engineering", that is, replacing a word which has offensive connotations with another expression, which makes no overt reference to the unpleasant side of the subject (Leech, 1985:45). This approach explores the origin and formation of euphemism in terms of their semantic features. The lexicographical approach, widely adopted by scholars, mainly deals with the meaning, etymology of each euphemism and its relation to other terms, while offering no further information about euphemism. Anyway, all these analysis are specific and clear-cut as to what euphemisms are and how they are formed and classified but they all neglect the important fact that "All study of language and speech as part of social life is basically one, rooted in the interdependence with social life itself (Dell Hyme, 1964:215). Therefore, this paper makes an appeal to the researchers in our own day for their attention to the tension between its present reality of popular use and its overlooked theoretic study, and focuses on the three motivations: socio-cultural motivation, communicative motivation and psychological motivation; and the three essential functional fields of euphemism: interpersonal rhetoric, social accommodation and the human tendency of the how versus what; then encourages further research on its socialization process. This dissertation consists of six chapters.Chapter one is an introduction, which gives a general account of definitions of euphemism and briefly puts forward the argument of this dissertation: sociolinguistic study of euphemism.Chapter two presents the linguistic characteristics of euphemism by analyzing its classifications and formations.Chapter three offers the theoretic foundations of language, culture and euphemism.Chapter four serves as the further analysis based on the theoretic foundation in the previous chapter, which deals with the three motivations: socio-cultural motivation, communicative motivation, and psychological motivation; and the three essential functional fields of euphemism: interpersonal rhetoric, social accommodation and the human tendency of the how versus what.Chapter five points out the tension between its present reality of popular use and its overlooked theoretic study after giving a generalization of its historic development and present situation; then naturally encourages further research on its socialization process.Chapter six concludes the whole dissertation and discusses the significance of the findings and results of this study in the application of foreign language teaching (FLT) and learning and cross-cultural communication.