A Study Of Political Euphemism In American Presidential Speeches In Light Of Adaptation Theory

Euphemism is a common language phenomenon across cultures all over the world. And political euphemisms are those used in governmental documents, speeches of statesmen, newspapers, etc, to achieve particular goals. Most of the previous studies focus on interpretation of political euphemism. There have been very few pragmatic studies of generation mechanism of political euphemism.So distinct from the previous studies, the present thesis makes research into the generation mechanism of political euphemism on the basis of Linguistic Adaptation Theory. According to Verschueren, language use can be taken as a continuous process of making of linguistic choices by adapting to the relevant contextual elements. Contextual correlates of adaptability are the decisive factors which language users adapt to when certain language structure is chosen. And political euphemisms are employed by statesmen for communicative needs. So the present study analyzes political euphemisms from the angle of communicative context.This paper probes into how political euphemisms in American presidential speeches adapt to ingredients of communicative context: language users, the mental, social and physical world. The present study reveals that the use of political euphemism in American presidential speeches is a result of linguistic choice-making adapting to language users'many roles, the psychological motivations, social conventions and diachronic changes to achieve certain political goals. As a kind of political tool, political euphemisms are used by U.S. presidents to please the public, to conceal the truth, and to beautify the ugly reality.The implications of present study are both theoretical and practical. Linguistic Adaptation Theory which functions as the theoretical foundation of present study provides a new general functional approach to study other linguistic phenomena from the pragmatics perspective. And the present study will be helpful in English teaching and learning.