A Study Of English Euphemism From The Adaptation Perspective

As a common phenomenon in all languages, euphemism is a topic of concern both home and abroad. So far many researches concerning the definition, classification, functions, formation and translation have been conducted from the perspectives of rhetoric, semantics, social psychology, sociolinguistics, fuzzy linguistics, literature translation, pragmatics, etc.Verschueren holds that pragmatics does not constitute an additional component of a theory of language such as phonetics, semantics and the like, but it offers a different perspective. Adaptation Theory which is put forward under the concept"pragmatic perspective"provides a comprehensive and scientific angle for pragmatics and there lies great theoretical significance and practical value. This thesis delves into English euphemistic expressions with the adaptation theory as the theoretical framework. According to Verschueren, language choices are made at every possible level of structure and the choice-making adapts to the contextual correlates including the language users and their mental world, social world and physical world. Thus the author defines euphemism as a dynamic substitution of mild or roundabout expressions for unpleasant or direct ones by means of verbal or non-verbal device with the consideration of the interactions of user's cultural, social and cognitive factors. Based on the adaptation theory, the author develops a conceptual model to illustrate the adaptation process of euphemism use. And the factors that English euphemistic expressions adapt to are defined. It is found that the generation of English euphemism has to adapt to the interpreter's role, emotion and the psychological needs to be polite and respected; the social status, gender, religious belief of the English users, the morality and value system of the whole community in English-speaking area; and temporal and spatial references of the physical world in which it takes place, physical conditions of the interlocutors and material conditions of the speech.According to these findings, several suggestions are presented for the appropriate use and correct interpretation of English euphemism, and for teaching English as foreign language (TEFL). The long-term strategy is to accumulate and acquire linguistic knowledge of English as well as cultural knowledge of English-speaking countries; and the short-term one is to cultivate the cultural tolerance and mutual understanding.