A CIT-based Study Of English Euphemism

Euphemism is a common linguistic phenomenon in our daily life. Though a lot of scholars have studied euphemism from different perspectives, they have seldom explored the process of meaning construction of euphemism and its mechanism of comprehension. In view of this, the author will do further research on English euphemism by adopting a new cognitive linguistic theory—Conceptual Integration Theory, which will enrich the previous studies.Based on the selected data, English euphemism is reclassified into entrenched euphemism and unentrenched euphemism in this thesis. And at both the word-formation level and the sentence level, the typical examples of English euphemism are analyzed and explained through the integration networks of a relatively new cognitive theory—Conceptual Integration Theory. This thesis tries to reveal the process of meaning construction and comprehension of English euphemism from the cognitive perspective.The author hopes that this thesis can broaden the application scope of Conceptual Integration Theory, and arouse the interest of other scholars in studying further the meaning construction of English euphemism.