The Interpretation Of English Euphemism Within The Frame Of Conceptual Integration Theory

The comprehension of language meaning has always been an important subject in linguistic research and paid attention to in so many fields as philosophy, psychology and linguistics. Conceptual integration is taken as a pervasive dynamic cognitive process based on extensive observation in multiple areas of meaning construction. Conceptual integration theory, as a newly developing cognitive theory, provides an effective method to deal with language comprehension. This dissertation makes a brief introduction of Conceptual Integration theory and its application in China in explaining various linguistic phenomena. Besides, it explains some important notions and theoretical principles and points out that Conceptual Integration theory offers a complete new angle for cognitive research and has revealed its great potential in explaining various linguistic phenomena.Euphemism, originating from language taboos,is"the substation of mild or vague or roundabout expression for harsh or blunt or direct one". It is a universal language phenomenon in society which has become an essential part of English vocabulary. Linguists and Scholars both abroad and at home have conducted a great number of studies of it from different perspectives respectively. This dissertation, based on their achievements, makes an account of some essential knowledge on the definition, classification formation devices and principles of English euphemism. And it points out that in previous studies of euphemisms, much attention has been focused on the perspectives of rhetoric, sociolinguistics, pragmatics and traditional semantics, and has achieved much achievement. However, very little research has been conducted on cognitive linguistics, in particular on Conceptual Integration theory. This dissertation makes an effort to analyze English euphemism within the framework of Conceptual Integration theory, expecting to adopt a brand new angle of research to explore the meaning construction and reasoning mechanism of English euphemism. Meanwhile, this dissertation tries to prove the powerful explanatory of Conceptual Integration theory in interpreting meaning construction of language.