A Pragmatic Anatomy Of Euphemisms

Euphemism is a linguistic concept, which is the "substitution of mild or vague or roundabout expression for harsh or blunt or direct one" (Concise Oxford Dictionary, 7^th edition, 332). It is derived from the Greek "eu", meaning "well" or "sounding good"; and "pheme", meaning "speech". Euphemisms are widely and vividly used in our daily life and have already become an indispensable part of English vocabulary. Many linguists and scholars have studied this linguistic phenomenon from different angles. Based on their achievements, the author makes a tentative analysis of English euphemism from the perspective of pragmatics.In the thesis, firstly the author tries to trace back to the history of English euphemism and analyze its definition, classification and formation. Secondly, the author attempts to analyze the motivation and social functions of English euphemism. Last but not the least, this thesis focuses on the exploration of pragmatic principles that English euphemism violates and observes in the communication course. The cooperative principle is one of the important basic guiding principles in communication. People often defy some maxims of the cooperative principle in order to obtain certain communicative goal.Meanwhile, English euphemism observes the politeness principle and the face theory, thus leading to the successful communication and the protection of self and other's face or self-esteem. To a large extent, the application of English euphemism takes the affective factors into consideration.