A Study Of Political Euphemism In American Presidential Speeches From The Perspective Of Adaptation-Relevance Model

Euphemism has long become the study focus of linguistics.However,political euphemism,as a sub-stream of euphemism,hasn't attracted enough attention as it should be.The available studies mainly focus on the application and communicative principle of political euphemism,and most of them are lack of theoretical support.There has been less concern about the production and interpretation of political euphemism in communication.In view of this,the thesis makes a tentative study of political euphemism in American presidential speeches in the 21 st century with the support of Adaptation-Relevance Model proposed by Ran Yongping(2004),which is so far a comparatively convincing and comprehensive communicative model with a view of expounding both language production and interpretation in language use.This model has the following arguments: communication is relevance-oriented;the process of Adaptation-Relevance is a dynamic inter-adaptation between linguistic choices and contextual correlates on both production and interpretation side;the language producer's presumption of relevance decides his choices of a particular utterance;the process of Adaptation-Relevance involves choosing strategies.In accordance with Adaptation-Relevance Model,the thesis analyzes political euphemism in American presidential speeches in the 21 st century from the following four aspects:the use of political euphemism as relevance-oriented;the use of political euphemism as a process of inter-adaptation between contextual correlates and linguistic choices;the presumption of relevance deciding the choice-making of political euphemism in American presidential speeches;the strategy-choosing in American presidential speeches.Ten pieces of American presidential speeches are selected as the corpus of the present study.From the perspective of Adaptation-Relevance Model,the thesis gives a comprehensive explanation to the production and interpretation of political euphemism in American presidential speeches,providing a Complete linguistic description of how a context(mental,social and physical world) influences the correlate linguistic form,and of how strategies are adopted to attract the public and persuade them to accept the presidents' ideas.The present study not only makes an explanation of the process of the production and interpretation of political euphemism,but also proves the applicability and explanatory force of Adaptation-Relevance Model.Moreover,since all the samples are selected from American presidential speeches in the 21 st century,people can be familiar with American politicians' communicative strategies and have a better understanding of American politics through such a study.