A Contrastive Study Of English And Chinese Euphemism-From The Perspective Of Conceptual Integration

This thesis attempts to dig out the cognitive differences of English and Chinese euphemisms from the perspective of Conceptual Integration Theory.Euphemism is a common language phenomenon in every language. For those who speak English or Chinese as their first language, most of them seldom notice the origin and the construction of their euphemisms. But for those who take English or Chinese as a second language, it is valuable to explore the motivation and construction of these euphemisms. The scholars both at home and abroad have made studies of them from a wide variety of angles. But they seldom concern the cognitive domain of euphemisms. Most of their studies are concerned with rhetoric, semantics, pragmatics and social psychology. Though constrained with the development of linguistic theory, the previous researches contribute to the development of linguistic theory. Conceptual Integration Theory plays a crucial role in people's cognition to language. It develops with the progress of modern science and technology, and originates from mental space theory. Its essence is on-line projection and blending, and there are totally four basic types of conceptual integration networks: simplex networks, mirror networks, single-scope networks and double-scope networks.Conceptual integration theory gives scholars the opportunity to explain the construction mechanism of language. From 2000, domestic scholars began to use Conceptual Integration Theory to explain some language phenomena, such as humor, translation and conventional language. And some scholars have attempts to explore the mechanism of euphemism, but their explanation mainly resides in English euphemism and do not give a reasonable explanation about the blending process.This study is based on the quantitative study of English and Chinese euphemism terms in four aspects, namely, crime, death, disease and sex, selecting from two dictionaries. From these analyses the author concludes that in Chinese euphemisms, at least in these four categories, terms which are concerned with an image count for more than half of the words and phrases. But the case with English euphemisms is totally different, where the words and phrases with an image count for no more than 30 percent.On the other hand, in Shu Dingfang and Xu Jinyuan's opinion, euphemisms should be divided into three levels—words & phrase level, sentence level and discourse level. In this way, the author selects six English and Chinese examples half-and-half, and analyzes them under Conceptual Integration Theory.In the analysis of each example, the author gives very detailed steps of its cognitive process. After analysis, the author finds that English euphemisms are much easier to understand compared with Chinese euphemisms, for most Chinese euphemisms need two steps to understand with the involvement of image, while English ones just need one step.Furthermore, for those English euphemisms at word & phrase and sentence levels, the double-scope network is commonly used because of their short form and impressive meaning, since double-scope network is more complicated than other networks. For those English euphemisms at discourse level, simplex network is easier to be found because of their long form.As for Chinese euphemisms, because of their involvement of image and two steps understanding, it is hard to conclude which network they use more frequently. The fact is that, in Chinese euphemisms, four networks are selectively used according to the depth of the indication they want to express.At the end of this essay, the author puts forward some reasons for the differences of English and Chinese euphemism. In the author's opinion, the philosophic differences of English world and China are the basic reason for the complication of Chinese euphemism. In Chinese philosophic tradition, rites are very important. This provides opportunities for the wide use and development of euphemism. While in English world, logic and science are popular, and this makes people's thinking straight forward and reasonable. Another element for the difference is that, for a long time, China has been in feudal period. People have no right to express their true ideas. This urges people to express their feeling in the form of image. In this form, readers are hard to understand author's true meaning.The contrastive study of English and Chinese euphemism in Conceptual Integration Theory reveals the cognitive differences between two kinds of euphemisms. It is hoped that this study could be helpful for the future euphemism study.