Study On Euphemism From The Perspective Of Adaptation Theory

Being a universal linguistic phenomenon, euphemism plays an important role in our daily life and is a kind of roundabout and indirect expression that people uses to fulfill desired communicative goals. Euphemism is widely used no matter in which era or which culture. In the more civilized modern world, the interpersonal and international communication without euphemism is unimaginable.As for the importance of euphemism, scholars at home and abroad have studied it from different perspectives, such as rhetoric, semantic, pragmatic and socio– psychological perspectives and encouraging results have been obtained. But it seems most of them are descriptive analysis or are mainly restricted to the grammar analysis and some specific pragmatic function, and up to now, researches on euphemism from a general cognitive, social and cultural perspective are very rare.Because the production and use of euphemism are closely related to such factors as society, culture, psychology and so on, a comprehensive study on euphemism can not be disposed within those traditional theories. Comparatively, this problem can be resolved within the theoretical framework of Verschueren's Adaptation Theory. Adaptation Theory is a theory of behavior and cognition about human language communication. It takes choice and adaptation as its foundation, and explores the psychological mechanism of human linguistic communication, and its process and the roles of social cultures. It reveals the essence of language use. From the perspective of Adaptation Theory, language use can be taken as the continuous making of linguistic choices by adapting to the relevant contextual elements. Verschueren (1999:58) claims that there are at least three hierarchically related key notions which are needed in the understanding of the process of making choices as the base-line description of language use. They are variability, negotiability and adaptability. Besides, it is believed that there are four necessary ingredients of an adequate pragmatic perspective on any given linguistic phenomenon. They are contextual correlates of adaptability, structural objects of adaptability, the dynamics of adaptability, the salience of the adaptation processes. Adaptation Theory is regarded as a comprehensive pragmatic theory with strong inclusive and explanatory capacity for language. Thus, on the basis of previous studies made by scholars, the author of the present study attempts to analyze euphemism within the theoretical framework of Adaptation Theory.The present study on euphemism is guided by the four research angles of Adaptation Theory. Euphemism is one kind of language phenomena, thus it is also a result of choice-making and a product of adaptation in order to achieve some particular goals. In order to reach or approach these particular goals, the utterers choose euphemism as the most appropriate strategy by adapting to those contextual factors. Context could further be divided into communicative context and linguistic context. The present study analyzed that euphemism is the result of adaptation to language users, to mental world (such as personal trait, emotion and motivation), social world (such as gender, age and social status) and physical world of the utterer and the interpreter. After analyzing the concrete context, here come the choices of euphemism based on the structural characteristic of euphemism. To be more specific, the choices of euphemism should adapt to its style and code as well as adapt to its sound structure and morpheme. Then, as contexts are always changing, the static use of euphemism can not fulfill the goal of the communication. This thesis demonstrates the adaptation process between euphemism and the contextual correlates is dynamic.Finally, by demonstrating the relationship between degree of salience and language choice, the present study makes a conclusion that whether people would employ euphemism and which kind of euphemism will be employed is greatly influenced by people's degree of salience. The different degrees of salience of the utterer and the interpreter can influence the successful employment of euphemism. From the perspective of Adaptation Theory, the present study analyzes euphemism with giving a lot of examples found in our daily life and literature works. According to the researches in the study, a conclusion could be made that the process of properly employing euphemism, is a process of continuous linguistic choices making and a process of dynamic adaptation. During this process, the linguistic choices must adapt to language users'mental world, social world, physical world and the structural characteristic of euphemism. This process of adaptation is dynamic and the degrees of salience of the language users (both the utterer and the interpreter) play a pervasive role. The present study reveals that Verschueren's Adaptation Theory can provide a good theoretical framework for a scientific explanation of euphemism and shows that the adaptation-based approach can reduce pragmatic failures ensure a smooth communication and enrich the common linguistic theories. The author hopes that the findings of the present study can be applied to foreign language teaching and learning.