A Pragmatic Analysis Of English Diplomatic Euphemisms In Press Conference Discourses

Euphemism, as a common linguistic phenomenon, has attracted attention of linguists and scholars for a long time. Many of them have studied euphemism from different perspectives with fruitful contributions and achievements. However, in the existing literature, it is found that there爱热only few empirical researches on diplomatic euphemism—euphemism used in the diplomatic discourse. This inadequacy of euphemism research leaves some space for the author of the thesis to do an exploratory study to look at the diplomatic euphemisms in press conferences from the pragmatic perspectives. Transcripts of four English press conferences are selected from the Internet and used as the data of this case study. Pragmatic analysis is conducted qualitatively through detailed analysis of the diplomatic euphemisms applied in these press conferences from the perspectives of Cooperative Principle and Politeness Principle. By doing so, the study attempts to explore the patterns of the employment of euphemisms in violating the three maxims Cooperative Principle and observing the Politeness Principle in this special genre and to find out the conversational implicatures behind the diplomatic euphemisms and the communicative functions.The results show that the Cooperative Principle and Politeness Principle are the underlying theories that guide the application of diplomatic euphemisms in press conferences. The use of diplomatic euphemisms in press conference frequently violates the three maxims of Cooperative Principle: Maxim of quality, Maxim of quality and Maxim of manner, and basically observes the Relation Maxim of the Cooperative Principle and the Politeness Principle. Communicative functions of the diplomatic euphemisms applied in press conferences fall into three categories: to disguise the truth, to defend and rationalize their actions and show their politeness.It is hoped that the study could provide some helpful inspiration for future studies on the discourse genre of English press conferences and diplomatic euphemism.