Mental Model-Based Cognitive Analysis Of Euphemistic Utterance

This paper attempts to analyze the generation and interpretation process of euphemistic utterance based on mental models.Euphemism can be classified and studied differently according to different criteria at different times. Euphemistic utterance in this paper, in its nature or under the skin, is also a kind of euphemism. But compare with the euphemism in the traditional sense which is based on the substitution of word for word, euphemistic utterance refers to all the linguistic expressions which are beyond the traditional limit of words or phrases and are temporarily build up by using all kinds of grammatical means in human language, for the avoidance of touching some taboo words or other tender subjects. They are called the euphemisms in broad sense, temporary euphemisms, non-conventional euphemisms, or stylistic euphemisms by some scholars while the tradtitional euphemisms are called the euphemisms in narrow sense, conventional euphemisms.As we all know, traditional euphemism refers to the substitution of one mild or pleasant or roundabout word or phrase for harsh or blunt or direct one, such as, "pass away" is used to substitute the word of "death", and "mentally retarded" is used for the word "fool", and so on. In most cases, those euphemisms are confined to the lexical level and they are the substitution of one separate word or phrase for another, which are accepted as conventions through common practice, or are generally applicable in a certain area and will remain the same in spite of the change of context and other kinds of relevant factors. In contrast, euphemistic utterance is a kind of linguistic expression which is closely related to human cognition by way of various linguistic and grammatical means, such as phonetics, semantics, pragmatics, rhetoric and even discourse. For example, when a doctor is asked repeatedly by the patient's relatives after he finished the operation and went out of the operation room "How about the patient?", the doctor said that "I have tried my best!"; when facing a boy who is courting her with great passion but not her Mr. Right, the girl turned him down by saying"我认你当哥吧!",and so on.Those linguistic expressions are what we call "euphemistic utterance" in this paper. When seen from the bottom up, they belong to the big family of euphemism, share many similar qualities with so-called traditional euphemisms and actually they are the same thing under the skin; but on the other hand, compare with traditional euphemisms which used to be known for their substitution of word for word, euphemistic utterances are famous for their context-dependence. That is, in order to understand and grasp the meaning of those euphemistic utterance properly, it is a must to take the specific context or the whole passage into consideration which will activate some relevant conceptual categories, mental models, or images in our minds, and make the stereotypical reasoning by using the stereotypical relation (SR) among things and events.This paper is an effort on the exploration of the nature of those euphemistic utterances, their cognitive mechanism and the laws of generating and interpreting of this kind of linguistic phenomenon in our daily life based on the Hypothesis of "Model-Based Pragmatic Reasoning" proposed by Prof. Xu Shenghuan and the Hypothesis of "Model-Based Production Mechanism of Syntactic Expression" proposed by Prof. Liu Chendan, which are further based on the comprehensive utilization of the theories and hypotheses coming from cognitive linguistics, cognitive pragmatics, cognitive science, and other relevant disciplines. During this process, "mental model" is the key point and also the cornerstone for our analysis on the production and interpretation mechanism of euphemistic utterance, which will provide a possible explanation on the nature and cognitive process of euphemistic utterance and other kinds of linguistic phenomenon.If we make a in-depth study on euphemistic utterances based on those theories and hypotheses, we will find the fact that the using and understanding of euphemistic utterance is essentially the same as the using and understanding of utterances in our daily life. Both of them are a kind of cognitive process through which mental models are established and manipulated by the addresser and the addressee based on the Ontological Study of Implicative, and both of them presume that the relations among entities and events involved in an utterance should be regarded as its SRs, thus the manipulation of downward causation is made by means of the establishment and manipulation of mental models on the perceived utterance. Through SRs, the addresser makes the explicit expression contain implicit expression and expresses his/her idea to the addressee while the addressee uses the implicit expression to make complementation and elucidation for the explicit expression so as to make the incomplete utterance into a relative complete expression and obtain the comprehension of the whole utterance.In more specific terms, it is a process in which the speaker (S) expresses his/her intention I (implicit expression) by abstracting lower-level mental models to higher-level mental models and then maps them to syntactic structure to form euphemistic utterance U (explicit expression) in a certain context; while the listener (L) tries to understand this euphemistic utterance in a proper way under the guide of SRs. At the same time, the mental structure of knowledge sets and a series of inference "if x then y" are also employed to get the coding and decoding, organizing and compensating between explicit expression and implicit expression, thus more and more new knowledge are acquired and the intention of the speaker is achieved.