A Pragmatic Study Of English Euphemisms In Press Conferences

Euphemisms are a common linguistic phenomenon as well as a language strategy employed by interlocutors in order to achieve the ideal effect of communication. It is commonly acknowledged that euphemisms originate from religious taboos, and then develops into substitutions of rude and offensive words or expressions. Euphemisms are not only a linguistic phenomenon, but also a social phenomenon. This is because they exist in almost every aspects of social life. Many linguists and scholars are extremely interested in this phenomenon and have conducted various studies from different perspectives like rhetoric, sociology, and pragmatics and so on. However, few of these studies are concentrated on euphemisms in specific context such as press conferences.Press conferences held by governments are used to release news to the press and public. Language is one of the most important carriers of press conferences and is also a useful tool for statesmen, politicians or diplomats to protect the benefits of their countries. Press conferences of governments usually concern sensitive issues like politics, military issues, and diplomacy. On such occasions, statesmen have to adopt indirect euphemisms as their language strategy to avoid offensive words. So press conference is a good source of euphemisms. Usually, in order to maintain a smooth conversation, people will follow certain communication principles in their conversation, like the Cooperative Principle and the Politeness Principle. However, statesmen do not only represent themselves in press conferences, in order to achieve the expected communication goal, they often choose euphemisms carefully in their language and do not observe Cooperative Principle and Politeness Principle.Based on Grice's Cooperative Principle and Leech's Politeness Principle, this thesis combines a quantitative study with a qualitative one and analyzes euphemisms in the selected twenty transcripts of American press conferences held in the White House. The author probes into the relationship of euphemisms in press conferences with CP and PP, and summarizes the constitutions, realizations and functions of these euphemisms. The whole thesis contains seven chapters, Chapter Five and Chapter Six are the core chapters of this thesis. Chapter One is the introduction, and this chapter introduces the background, objective, significance and organization of the research.Chapter Two is the literature review, in which the author makes a systematic review and evaluation of different researches on euphemisms. Besides, definitions, classifications and constitutions of euphemisms are introduced in detail as well in this chapter.Chapter Three establishes the theoretical framework on the basis of the Cooperative principle and the Politeness principle.Chapter Four introduces the research methodology of this thesis. The author mainly elaborates the methods of data collection, research methodology and steps in this chapter. Chapter Five and Chapter Six are the main body of this thesis. They elaborate in detail the empirical study on euphemisms of press conferences on the basis of CP and PP respectively, also probe into the pragmatic attributes of euphemisms and how CP and PP affect the use of euphemisms in communication.Chapter Seven concludes the major findings of this research, pointing out the limitation of the research and providing suggestions for futures studies.In summary, this thesis makes a detailed analysis of euphemisms in press conferences from the perspective of pragmatics, and tries to discover the pragmatic attributes of this phenomenon. It is also hoped that this research can deepen the understanding of euphemisms...