Contextual Analysis To Euphemism In Desperate Housewives

Contextual Analysis to Euphemism in Desperate HousewivesIn communication, it is inevitable to meet some embarrassing, sensitive topics. However, in order to avoid those unpleasant and unacceptable issues, meanwhile, to achieve the smoothly communication effect, people tend to use those expressions which are more roundabout and euphemistic rather than direct and harsh. This language phenomenon is euphemism. Because of the function of euphemism in communication, many scholars at abroad and home studied it since a long time ago. Certainly, different disciplines study euphemism from different perspectives, the earlier studies on euphemism mainly concentrate on rhetoric, semantics, syntactic and dictionary compiling. With the progress of society, people have an increasing need in language use and expression, so the use to euphemism is not only limited in words and sentences, but the practical usage, that is, in a particular language context, it is a worth considering problem that how to use and understand euphemism appropriately so as to achieve the expected communication effect.Language and culture are closely related to each other, language is one part of culture and reflects it. For language users, it is imperative to know both a language and its cultural background well. The same is true that the understanding and employment to English euphemism can not be separated from the culture of English-speaking countries. This thesis will analyze English euphemism from pragmatic context, taking the first season of American series Desperate Housewives as language material. Context is a complicated concept, which can be classified from different angles:the dynamic context, the static context; the cognitive context, pragmatic context, etc. The pragmatic context in this thesis is dynamic without doubt, taking the context of situation and the context of culture as key points to analyze representative dialogues in Desperate Housewives. The analyzing result will prove that in using and understanding English euphemism, which is not only closely related to factors of participants, participants’communication intention, communication medium, subject matter and setting, etc in situational context, but also influenced by culture and culture motivation.The theory significance of this thesis is that it analyzes English euphemism from pragmatic context, taking the context of situation and the context of culture as theory basis, selecting some representative dialogues of Desperate Housewives as analyzing objects, to preceding a systematical analysis; the practical significance is that the analyzing conclusion can be of reference for foreign language learners.