A Cognitive Study Of The Rhetorical Effect And Meaning Construction Of Euphemisms In English And Chinese

This thesis studies euphemisms in English and Chinese from the perspective of cognitivelinguistics. As a prominent linguistic and cultural phenomenon, euphemism has attractedextensive attention both at home and abroad. There are lots of works that have made detailedanalysis and investigation on this phenomenon. Both Chinese and English euphemisms arestudied in a great depth. For example, the specific features of euphemism are observed tomake distinction from the other rhetorical devices; the history and evolution of euphemism isalso investigated; the specified classifications are also made based on the observations of thisphenomenon; the formation of euphemism is also studied; so does the stylistic difference ofeuphemism, and so on. However, these works seldom study the cognitive mechanism of therhetoric effect and the cognitive motivation of meaning construction of Chinese and Englisheuphemism. That’s also why the author chooses the rhetorical effect and meaning constructionof euphemism as the research subject.Based upon those insightful preceding works, this thesis makes efforts to investigate theway of euphemisms to achieve its rhetorical effect and its meaning construction by using thecategorization theory and conceptual metaphor theory. The detailed analysis is carried out inline with two procedures, i.e. the observation on features of euphemism and the cognitiveanalysis of it based on these features.For the first procedures, the thesis has summarized the main features of euphemism as:First, semantic conflicts are found in euphemistic expressions, which arise when thecombination of linguistic meanings goes beyond the scope of meaning choices or ourcommon understandings. The purpose of euphemism is to avoid using impolite or taboowords by adopting less unpleasant words to smooth communications. Hence, the true meaning of euphemism goes beyond the literal meaning. Second, euphemisms are conceived with thesupport of context. Thanks to the semantic conflicts in euphemistic expressions, the meaningof this rhetorical device must be interpreted with the help of the context. Third, in euphemisticexpressions, the euphemism and taboo word share a corresponding relation, which ensurestheir correspondence.In line with the three features, the thesis adopts the specific analysis at two levels, andfinds the way of euphemistic effect and meaning construction.At the first level, the thesis makes effort to analyze the way euphemism achieves itsrhetorical effect. As the categorization system is formed along with vertical and horizontaldirections, euphemism does the same in achieving their rhetorical effect. The euphemism andtaboo word are regarded as in the same semantic category, when it moves vertically, frombasic to superordinate level, or horizontally, from typical to marginal status, the cognitiveefforts to conceive the meaning of euphemisms increase; hence the indirect effect is achieved.At the second level, the thesis goes deeper to investigate the way of meaning constructionof euphemism by using conceptual metaphor theory. Its meaning can be constructed via themapping or activating from the source domain to the target domain, by virtue of which theunpleasant meaning is covered up and the acceptable meaning is profiled.Therefore, a conclusion can be made as the following:(i) the rhetorical effect ofeuphemism is achieved through a categorizational extension;(ii) the meaning of euphemismis constructed by virtue of a cross domain projection or activation.