A Philosophy-of-mind Approach To Euphemism

Euphemism, as a ubiquitous language phenomenon, is a softened, bland, or sometimes neutral expression used instead of one that might suggest something unpleasant. Ever since its appearance, it has been playing a very important role in "lubricating" communication. On social occasions, euphemism has become not only one of the important communicating ways for people to express their ideas and feelings, but also a very important means to harmonize the relationships between people in verbal communications, and therefore it plays a very important role in promoting the construction of a harmonious society.Early researches of euphemism, descriptive or prescriptive, have been restricted to the perspectives of its definition, classification and aesthetic effects. During recent decades, modern linguistic schools stand in great numbers, which lay a solid foundation for the explanatory turn of euphemism study. Modern linguistics, cognitive semantics and cognitive pragmatics in particular, probe into this old issue by proposing different linguistic approaches with which the interpretation process has been expounded. The studies are a large treasure for further studies; however, few of scholars in the studies set foot in disclosing the generation and interpretation mechanisms of euphemism. Even if there do exist, these cursory studies merely take as the object the only limited scope of euphemistic expressions such as euphemisms about sex, illness, death, which have been the object of over-repeated examination, thus making the study somewhat devoid of the characteristics of the present time. This being the case, the present study attempts to give a tentative account of why euphemism is possible from a new perspective, the perspective of philosophy of mind.Philosophy of mind, being recognized as the first philosophy in the21st century by the British philosopher and linguist John Searle, is the philosophical thinking concerning the relation of body and mind. Different from philosophy of language, philosophy of mind takes mental activities as its direct object of the study with language activities only viewed as the reflection of mental activities in the scope of its study. As we all know, language is the window into mind, through which we can observe how human’s mind works at large. This in turn makes it possible that philosophy of mind and the study of language have an overlapping, and thus the positive gains of the current study of euphemism from the point of view of philosophy of mind can be applied to linguistic research to make it take on a new look.The present study emerges from the three hypotheses of language against the background of philosophy of mind, which are put forward by the Chinese scholar Xu Shenghuan. The hypotheses are as follows:(1) The basic nature of language is its being mind-based.(2) Language use is based on what is perceived and felt.(3) Language representation is the reflection of mental representation.To be more specific, the thesis tries to describe the mental processes of the generation and interpretation of euphemism in an Analytical Framework of Euphemism Based on the Philosophy of Mind, and furthermore it reveals how the concepts of intentionality, supervenience, and qualia help to explain the mental causes for which euphemism is produced and interpreted.The research, which finally comes down into a mechanism about euphemism, is largely divided into two parts:generation process and interpretation process, with the former again being divided into two, the directing (that is, focusing on) process and the selecting process.The whole mechanism is as such:First, adopting the appropriate intentionality is of prior importance for language use, which undoubtedly holds true for the use of euphemism. It is the initial step of the producer, determining the producer’s choice of the potential content and attitude when he speaks; that is, to be evading as to what and how he would like to express, this time to speak in a euphemistical way. Otherwise, it is impossible for us to be involved in the world, let alone speak euphemistically.Second, as we all know, there usually exists more than one euphemism for the same "true word", so the speaker has to choose the only one suitable to serve his or her purpose. How does the selecting process happen? To be specific, which variant is playing a decisive role in the speaker’s choice of a certain substitute? This is closely related to the psychological supervenience, an important mental process which is going on in our mind. And this process can be briefed into one sentence:it is the mental property, which is somewhat dependent on the physical property of the real object described on the one hand and somewhat out of the speaker’s free will of how to describe it appropriately on the other.that decides his or her choice of a certain substitute which is of euphemistic novelty.Third, how does the hearer interpret the "gilded words"? What qualia-sense does the hearer sense from the euphemistic word or phrases? To answer these questions, we have to resort to qualia, an instance of mental property. Its coming into being is also due to the mental process of supervenience. This interpreting process is condensed as follows:the qualia-sense of euphemism brought upon the hearer is decided by the mental property of the "gilded word" which undoubtedly arouses a kind of positive and uplifting meaning in the hearer.All in all, intentionality, supervenience, and qualia underlie the mechanism proposed in this thesis. By means of the three concepts, we give a clear explanation of the generation and the interpretation of euphemism from the perspective of philosophy of mind.