A Study Of The Application Of English Euphemism Fom A Cross-cultural Communication Perspective

Euphemism is a linguistic and sociolinguistic phenomenon. As an importantlanguage phenomenon, euphemism surely has an influence on the human language. Sodoes English euphemism. In cross-cultural communication, English euphemism plays avery important role, especially in the following aspects: political field, economic field,cultural field and educational field. Thus, based on the previous studies about Englisheuphemism, this thesis focused on discussing the application of English euphemism inthe4fields from a cross-cultural perspective, according to Brown and Levinson’s facetheories, Yule’s Face Act and Leech’s Politeness Principle.In order to discuss the application of English euphemism, this thesis adopted amethod of example analysis. The whole thesis consisted of five parts.Part1introduced the significance of the study and the structure of this thesis.Part2is the literature review which gives a previous study of English euphemismboth at home and aboard. The previous study can be summarized into5aspects: thedefinition and the classification of English euphemism, euphemism in communication,the characteristics of English euphemism (including universality, culture specificity,re-symbolism, obscurity, beautification), and the theories of cross-culturalcommunication.Part3, the most important part of this thesis, focused on analyzing the applicationof English euphemism from a cross-cultural communication in politics, in advertisement,in education, in literature and in other aspects. In order to discuss the application ofEnglish euphemism in cross-cultural communication, firstly, this thesis made clearabout some relevant terms: culture, communication and cross-cultural communication.Then, this thesis discussed the relationships between culture and communication, andbetween culture and cross-cultural communication. Finally, this thesis concentrated onanalyzing the application of English euphemism in the fields of politics, advertising,education, literature and some other aspects of life.Part4discussed English euphemism in EFL teaching and cultivating cross-culturalcompetence through it. In EFL environment, how to teach English euphemism, thisthesis proposed some countermeasures, such as teaching cultural connotations ofvocabulary and making contrastive analysis of English and Chinese euphemisms. Additionally, this part also analyzed how to cultivate cross-cultural communicationcompetence.Part5drew a conclusion for this thesis. This part pointed out the achievement thisthesis made. Additionally, this part looked forward to the future study for Englisheuphemism in cross-cultural communication.