Adaptation Theory And Its Application To Cross-cultural Interpretation Of The Non-observance In Euphemism

Euphemism is a kind of sociocultural linguistic phenomenon, which shows a variety of forms of expression in different languages. By means of the cross-cultural contrastive analysis of euphemism, the cultural divergence between different nations can be full incarnated so as to effectively reduce the pragmatic failure in cross-cultural communication. Due to the powerful social functions of euphemism, scholars at home and abroad have made systematical studies on euphemism from the rhetorical, semantic and social-psychological perspectives with emphasis on the definition, classification, social function and expressive device of euphemism. However, researches on euphemism from pragmatic view are relatively less.Along with the development and maturity of pragmatics, more and more linguists consider that euphemism originally belonging to the category of semantic change should be attributed to the pragmatic category of interpersonal communication. Because language users in speech communication have to choose proper linguistic forms and strategies in order to satisfy the communicative needs, euphemism is taken as the preferred linguistic strategy for regulating the interpersonal relationship by the attributes of euphemism such as indirectness, politeness and fuzziness. As another important focus of pragmatic research, the Cooperative Principle provides effective guidance to speech communication. Euphemism, a frequently-used linguistic phenomenon, should have observed the Cooperative Principle, but deliberately violates it for attending certain communicative aim in a specific context. This phenomenon of non-observance of euphemism is discussed by many scholars in diverse ways. Sadly, many studies on the non-observance of euphemism are only confined into a static context and rarely concern the deep motivation of the use of euphemism in cross-cultural communication, which may cause the failure in correctly interpreting the cultural factors lying behind the phenomenon of non-observance of euphemism.The emergence of Vershueren’s Adaptation Theory makes up for the defects of the static researches on linguistic phenomenon. Adaptation Theory considers that any language use is a choice-making process and this linguistic choice should dynamically adapt to the context which involves the linguistic context and communicative context. This new pragmatic view can systematically and comprehensively analyze the linguistic phenomenon. As the result, based on the angle of view of communicative context in Adaptation Theory, this paper makes a cross-cultural comparative analysis of the deep motivation of non-observance of euphemism in cross-cultural communication, which reveals the phenomenon of non-observance of euphemism in cross-cultural communication is the result of dynamically adapting to the language user and its social, mental and physical worlds. The study demonstrates that the correct interpretation of non-observance of euphemism in cross-cultural communication from the perspective of Adaptation Theory can show the national and cultural features of euphemism, develop the cross-cultural communicative competence and finally reduce the cross-cultural pragmatic failures.