A Comparative Study Of English And Chinese Euphemism From The Perspectives Of Pragmatics And Aesthetics

Euphemism is universally acknowledged as a very important part in every language. Researchers both at home and abroad have conducted a lot of studies on euphemism from many perspectives, such as rhetoric, sociology, socio-linguistics, anthropology, pragmatics and discourse analysis. Most of the studies focus on a particular language. This thesis is a tentative endeavor to explore euphemism from the perspectives of pragmatics and aesthetics by making a comparative study of euphemism in English and Chinese.This thesis first introduces the general background of the studies of euphemism and the significance, structure, research methods and aims of this thesis are stated. What follows are the definitions of both English and Chinese euphemism and reviews of studies of euphemism at home and abroad. After that, comparative studies of euphemism in English and Chinese are conducted from the perspectives of pragmatics and aesthetics on the basis of cross-cultural communication. In the end, findings and limitations of this thesis are included.To sum up, the author intends to state the similarities and differences of English and Chinese euphemism through doing a comparative study of them from the perspectives of pragmatics and aesthetics, in the hope that this thesis would be of great significance and practical value to the language learns of the two languages and researchers who are interested in this field.