A Study Of Euphemisms From The Perspective Of Conceptual Blending Theory

Euphemisms are the use of more polite and less blunt expressions to replace theexpressions with direct and unpleasant connotation, in order to ensure a smoothcommunication and harmonious interpersonal relationship. Euphemisms are commonlanguage phenomena and have attracted many linguists’ attention. The studies ofeuphemisms are from the perspective of lexicography, rhetoric, semantics, pragmatics,sociolinguistics, which are valuable for the further study of euphemisms. Recently, thedevelopment of cognitive studies explores new directions of research on euphemisms.Therefore the purpose of this research is to analyze English euphemisms from theperspective of Conceptual Blending Theory, which plays an important role in theunderstanding of language, and gives linguists the opportunity to explain the dynamicmeaning construction process of language.The data of this study is collected from three authoritative dictionaries---ADictionary of English Euphemisms, Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, andCollins Cobuild English Dictionary. Moreover Corpus of Contemporary AmericanEnglish (COCA) is used to retrieve and filter samples by word frequency. So,considering previous studies are mostly case study, this thesis uses a large number of datato complement the study of Conceptual Blending TheoryThe major findings of this study is death euphemisms can be classified by the fournetworks of Conceptual Blending Theory, among the four kinds of networks,double-scope network is the most frequently used blending approach in the meaningconstruction of death euphemisms. Mirror network is the second frequently usedmeaning construction approach. It is hoped that this study could be helpful for furtherstudy.