A Study On Cognitive Motivations Of English Euphemism From The Perspective Of Prototype Theory

Euphemism is a linguistic phenomenon in communication. Englisheuphemism is commonly used in the daily life of western people. As acommon linguistic phenomenon, euphemism has been a hot topic for along time, and the subject of the earliest euphemism was religious. Mosteuphemistic studies have been focused on its definition, classification,illustration and other ontological aspects. Many scholars have studiedeuphemism from different angles, such as rhetoric, semantics, pragmaticsand sociolinguistics.Cognitive linguistics is a relatively new branch of linguistics, whichconnects language with human cognition and has been applied ineuphemistic studies. Theories of cognitive linguistics try to explain the mechanism of language production, acquisition and understanding anddescribe the relationship between cognitive structure and language pattern.Prototype theory, as one of the important theories of cognitive linguistics,is adopted in this study to reveal the mental relationship between cognitionand euphemism. Motivation, a seldom touched topic in euphemistic studies,has been proved to exist not only in linguistic system but also in othercognitive system. This thesis is a study on cognitive motivations of Englisheuphemism from the perspective of prototype theory.The thesis is divided into five chapters. They are sequentially theintroduction, the literature review, the theoretical framework for the study,cognitive motivations of English euphemism from the perspective ofprototype theory and the conclusion. The research methods are thecombination of qualitative method and quantitative method, and case study.Euphemistic expressions are selected from A Dictionary of EnglishEuphemism by Liu Chunbao according to the author’s classification, and examples are selected from the Corpus of Contemporary American English(COCA).The research design makes sure that the reliability and validity ofstudy. Some tentative research findings have been discovered in this thesis:(1) As a study on cognitive motivations of English euphemism,according to the previous studies and considering the perspective ofprototype theory, the author finds that English euphemism can be dividedinto two groups—euphemism of meaning and euphemism of form.(2) It is found that taboo words as prototypical members in a categoryare sensitive to communicators and direct in their sense. However,euphemistic words are non-prototypical or peripheral in the same categorywith those taboo words.(3) Cognitive factors, such as prototype and categorization, can beused in motivation studies of euphemism for people obey the principle ofthe cognitive world structure to find the non-prototypical euphemism in taboo categories. Prototype theory will help to understand how Englisheuphemism is motivated.(4) The principle of family resemblance and the difference betweenthe peripheral member and the prototypical member provide us with thebasis to study the cognitive motivations of euphemism. Englisheuphemism can be motivated through the evolving from prototypicalmembers to peripheral members in a category and through the weakeningof typicality of members in a category from the consideration of familyresemblance.The thesis intends to enrich the theories of English euphemism,especially from the formation of English euphemism and the perspective ofcognitive motivations. It also tries to testify the explanatory power of thetheories of cognitive linguistics, especially the prototype theory, and therefore, better understanding and utilization of English euphemism willbe fulfilled.