A Study Of Euphemism Of Doctor-patient Conversation From Relevance Theory Perspective In House M.D

Euphemism receives a lot of academic attention due to its great importance and high occurrence in conversations. Numerous previous studies have been done about definition, classification, realization and application strategy of euphemism mainly from semantic, pragmatic, sociolinguistic, and psycholinguistic perspectives.Adequate and effective application of euphemism in doctor-patient conversation can help to ease doctor-patient relationship and establish patient’s confidence to recover. So thesis attends to explore euphemism in doctor-patient conversation from relevance theory based on corpora from TV series House M.D.The thesis seeks to answer following questions:while using euphemisms in House M.D, how do communicators abide by principles of relevance theory? How do communicators exert contextual effects? What processing efforts do communicators make? How do communicators realize ostensive-inferential communication process?The corpora adopted in the present thesis are taken from the show House M.D. In detail, the data analysis will be done by the following procedures. Firstly, the euphemisms used in House M.D will be recorded. Secondly, the study tries to collect and classify them according to function, realization, and application strategy of euphemisms in the TV series. Thirdly, with the elaboration of the distribution and realization of different types of euphemisms, the study identifies them and tries to analyze the realization of them under relevance theory framework.The results of the study indicate that euphemisms are frequently used in doctor-patient conversation. Communicators do comply with principles of relevance theory. In communications, contextual effects are exerted by speakers and listeners respond with processing effort, as a result, they together realize the ostensive-inferential communication.In the end, the thesis is composed of six chapters. Chapter one is an overall introduction to the thesis. Chapter two is the literature review, including the previous studies on euphemism, on doctor-patient conversation, on euphemisms in doctor-patient conversation, on TV series House M.D, and on relevance theory. Chapter three focuses on theoretical foundation:relevance theory. Chapter four introduces research design. Chapter five deals with case studies of euphemisms in House M.D under the theoretical scope of relevance theory. Chapter six concludes the whole thesis with a brief summary of the major findings obtained in the study, implications and suggestions for further study.