Interpretation Of Euphemism In Obama’s Speeches From The Contextual Adaptation Perspective

Euphemism is a common linguistic phenomenon and is widely used in daily communication. As an important method for presidential elections and promoting government policies, political speeches play an important role in American political life. Euphemism is also widely used in political speeches. Many scholars at home and abroad have conducted fairly systematic and in-depth researches into euphemism from the perspectives of rhetoric, semantics, lexicography, etc. However, studies of euphemism under the framework of the adaptation theory are comparatively insufficient.Taking Verschueren’s Adaptation Theory as theoretical guidance and President Obama’s political speeches as research material, the author of this paper attempts to dissect how President Obama consciously adopts euphemisms in his speeches for effective communication and to find out how he uses these euphemisms to adapt to the mental, social and physical worlds. As to research method, firstly, materials chosen for the analysis are collected from the official website of Obama’s speeches. In total,35pieces of speeches from the year2008to the year2012are selected from the website. Secondly, all types of euphemism are picked out in accordance with the definition of euphemism and the three principles:distance principle, relevance principle and sweet-sounding principle, which are constructing principles put forward by Shu Dingfang(束定芳，1989). In these35pieces of Obama’s speeches,129items of euphemistic expressions are picked out. After being singled out. the euphemistic expressions are categorized and presented at lexical, rhetorical and grammatical levels. With the description of all the euphemistic expressions at the three levels, the thesis probes into the concrete contextual elements that diplomatic euphemism adapts to in the mental, social and physical worlds.The results of this study show that euphemisms in President Obama’s speeches are delicate linguistic choices made to attain specific political purposes and are a process of consciously adapting to contextual settings, i.e., all elements in the mental world, the social world and the physical world. In the first place, euphemisms in Obama’s speeches can be realized by lexical devices, grammatical devices, especially by rhetorical devices, all of which are the result of language use:making language choices. In the second place President Obama’s adaption to the mental world by means of euphemisms is mainly adaptation to his psychological motivations, e.g., to avoid taboo, to show politeness to his listeners, to win support, to cover up truth, to sugar the pill, etc. In the third place, President Obama’s adaption to the social world is mainly adaptation to the cultural phenomena in the social world, e.g., values, religious beliefs, social conventions, etc. In the fourth place, President Obama’s adaption to the social world merely discuss the adaptation to diachronic changes.The significance of this paper can boil down to the following aspects:1)Starting from the perspective of contextual adaptation, it contributes to extending the study of euphemism to a holistic one inclusive of social, mental, physical and other contextual factors and provides another actual case of investigating the adaptability of euphemism under the framework of the adaptation theory;2) It provides academic references for studying the contextual adaptation of euphemism in political speeches, which stimulates English learners’interest in the application of euphemism in political speeches and proffers them certain empirical references to better use euphemism in daily communication;3) It enhances the public’s acquaintance with and apprehension of euphemism in political speeches, thus preventing misunderstanding.