A Study On English Euphemisms Based On Prototype Theory And Conceptual Blending Theory

It is a universal phenomenon around the world that when people talk about certain topicsthey have to avoid talking about it directly for various reasons. Euphemism, as a kind of“lubricant”, emerges in people’s communication on such occasion.Euphemism is a way to use polite, elegant, indirect expressions to substitute thoseimpolite, rude, harsh words or expressions so as to achieve the purpose of smoothcommunication. The important status and its linguistic value of euphemism have attracted theattention of numerous scholars at home and aboard. Scholars of different fields have studiedeuphemism from perspectives of lexicography, semantics, pragmatics, rhetoric,sociolinguistics and so on. And these studies are mainly focus on the classification ofeuphemism, its figure of speech, formation devices and the culture it reflects etc. However,with the development of the researches, scholars have found that the composition ofeuphemism is not only a linguistic phenomenon, but a psychological phenomenon. So studiesfrom the perspective of cognitive linguistics has became more and more popular. As twoimportant theories in cognitive linguistics, Prototype Theory and Conceptual Blending Theoryhave great power on explaining the meaning construction process of euphemism. The authorof this thesis believes that the categorization process of euphemism is the process of itsmeaning construction. Conceptual Blending Theory can explain the dynamic meaningconstruction process of euphemism. So the combination of these two theories can interpretboth the static and dynamic meaning construction process of English euphemismcomprehensively.In this paper, the study object is the semantically related euphemism which has largerproportion in the formation process, especially those kinds of euphemism whose formationapproaches are substitution of synonyms, metaphorical transfer and metonymical transfer areexplained in detail.The thesis has five chapters: Chapter One introduces the background, significance,research questions and organization of the research. Chapter Two first introduces some basicconcepts of English euphemism, including the definition, classification, formation devices,functions, formation rules and so on; Next, it respectively describes the research situationfrom different angles at home and abroad of English euphemism and introduces the researchdata which will be used in this thesis. Chapter Three describes the two frameworks related tothis thesis respectively, namely Prototype Theory and Conceptual Blending Theory. InChapter Four, the author mainly uses two theories to explain English euphemism respectivelyand then combines these two theories to interpret the static and dynamic meaning construction process of English euphemism. In the last Chapter, the author makes a summary of majorfindings, limitations of the research and suggestions for further study.The author of this study hopes that this paper can contribute in some way to the researchof euphemism phenomenon. However, the research is insufficient in some aspects and needsimprovement in future studies.