The Topological Interpretation Of Euphemism

Euphemism, being a language of communication, is ubiquitous in all aspects of social life. It is a language phenomenon that corresponds to direct language. In the traditional researches of euphemism, no matter in the aspect of English or Chinese,the researchers will relatively limit it to an alternative language on the contrary of taboos, or limit it as a figure of speech in the studies. The research methodologies they used were too single, and the way they did discourse interpretation were too routinized.Topology is a branch of geometry in the field of mathematical study, and it mainly concentrate on the continuous nature of the geometric figures. Topological property is the character that geometric figures remain the same even after making changes for several times. Euphemism, in its usage process, also follows the same rule that means it will remain the same in constantly changing. Therefore, on the basis of cognitive linguistics, this paper will tentatively make an analysis and interpretation of the topological property of euphemism from the perspective of philosophy of mind.In the research process of cognitive linguistics, conscious activities always play a crucial role. Euphemism, as a communication method of language, is no exception in its process of usage, and it is always inseparable from the guidance of conscious activities. In certain context, in order to make their communication more acceptable and comprehensible, the people who output and input language attach their subjective intentions to something new to replace the original thing they refer to. The new thing is the euphemism that holds no necessary or indirect connections with the original thing. It only has the function of communication and expression in the specific context and the subjective consciousness of human beings. It is easy to find that euphemism is inseparable from the consciousness of human, and then we can make a detailed interpretation of euphemism from the perspective of cognitive linguistics and the basic idea of philosophy of mind, the view of topology that means the invariant in the constant variant.The paper will be divided into six chapters. As the introduction part, the first chapter highlights the background of this study, the cause, purpose, hypothesis, research methods and the corpus sources; it makes a brief introduction of the whole research and presents shortcomings of the original euphemism researches. The second chapter is literature review that makes a general summary and explanation of the research history and literature of domestic and international research on euphemism. It not only tries to provide the appropriate academic background platform for the researches of euphemism, but also establish suspense for the research below. The third chapter is the part of the theoretical framework, learning from cognitive pragmatic theory and Gestalt theory and making a brief introduction of the invariant character in variant topology from the perspective of philosophy of mind, it presents a more detailed research frame and explicit research objective. Chapter four is the result section that makes analysis and exploration of the effectiveness and feasibility of euphemism in the topological theory framework. And it also combines the research and specific corpus in the first few chapters and applies the topological theory to the practical usage by making direct or indirect changes. At the same time,combined with the corresponding corpus, it briefly makes analysis of the impact of the objective context and cognitive context on the operating models of euphemism.The fifth chapter is the discussion section, on the basis of certain understanding of the topological theory, we expand the research level to the practical application of the cognitive teaching; and analysis on the specific operating mode of cognitive teaching with the topological way. The conclusion of Chapter VI summarizes the main contents of this study, but also puts forward the difficulties and shortcomings of this study.