A Study Of English Euphemisms In Friends From The Perspective Of Adaptation Theory

Euphemism,being a commonly employed linguistic strategy in our everyday communication,exists in almost all languages all over the world.It is just like a lubricant,which allows us to express our ideas in a way that doesn't hurt the feelings of others.Euphemism plays an indispensable role in our daily life,thus it has attracted large numbers of researchers both at home and abroad.Studies on euphemisms mainly include explorations about the definition,classification,formation,function and translation from various perspectives,such as semantics,rhetoric,sociolinguistics,pragmatics,social psychology and so on,among which the most common study is the pragmatic analysis of euphemisms on the basis of a few traditional theories like cooperative principle,politeness principle as well as face theory.However,in recent years,a new theory has been found to apply to the pragmatic studies of euphemisms,that is the adaptation theory put forward by Verschueren.Verschueren came up with a wholly new angle on the study of pragmatics,regarding it as an integration of cognitive,social and cultural analysis.Adaptation Theory is the core concept of his pragmatic perspective,which provides an integrated theoretical basis for linguistic analysis.The adaptation theory regards the use of language as a persistent process of making choices to adapt to both linguistic and communicative context.Communicative context can be more specifically divided into four categories,namely language users,social world,physical world as well as mental world.Based on previous studies of euphemisms,this paper uses Adaptation Theory as the theoretical basis to deal with the adaptation process of euphemisms to communicative context and its pragmatic functions.Euphemisms to be analyzed in this thesis are selected from a very popular American TV series Friends,which focuses on the everyday life of six friends.Though a lot of studies have been done related to the famous sitcom,many are from perspectives like humor,gender difference,using such traditional theories as cooperative principle and face theory.To have a deep understanding of the adaptation process of euphemisms in the TV and its pragmatic functions,both quantitative and qualitative study have been conducted.Most of the chosen euphemisms are unconventional ones formed either by semantic or pragmatic means.First,the adaptation process of euphemisms in Friends to communicative context is to be analyzed in this paper.The choice-making of euphemisms ought to adapt to language users(the utterers' voices and interpreters' roles),mental world(language users' personality traits,motivation and emotion),social world(social conventions,social values,social relationships,gender and social distance)and physical world(time,space,physical position and material conditions).Second,the communicative functions of euphemisms in Friends are to be discussed.The use of euphemisms is regarded as adaptation to such communicative functions as evasive function of avoiding saying taboo words;polite function of showing respect to others as well as saving other people's face;cosmetic function of covering up some unpleasant truth or facts;humorous function of saying out something in a funny way;illocutionary act function of giving orders to other people in an indirect way.This paper is of great value to us.Practically,it is of valuable implications for cross-cultural communication and TEFL(teaching English as a Foreign Language).At the same time,this study proves that adaptation theory is a good theoretical basis for the study of euphemisms.The author sincerely hopes that the study can be of some significance to Chinese English learners.