| Euphemism,as a sort of common linguistic phenomenon,is widely applied in people's daily lives.Political speeches is an important method for American presidential elections as well as an essential means to promote presidential political ideas,therefore it plays a fatal role in American political life.And euphemism as an effective communicative strategy is extensively applied in political speeches.After the analyses of the previous studies on political euphemisms,it is found that many scholars have investigated the definition,classification and rhetoric formations of political euphemism,but the generative mechanism of political euphemism is neglected,therefore this thesis intends to investigate the generative mechanism of political euphemism under the framework of Adaptation Theory.This thesis intends to take the contextual adaptation of Verschueren's Adaptation Theory as theoretical guidance and Presidential Obama's political speeches which he has delivered during the year 2009 to the year 2016 as the mainly research material,and take the case analysis as the mainly research methodology,in order to figure out the answers of two questions: 1.What are the concrete elements in the mental,social and physical worlds which political euphemism should be adapted to? 2.What are the political goals of the employments of political euphemism which President Obama wants to achieve?This thesis consists of three parts: introduction,body and conclusion.The main contents are as follows:The first part is the introduction,introducing the main research objectives,the rationality and the previous studies on political euphemism.This article starting from the perspective of contextual adaptation of Adaptation Theory and taking President Obama's political speeches as the main research objects,analyzes how he consciously chooses the euphemisms to achieve communicative purposes,and how to use euphemism adapt to the contextual factors in the mental world,the social world and the physical world.The second part is the main part of the thesis.The first chapter is the literature review,which firstly illustrates the definition,classification and rhetoric formations of euphemism and political euphemism,and then introduces the basic content of Verschueren's Adaptation Theory.The second chapter introduces how the political euphemisms adapt to the mentalworld.Those euphemisms which President Obama employs are certainly driven by specific intentions or motivations to realize his political goals.In order not to reveal his real intention directly,he employs political euphemisms to avoid the taboo,avoid hurting others,show the politeness to the hearers,win public's support,conceal the truth and disguise the reality,etc.The third chapter introduces how the political euphemisms adapt to the social world.Political euphemisms should not only adapt to the mental world,but also the social conventions,value systems,religious beliefs in the social world.First of all,the social conventions refer to the conventional and unwritten rules and orders in social lives,and showing politeness and avoiding taboos are also the constituents of it.In addition,the value system refers to the individualism which the western world respects.And the religious beliefs points to the Christian which the western people believes.Finally,the fourth chapter elaborates the adaptation of euphemism to the physical world.There are three factors in the physical world: time,space and the utterers and interpreters.Time is constantly changing,so does the political euphemisms.While language as a social organism,political euphemisms should also adapt to it.And the bodily gestures,facial expressions,behaviors and physical appearance of the utterers in the physical world would also affect the understanding of the interpreters.The third part is the conclusion.Through this study,it is found that the employments of euphemisms of President Obama in his speeches is to achieve specific political purposes,and the fine choices of language is the process of constantly conscious adaptation to the context.After the analysis,it is concluded that the employments of political euphemism should adapt to the mental,social and physical worlds.Firstly,it should be adapted to the concrete elements in the mental world,such as emotion,motivation and personality,etc.Secondly,it should be adapted to the social conventions,value system and religious beliefs,etc.in the social world.Finally,it should be adapted to the time reference and spatial reference in the physical world.In addition,President Obama employs euphemism to achieve specific political goals,such as showing politeness,avoiding taboos,covering up the truth,adapting to the social conventions,the value system and the diachronic changes of time reference.This thesis is significant in both theory and application.From the perspective of theoretical significance,this thesis is based on the theory of contextual adaptation,which extends the study of euphemisms to a holistic one inclusive of mental,social,physical and other contextual factors,providing another actual case of investigating the adaptability of euphemisms under the framework of the adaptation theory at the same time.From the perspective of application significance,it gives a thorough investigation about the academic value of political euphemisms,provides some theoretical guidance of using euphemisms in our daily lives,as well as activates English learner's interests in the application of euphemisms;secondly,it explains the intentions of employing euphemisms in political speeches,and enhances the public's acquaintance with and apprehension of euphemisms in political speeches,thus preventing the public's misunderstandings of it.However,there are some limitations in the thesis,for instances,there are only 26 pieces of political speeches being employed;it only investigates the political euphemism in the political speeches while the other areas are not mentioned;it only takes the contextual adaptation as the theoretical guidance and the other three angles of Adaptation Theory are not mentioned. |
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