| Language is a kind of art.As the artists of language use,people need to apply some strategies flexibly in daily communication in order to achieve communicative purposes,which causes many linguistic phenomena to come into being.Euphemism is one of them.People may use euphemisms to indirectly express some impolite,embarrassing or sensitive utterances so that communication can go on successfully.As a common linguistic phenomenon,euphemism has attracted the attention of linguists.For many years,linguists have been studying nearly every aspect of euphemism from different perspectives and have achieved a lot.However,most of them focus on the study on euphemism from single perspective.In addition,previous studies on the pragmatic functions of euphemism are relatively limited and superficial.Regarding the present research background,this thesis aims to study euphemism from an integrated perspective.Relevance Theory(RT)and Conceptual Blending Theory(CBT)play important roles in linguistics.Meanwhile,the two theories also have their own merits and demerits.The author believes that RT can supply a governing principle for CBT while the four mental spaces of CBT can provide the specific cognitive process for RT.Therefore,the author creates a new cognitive-pragmatic model based on RT and CBT.At the same time,this thesis relates euphemism to intersubjectivity,unfolding the deep function of euphemism use.Therefore,this study is designed to explore the function of euphemisms in English news discourse and the realization of the function from the cognitive-pragmatic model.This study is a qualitative study with the help of case analysis.Based on Liu Chunbao's A Dictionary of English Euphemisms and through the analysis of partial news discourses from BBC and China Daily in 2016,this study has reached two conclusions.On the one hand,the deep function of euphemism use in English news discourse is to achieve intersubjectivity.On the other hand,the cognitive-pragmatic model interprets the way to realize the function of intersubjectivity.The present study has the following four contributions.First,based on both the merits and demerits of RT and CBT and the fact that they are complementary to each other,this study has put forward a new cognitive-pragmatic model which provides a new theoretical framework for the study of euphemism.Second,the author has related euphemism to intersubjectivity,which reveals the deep mechanism of euphemism use.Third,this study has accounted for the realization of the function of euphemisms in English news discourse from the new cognitive-pragmatic perspective.Moreover,the results of this study will provide some insights for English teaching and daily communication. |
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