A Study Of Political Euphemisms In The State Of The Union Addresses From The Perspective Of Conceptual Metonymy

Euphemism,as a common linguistic phenomenon,plays a significant role in keeping our daily communication smooth.Political euphemism,as a special kind of euphemism,is often used by politicians in their speeches to conceal the truth and shift people's attention off it.As a consequence,political euphemisms in political speeches have attracted more and more attention from many scholars all over the world.At present,there are a large number of researches on political euphemisms in different types of texts from different perspectives.These studies have mainly concentrated on the aspects of definitions,classifications,features and social functions of political euphemisms.However,this thesis,being different from most of the previous studies,aims to analyze the generation of political euphemisms in The State of the Union Addresses from the cognitive perspective in light of conceptual metonymy.This paper mainly examines the political euphemisms in The State of the Union Addresses delivered by American presidents George Walker Bush and Barack Hussein Obama.This thesis attempts to apply a qualitative approach to exploring the generation of political euphemisms based on metonymy-producing relationships proposed by Radden and Kovecses.The types of metonymy-producing relationships may be subsumed under two general conceptual configurations:Whole-Part configuration and Part-Part configuration.Therefore,this study tries to answer two research questions:(1)How are political euphemisms in The State of the Union Addresses generated under Whole-Part configurations?(2)How are political euphemisms in The State of the Union Addresses generated under Part-Part configurations?Through the analysis,the main findings of this thesis are as follows:(1)The generation of political euphemisms in The State of the Union Addresses under Whole-Part Configurations is in essence based on conceptual metonymy.In the cognitive process of metonymy,the political euphemism which may be the whole Idealized Cognitive Model(ICM)or part of the whole ICM acts as the vehicle to provide mental access to the target which usually refers to the intended meaning the speaker wants to convey.Thus,political euphemisms are generated to stand for the expressions which the politicians attempt to avoid.(2)Political euphemisms in The State of the Union Addresses under Part-Part configurations are also essentially generated on the basis of conceptual metonymy.In the cognitive process,the political euphemism that is considered as one part of the whole ICM acts as the vehicle to provide mental access to the expression which serves as the target.In general,the target is usually the expression which may reveal the real thinking the speaker wants to conceal.