A Study Of Euphemisms In Grey’s Anatomy From The Perspective Of Adaptation Theory

Euphemism serves as a linguistic lubricant to make the communication process go smoothly.Foreign and domestic scholars have committed themselves to the study of euphemisms since 20 th century from various perspectives,such as rhetorics,semantics,pragmatics and sociolinguistics.However,their research is largely limited to definition,classification,function,formation and so on.Though some scholars actively explored the use of euphemisms from the perspective of pragmatics,their studies rely much on the traditional theories such as cooperative principle,politeness principle and the face theory.In consideration of that,this thesis attempts to study the adaptation of euphemisms to communicative context based on Verschueren’s adaptation theory and it further explores the pragmatic functions of euphemisms.This thesis mainly investigates two research questions which are listed as follows:(1)How do euphemisms adapt to different ingredients in the communicative context?(2)What pragmatic functions do euphemisms serve?Taking the adaptation theory as theoretical basis,this research selects euphemisms in the first two seasons of the American medical drama Grey’s Anatomy as the linguistic data.It employs quantitative and qualitative research methods to explore the adaption of euphemisms to different ingredients in the communicative context and further discusses the pragmatic functions of euphemisms.The research finds that euphemisms dynamically adapt to different ingredients in the communicative context and people always employ euphemisms to achieve their respective pragmatic purposes in communication.This research has some theoretical and practical significance.Firstly,it enriches the study of euphemisms in pragmatics.Secondly,it provides cross-cultural communication and teaching English as a foreign language(TEFL)with some implications.