A Study Of English Euphemisms In Desperate Housewives From The Perspective Of Adaptation Theory

Euphemism is becoming more and more important in people's daily communication.Therefore,it is getting more and more attention from scholars at home and abroad.As the British linguist,Hugh Rosen put it,“Euphemism is deeply ingrained in our language,and few people can do it without euphemism.Communication,even those in a straightforward manner,is no exception.” However,so far,most of the research on euphemism has focused on semantics,pragmatics,rhetoric,sociolinguistics,and fuzzy linguistics.Related research has excellent guiding significance for those who further study euphemism,but at the same time,there are apparent defects and deficiencies.As we all know,euphemism is a language communication strategy,which needs to be combined with the corresponding context to analyze communication.In some cases,from a pragmatic point of view,the same word or words will produce different meanings in different contexts.The real reason is that language itself depends on context,and euphemism is more like a widely used language strategy.It is necessary to place euphemism in a specific communicative context.Besides,language,cognitive and social factors would be considered if readers want to go deeper and explore the characteristics and environment of euphemism more scientifically.Verschueren's adaptation theory can fully meet all of these requirements.Under the concept of mental cognition,Verschueren believes that social psychology is a combination of social and cognitive factors,and is the basis for language users to adapt and produce meaning.Therefore,the linguistic and social nature of cognitive level will play a role in people's language behaviour.The theory of adaptation proposed from the perspective of pragmatics is a theory that explains the communicative behaviour and cognition of human language.It assumes that language use is an ongoing process of dynamic language selection,and the use of language needs to adapt to the relevant context.Based on Verschueren's adaptation theory,this paper collects euphemisms used in the TV series Desperate Housewives as research materials,explores how euphemisms in communicative language play various contextual factors,and concludes that English euphemism is the act of language selection in the process of communication.It can adapt to various factors in the communicative context composed of the physical world,the social world and the mental world.