Research On Chinese Animal Euphemism

The Chinese animal euphemism refers to the language that people use metaphors,metonymies and other means to euphemize animals out of respect,love,fear and dislike for animals when they speak or write articles.At the same time,people use metaphors and metonymies to address animals euphemistically when both sides can understand,in order to avoid the unpleasant communication.The Chinese animal euphemism originate early.With the development of history,the reasons for avoiding animals have been gradually enriched,and animal euphemism has also become more and more numerous.Its course reflects the change of people’s psychology and social culture.This paper divides Chinese animal euphemisms into euphemizing tiger,weasel,snake,crane and other animals from the point of view of euphemisms.From the perspective of semantic expression,it is divided into semantic types involving animals and semantic types not involving animals.The semantic types involving animals include their forms,habits,environments,status,names and so on,while the semantic types not involving animals include human appellation,gods,allusions and legends,etc.And this paper analyzes that Chinese animal euphemism is mainly consists of three ways: making special words,transforming the meaning of original words and quoting allusions from the form of language.From the perspective of pragmatic function,it is found that animal euphemism has four special pragmatic functions:poetry,pharmacology,zodiac,and honorific titles.Then this paper studies metaphor,metonymy and implicit metonymy interactive cognitive construction of Chinese animal euphemism from the perspective of cognitive linguistics.Combining with the theories of concept integration,image schema and family similarity,this paper elaborates each cognitive model with examples,and illustrates the cognitive process of animal euphemism clearly with the assistance of structure diagram.Finally,this paper analyzes the reasons for the generation of Chinese animal euphemism and the culture they carry from the perspectives of social culture,and analyzes the specific reasons for the generation of Chinese animal euphemisms from the perspectives of belief,system,social psychology and cultural pursuit.From the two aspects of folklore and social consciousness embodied in animal euphemism,this paper probes into the folklore of production and life,the folklore of religious belief,the consciousness of feudal ethics,the consciousness of master and slave and occupation,and the consciousness of morality.