As an indispensable and natural part of language, English and Chinese euphemisms have drawn much attention from scholars at home and abroad。 English and Chinese euphemisms have played a great role in people’s communication since they came into existence。 The communication without euphemisms is unimaginable。 Euphemisms are used like emollient, which makes the communication go on smoothly。
In conclusion, the paper points out that euphemisms are not only a linguistic and cultural phenomenon, but also a rhetoric and communicative strategy。 Since euphemisms are widely used in both speech and writing, we should make a thorough study of them to overcome the obstacle of inaccurate employment of euphemisms。
This thesis is composed of four parts。 Part One introduces the Euphemisms used frequently in communication activities and presents the reasons why the euphemisms are used widely and has played a great role in communication。 Part Two mainly states the literature review for the purpose of recalling what has been done in the field of English and Chinese euphemism research。 Part Three, when it comes to culture and communication skill, shows cultural phenomena about euphemisms and analyzes the principles in making use of euphemisms。 Part Four mainly discusses the translation of English and Chinese Euphemisms, and the differences and the strategies of English and Chinese euphemisms were also studied。论文网
2。 Literature Review
The word "euphemism" was derived from the Greek word “euphemismos”, which means "good", "speech" or "saying", consequently it literally means "to speak with good
words or else in a pleasant manner"。 Euphemizing is generally defined as substituting an inoffensive or pleasant term for a more explicit, offensive one, thereby veneering the truth by using kind words(Neaman,1991:11)。 An euphemism, a special expression, has been defined differently in different books and dictionaries。