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4.2 Metonymy Motivation of Euphemism Formation in Semantic Level 11
4.3 Metonymy Motivation of Euphemism on Grammatical Level 15
4.3.1 Tense Metonymy 15
4.3.2 Affirmative And Negative 16
4.3.3 Elliptical Sentences 17
Chapter Five Conclusion 18
References 18
On Metonymy Motivation of English Euphemism
Chapter One Introduction
1.1 Research Background
Euphemism is a language phenomenon widely existing in human society. According to Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, A euphemism is the use of a less direct, pleasanter name for something thought to be unpleasant.
In communication process, when it comes to words or expressions raise psychological fear, anxiety, sadness or other emotions or they are offensive to others, people often try to avoid direct reference, but use some vague, pleasant expressions to represent them, so that the communication is smooth. This phenomenon is the euphemistic language expressions. The expression of euphemism is economical and indirect in communication. For language speakers, the expressions of euphemism can reduce the negative effect and diminishes the negative interpersonal load, thus help them to establish good social relation with others.
Based on the relative aspects of euphemism, it can be defined as the following:
“Euphemism is the non-direct expressions or utterances for the things which bring the information organizer and interpreter pains such as reverence, fear, shame, discomfort, etc. and which is formed by using phonetic, semantic and grammatical methods.”
As the American scholar (Hugh Rawson) said, euphemisms are so deeply embedded in our language, that no one among us, even those who self-proclaimed speaking straightly cannot live for a whole day without euphemisms. Enright (1985) said: “If there is no euphemism, the world will stop running due to the friction, and the world will be filled with hatred.” And that was not exaggeration.
Therefore, the formation and development of Euphemism has attracted linguistics’ interest home and abroad. Traditional research on euphemism emphasizes the pragmatic or socio-cultural interpretation, but pays little attention to the inner factors, such as people’s cognitive activities and life experience. Under the influence of the emerging discipline of contemporary cognitive linguistics, scholars began to pay attention to research on euphemisms from the cognitive perspective, such as Shao junhang and Fan weiwei (2004). Many efforts have been made on English euphemism, and the result of this thesis hopes to provide further understanding of metonymy motivation of euphemism formation. And help Teaching English as Foreign Language teachers and translators a better way to understand euphemism cross culture.
1.2 Research Objectives
Since euphemism is so important in language use, it deserves to be researched from different aspects. This article is going to investigate the generating mechanism of English euphemism under the guidance of cognitive theories. Through analysing the relation between euphemisms and things they refer to, we can see by whatever means the euphemism is formed, metonymy is an important bridge to connect the euphemism and the source domain. The conclusion of this paper can help us know how the cognitive mechanism works in euphemism formation and how we understand euphemism with the metonymy.
1.3 Organization of The Thesis
This thesis is pided into five organized parts and each presented things as follows:
The first part gives general introduction of the whole article. It has three parts which are research background, research objectives and organization of the thesis.
The second part is literature review of researches which have been done on euphemism. It contains two parts. They are researches home and aboard, and studies on euphemism from aspect of metonymy.