Abstract Euphemism is a kind of language strategy which is generally existed in human society for the achievement of the excepted communicated effects. By means of euphemism, people can understand the languages, thoughts and cultures from different countries easily. The hit TV series Desperate Housewives described the middle-class life in America. There are a large number of euphemisms in this TV series. This thesis selected the lines in Desperate Housewives as the object of study, and analyzed the use of euphemism among the characters. Meanwhile, this thesis also find out the usage of euphemism is closed related with personal factors, cultural background and social influence of the characters.69650

Keywords: Euphemism; Desperate Housewives; lines

摘要委婉语是人类社会中普遍存在的,为了达到预期交际效果而采用的一种语言策略。 通过委婉语,人们可以了解不同国家的语言﹑思想以及文化。《绝望的主妇》是美国热播 的一部肥皂剧,以描写美国中产阶级的生活为主要内容，剧中出现大量委婉语。文章选取

《绝望主妇》的台词为主要研究对象,分析人物使用委婉语的情况和习惯。同时，文章还 发现委婉语的使用与个人性格﹑文化背景﹑社会背景等因素相关。

毕业论文关键词: 委婉语；《绝望主妇》；台词

Contents

1. Introduction 1

2. Literature Review 2

3. An Analysis of Euphemism in Desperate Housewives 4

3.1 Age 4

3.2 Death 5

3.3 Weight 6

3.4 Sex 8

4. Reasons for Characters’ Preference for Euphemism 9

4.1 Personal factors 9

4.2 Cultural background 12

4.3 Social influence 14

5. Conclusion 15

Works Cited 17

1. Introduction

Euphemism is a very common linguistic phenomenon and it is widely used in the world. “Euphemism”, derived from Greek“eu”and “pheme”, means using good words or a pleasant manner to speak. Euphemisms exist everywhere in people’s life; a fair number of words are labeled as frivolous, vulgar. For better maintaining relationship, people tend to resort to a kind of language, which can make distasteful ideas seem acceptable. The thesis uses lines of TV series Desperate Housewives to analyze euphemism and why it takes place. This series is mainly talking about the daily life of the four housewives. The tone of the series is full of euphemisms. The conversation of ordinary people is very suitable and more vivid. For this reason, I choose this series as my case study. All examples quoted will be analyzed to find the features of euphemisms.

Many researches have been done on euphemism because of its prominence in language and culture. A lot of great works was made during the study of euphemism, which lay a foundation for further study. In 1985, Enright (Enright 29) published a series of books on euphemism, which studies the relation between euphemism and sex, the media etc. In China, Chen Wangdao (Chen 139) defined euphemism as a figure of speech in which roundabout and implicit words used to substitute direct expressions to hint the meaning. But in daily communication, people are often committed a lot of errors in the communication progress, when mentioned something impolite, they are seeking another words to replace. People tend to use some euphemisms in case of offensive topics. So this thesis aims to make the study on daily euphemism in hopes of digging out the meaning of some euphemism words and expects that the result will be beneficial for people in daily communication