The features of English Euphemism 英语毕业论文.doc

The features of English Euphemism 姓名：学号：专业：英语教育 班级： 教师：Abstract: Currently, it is known that euphemism plays an important role in people’s social communication and exists in almost every culture and society. The aim of this paper is to help the language learner to understand euphemism better, Thought analyzed the features of English Euphemism, we know many words make people embarrassed and unhappy. In order to avoid the offensiveness and misunderstandings, people usually use euphemism to replace with the unpleasant and rude words in communication. Key words: English，Euphemism，Definition ，Feature One of the most important ways for our human beings to communicate with others is language. Language is an important means for people to maintain their social relationship. However, there are many things which are supposed to be unspeakable. Many words also make people embarrassed and unhappy. So, in order to avoid the offensiveness and misunderstandings, people usually use the indirect or pleasant expressions to replace with those unpleasant and rude words in communication. We call that euphemism. Euphemism plays an important role in people’s social communication and exists in almost every culture and society. 1. The Definition of Euphemism Euphemism is a common linguistic phenomenon in all cultures, it takes an very important role in people’s daily communication. Euphemism is originated from the Greek. It is prefix “eu” means good, pleasant, and its root “pheme” means speech. Thus, euphemism literally means “to speak with good words or in a pleasant manner” (Silver 1990). According to Allan and Burridge (Burridge 1991), the definition of euphemism is: A euphemism is used as an alternative to a dispreferred expression, in order to avoid possible loss of face: either one’s own face or through going offense, that of the audience, or of some third party. Many people have defined euphemism. There are some definitions of euphemism below: (1) mild or vague exp