On Euphemism in English 英语专业毕业论文.doc

On Euphemism in English Abstract: Euphemism is uaually considered as a linguistic concept and it universally exists in different languages all over the world. Better communication can be achieved for people to accurately and appropriately use the conventional euphemism in daily life,which represents the civilization of indivisulas and society. This paper elaborates on the source,the way of expression and the mayor functions of euphemism in English in hope of enabling chinese learners of English to better understand others and make ourselves better understood for the sake of language learning and social intercourse. Key words: euphemisn , origin , use , formation Foreword:Euphemism originated from Greek,euphemismps.The prefix”eu” means “good” and the root “pheme” means”speech” and the suffix “ism”refer to the results of a series of actions. So the literal meaning is “speaking well of ……” or words for good omen.A number of dictionaries defined it as that the subtitution of a mild indirect or vague expression for one thought to be offensive and blunt. It is used extensively in everyday life and make daily communication smoothly move on and protect the courtesy and dignity of speaker and relevent people. In order to perfect our communication and English learning ,we absolutely need to know how to understand and use it properly . Ⅰ.The origin common usage of euphemism Euphemism basicly come from and is used in folllowing aspects. 1.People and occupations In these two aspects , euphemisms mainly appear to beautify some titles . we say professions instead of jobs. In another word, jods sound humble but professions more professional and high-sounding. Also the high-sounding title “engineer” has been used to compound a new title which considered to be polite. For instance,we say sales engineer instead of salesman. As we all know ,when we mention blacks or Jews ,we need some euphemisms to avoid esbsrassing .Often we use colored to refer to blacks,we can say colored gentlem