Abstract: The euphemism is extensively and frequently used in social life. It is a kind of language phenomenon, and a kind of social linguistics phenomenon even more. In communication, if we use euphemism, we can avoid speaking over frankly and causing the injury to the other side. Nothing but studying on euphemism, especially the comparatively extensive usage in English. We could understand it more accurately , and aptly use it. It is extremely essential to learn the usage of euphemism ,because it will help us to study English and know about the western culture.
Key words: euphemism. Classification. Linguistic context. Usage
Euphemism is a kind of general phenomenon of language that exists in human language usage course. It is the courteous statements when people talk about those unhappy or awkward things . It is a kind of rhetorics of speech, and a kind of culture phenomenon even more. Euphemism is extensively and frequently used in English ,so, it is extremely essential to learn the usage of euphemism , it will help us to study English and know about the western culture. And it is frequently used in social life ,no matter in life or in politics. They are the lubrication in people communication. Mostly, euphemism is used to make the conversation more pleasant and implicit in a certain specific occasion, and in the excited or sensitive cases, make people acceptant .The word ‘euphemism’ is stem from Greek. The meaning of prefix " eu- " is " good "and the stem " phemism " means “speech”. The whole literal meaning is " word of good omen ". And, the phrase is used in place of a more disagreeable or offensive term. When a phrase becomes a euphemism, its literal meaning is often pushed aside. Euphemisms are used to hide unpleasant ideas, even when the term for them is not necessarily offensive. And this latter kind of euphemism is used in the fields of public relations and politics, where it is known as doublespeak. Generally speaking, we usually use implicit, circuitous or beautiful words which express the taboo or the sensitive things, which is euphemism. In Chinese, the euphemism called the “enigmatic language”(隐语)。
1. Classify and word-building of euphemism in Chinese and English:
1) The Chinese and English euphemism is usually divided into two kinds:
(1) traditional euphemisms---- it refers to the taboo language. For example the disease, death, bury, sex, naked, draw or other taboo things. If express directly, that is a taboo language .In that case, we often feel the conversation is vulgar stiff and impolite. On the contrary, If express indirectly ,that is euphemism, the feeling often is refined, implicit and courteous. The word death is resented most by people. No matter in which kind of culture, people often seek some words that don’t hurt emotion or the neutral vocabulary express it. Such as 见马克思(to meet Marx s) ,老了(old ),常眠了(to sleep often),升天了(to be in Heaven)走了(to be gone) etc. of Chinese, and there have a lot of corresponding expressing languages too in English, to go，to go West，to pass away，to be gone，to be at rest，to be in Heaven，to fall asleep，to breathe one's last，to be in Abraham's bosom，to go to see Confucius，to have the curse，to shake the dew off the lily .for example:
a. He worked until he breathed his last．
b. The child is now in Abraham's bosom．
(2) stylistic euphemisms----it refers to the words of the compliments, have no relation with the taboo language. When Britain and American(especially contemporary Americans) are in the communication, in order to show courteously and avoid stimulating or strive for cooperation, they often adopt the tactics of praising decorations, match in order to put in a good word to some unhappy things. Such as call the singer or dancer "culture worker"，call "migrant worker" "seasonal employee", call "priest" "religious worker". Euphemisms can eventually become taboo words themselves through a process for which the linguist Steven Pinker has coined the term euphemism treadmill, which is comparable to Gresham 's Law in economics. In this process, over the course of time, a word that was originally adopted as a euphemism acquires all the negative connotations of its referent, and has to be replaced by a substitute. In extreme cases, the process can happen many times, and indeed may still be happening. For example, "Toilet room", itself a euphemism, was replaced with "bathroom" and "water closet", which were replaced (respectively) with "rest room" and "W.C.". "Funeral director" replaced "mortician", which replaced "undertaker", which replaced "gravedigger".
There is some disagreement over whether certain terms are or are not euphemisms. For example, sometimes the phrase visually impaired is labeled as a politically correct euphemism for blind. However, visual impairment can be a broader term, including for example people who have partial sight in one eye, a group that would be excluded by the word blind. There are two rough opposites of euphemism, dysphemism and cacophemism. The latter is generally used more often in the sense of something deliberately offensive, while the former can be either offensive or merely humorously deprecating. There is necessarily a lot of subjectivity involved, because connotations easily change over time. Idiot was once a neutral term, and moron a euphemism for it. Negative senses of a word tend to crowd out neutral ones, so the word retarded was pressed into service to replace moron. Now that too is considered rude, and a result, new terms like mentally challenged, special are starting to replace retarded. In a few decades, calling someone `special' may well be a grave insult. A similar progression has occurred with reek -> stink -> smell -> odor -> fragrance and crippled -> handicapped -> disabled.
Examples include:
bathroom for toilet room
same-sex for homosexual, itself a euphemism
2)The word-building of euphemism in English
There are various methods in English euphemism word-building. Generally it be divided into several kinds below: Word-building means, spell the means, the means of the vocabulary , grammatical devices and rhetorical devices etc.
(1) acronym: refers to put the taboo words or the sensitive words’ fist letter together. e.g. BM(bowel movement, the Big C (cancer)
(2) clipping: refer to just use some parts of the words. e.g. gents(Gentlement's Room) lav (lavatory)
(3) punctuation: use the punctuation mark to instead letters. e.g. d--（damn） son of a -- (son of a bitch)
(4) borrowing: Generally speaking, some people(especially the intellectual and student ) think the Angle-Sa words are too informal to used in the formal occasion. So they use the words from Greek or France. e.g. lingerie( underwear)
(5) metaphorical transfer: According to the characteristic of the taboo thing, depict it as things that can accept with the same characteristic. e.g. go to sleep forever(die)
(6) metonymical transfer: refers to use the whole to replace the part. e.g. chest（breast）
(7) reinterpretation of initials: Intend to make other things to explain to the first letter word, and it is often a little humour. E.g. hot and cold （heroin and cocaine）
(8) negation: Go and express unhappy things those from opposite side, result can make listener a bit more mild and indirectly . e.g. unwise（foolish）
And many euphemisms fall into one or more of these categories:
Foreign terms (derriere, copulation)
Abbreviations (SOB for "son of a bitch")
Abstractions (it, the situation, go)
Indirections (behind, unmentionables)
Longer words (perspire, urinate)
Mispronunciation (goldarnit, freakin)
These methods , have run through two principles on the whole: First, partly accepting and partly rejecting principle; Second, make listener pleasant to listen.
2. Chinese and English euphemism in different linguistic context . application and culture atmosphere.
1) In the literary works
The literary works is a mirror of the social life. Often, there are interesting and good euphemism usages in.
Euphemism in literary works Chinese English Detials
内人 妻子 Wife
良人 丈夫 Husband ‘良’(better half)
巴黎 艺术和文化中心 The central of art and culture ‘悲惨世界’(雨果)
拙荆 妻子(丈夫称自己的妻子) Wife
Let’s take ‘良人’for example, the word ‘lebonhomme’(French) is similar to ‘良’ (Chinese). In English, it means ‘better half’. So the literal translation of ‘良人’ is ‘the better half spouse than me’ .It’s euphemism. In the past, we called wife ‘内助’ in China. Why we called that? Because in the past , male usually went out earning money ,and then the female did the housework in .In the old time, ‘内助’used to call own wife.It is modesty. Usually, we called friend’s wife ‘贤内助’, ‘贤’ means virtuous in Chinese. It shows the respect and euphemism. In modern ,we called other’s wife ‘夫人’. There ‘夫人’ is also a kind of euphemism.
2) In social life and economic field
The euphemism is extensivly and frequently used in social life. If we ignore the usage of euphemism ,we will be laugh at. There is a story: One day, a American boy said to his Chinese friend that he wanted to wash his hand. The Chinese girl answered that she’d like go along with him. The American boy puzzled. Obviously, there’s ‘wash ones hand’ means ‘go to the toilet’, not really wash his hand. And there are other similar usage of ‘toilet’ ,such as: bathroom，ladies'，Gents'，lavatory，power room，comfort room，the smallest room etc. We often use ‘slender’ to describe a very skinny woman, and use ‘plump’ or ‘over-weight’ to instead ‘fat’. And say somebody go to prison use ‘go to the big house’. When someone’s appearance is bad, we usually use ‘no pretty’ or ‘plain’, not ‘ugly’. E.g.：His girl-friend is not pretty．And in the social life ,when we mention the sensitive topic of the race, people usually try their best to avoid hurting other’s ethnic emotions , and the effectual method is to use the euphemism .Because the word ‘race’ often has some passive feeling, it is replaced by some euphemistic word. For example, Multi-cultural has replaced multi-racial; Civil disturbances has replaced race riots. The black is the first major ethnic minority of U.S.A., suffer to hundreds of people's oppression and discrimination in history. If we use negro, nigger, black, colored, person of color, it may hurt their feeling. Some people use welfare replace black, and the most euphemistic is called them African-American.
In china, the people do not mind mentioning the word ‘old’. Especially the old men, they often get together to talk about who is the oldest one. But it is quite different in the West. They have not the word means ‘old people’. They just use senior citizen or the longer-lived instead .And the mature golden age often go to the evergreen clubs. The reason is Chinese society advocate old, think old man to be experienced, and symbol of intelligence. On the contrary, once western social people become old, mean being evicted from the mainstream society, and it is useless to the society. So, in West, they called the ‘retired people’ ‘pensioners’, called ‘crippled（disabled）man’ ‘special man’. E.g. : （1）Senior citizens are respected in our country．
（2）There are several pensioners in my school．
（3）These special men support their family by themselves．
In the economic field, there are some examples :have the low availability factor(商品匮乏),downgrade economic readjustment ／upward price readjustment(,商品降价／涨价),used car(旧车), and sanitary engineer refers to the garbage collector（清洁工）.And in Chinese, when we say that somebody has “经济问题”( the economic problem) refers to corruption.
3)In educational life
The euphemism is also used in educational life. Such as ‘Underachievers’ refers to Students without the achievement in study. They are ‘exceptional students ’, students with bad achievement are ‘a below average student’ or ‘ working on his own level’, ‘can do better with help’ means obtuse students. Student have a class is called ‘have classroom learning experience’, and when students cheat in the examination cheat, we often called ‘to depend on others to do his ／her work’.
（1）He has difficulty distinguishing between imaginary and factual information．（He lies）
（2）He needs help in learning to adhere to rules and standards of fair play．（He cheats）
Euphemism is a kind of language phenomenon, and a kind of socialinguistics phenomenon even more. In communication, if we use euphemism ,we can avoid speaking over frankly and causing the injury to the other side.
注：
1. Gresham’s law is stated as, ‘Where legal law exist, bad money out good money.’
2. dysphemism and cacophemism : From Greek dys- (bad) + -phemism (as in euphemism), both dysphemism and cacophemism are rough opposites of euphemism, meaning the usage of an intentionally harsh word or expression instead of a polite one.
References：
1.东北师范大学高祥,英语通大学英语四级考试版03~04学年第11期
2.《英语周报》董士平
3.马丽《英语中有关种族的委婉语》英语知识2001-9
4.英语学习网