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According to Verschueren, the language use is a dynamic process in which linguistic choices are made continuously based on contextual correlates, especially the communicative context including the mental world, the physical world and the social world. He harbors the idea that there are four properties for language. Verschueren’s Linguistic Adaptation Theory provides a more scientific and practical perspective for the research of euphemism.
On the basis of Verschueren’s Linguistic Adaptation Theory, this paper is intended to make a profound analysis on how the choice-making of English euphemism dynamically adapts to communicative context through detailed case study selected from the popular American TV sitcom Modern Family. The major intentions of this paper are to obtain a more thorough comprehension on euphemism, to demonstrate the dynamics of adaptability in the process of uttering and interpreting euphemistic expressions and to give people some insight as to how to apply English euphemism to intercultural communication and teaching English as a foreign language.
This paper is made up of five sections. The first part is a general introduction of euphemism and the second one is about the previous study of euphemism. Part three introduces Verschueren’s Linguistic Adaptation Theory which lays a theoretical foundation for the profound exploration and detailed analysis on English euphemism in this paper. Part four probes into the dynamic process in which the choice-making of English euphemism adapts to communicative context on the basis of Adaptation Theory with a large number of examples selected from the American TV sitcom Modern Family. The last part is the conclusion of this paper.
2. Literature Review
Euphemism is seen as the important means of communication, which is employed to improve interpersonal relationship or even international relation.
Euphemism has drawn the attention from lots of scholars in Western countries and China. Great achievements have been made by many linguists on euphemisms from different perspectives including its definition, classification and pragmatic functions. The following part will present the main points of the studies of euphemism.
As was mentioned above, the studies of euphemism in western countries include all the basic research subjects: the definition, classification and features. However, some restrictions of traditional studies are broken by some scholars who also extend its scope of study to the sociolinguistics and pragmatics, which is significant to Chinese scholars.
Western scholars have paid much attention to euphemism. George Blunt, a British writer, was the first one to create the term “euphemism” and defined it in the 1580s. After that, many other influential scholars such as Menken, Hugh Rawson, etc, changed their attention to the study of euphemism.
Menken, an American linguist, has contributed a lot to the study of euphemism for later researches, exploring the reasons why thousands of euphemisms came into being and became popular based on the historical and cultural background of American society In The American Language in 1936.
The year of 1981 saw a comprehensive and important study of euphemism. Hugh Rowson, a British linguist, complied A Dictionary of Euphemisms and Other Doubletalk, in the induction of this dictionary, not only was the study history of euphemism reviewed but also its definition, classification, features were discussed in detail.
Influenced by western scholars, Chinese scholars averted their attention to it in the 20th century, with Chen Wangdao as the pioneer. He defined euphemism and discussed euphemism from rhetoric point, proposing that euphemism was formed not only in lexical words but also in sentences and paragraphs. Under his influence, other Chinese scholars like Guo Xiumei(1985), Xu Peng(1996) regarded euphemism as a figure of speech, which ignored the motivation of the applications of euphemism.来!自~751论-文|网www.751com.cn