英语专业毕业论文 A Comparative Study of “Death Euphemism between Chinese and English A Comparative Study of “Death Euphemism between Chinese and English 1 Introduction Death is the most terrible event to most human beings, which means the end of existence. As a consequence, it is a forbidden area in almost every culture. However, people must face it no matter whether they like it or not. To avoid mentioning directly the word death, which probably will arouse unhappy feeling and frighten people, lots of euphemisms are created to substitute for it. This thesis uses death euphemism to stand for this category of euphemism for convenience. John Gross Enright, 1985:203 concluded, Death, we are frequently told, has replaced sex as the great forbidden subject. Some death euphemisms express commendatory meaning, such as to be in heaven, to be with God; some neutral, such as to go, to decease; still some derogatory, such as to crock, to kick the bucket. People are reluctant to accept the fact that the dead persons have left this world forever, and they employ various strategies to achieve their goal. Death is just like a rest or some other forms of non-consciousness, so the dead just close their eyes and fall asleep; death is a journey or a leaving from life to some specified or unspecified places, so the dead pass away and go to a better place or even are in the arms of Jesus; death is an imperative invitation from the authorities in the afterlife, so the dead receive the final summons and have to answer the call; death is a loss for those who know the dead, so the dead are no longer with us and are sadly missed; death is also an end, so the dead breathe their last and are no more. Chinese death euphemisms are more complicated due to the deep cultural connotations, for instance, death euphemisms can indicate not only peoples attitude towards the dead, but also the identities of the dead. Euphemism, for a long time, has been discussed by scholars as Fromkin 1988, Rawson 1981, Leech 1985,张拱贵1996 etc. in their respective fields of research. Their study has been mainly restricted in three areas: dictionary compiling, rhetoric, and semantics, among which, dictionary compiling accounts for the largest proportion. The major concern of scholars as Rawson 1981,Neaman&Silver 1983, Ayto 1993,刘纯豹1990 and张拱贵1996 is to collect and categorize euphemisms for dictionaries or thesauruses. This lexicographical approach mainly deals with the meaning, etymology of each euphemism and its relation to other terms, paying little attention to the socio-cultural aspect of euphemisms. The rhetoric view treats euphemism only as a figure of speech, revealing in detail the formation, classification of euphemisms. While the semantic view regards euphemizing as an “associative engineering, that is, replacing a word having offensive connotation with another expression, which makes no overt reference to the unpleasant side of the subject, and may even be a positive misnomerLeech, 1985:45. This approach explores the origin and formation of euphemisms in terms of their semantic features. Most of the studies on death euphemisms also concentrate on the above-mentioned ways of analysis. However, those linguists concerned with the details of language structure pay little or no attention to the context in which speech is embedded or to the socio-cultural factors, which condition its use. There are some scholars as吴慧坚1994,李思国1999, to mention just a few, who all relate the study of death euphemism to its cultural context. However, there still lacks systematic and contrastive analysis with theoretical support. Psychological, religious, or conventional factors trigger the increase of death euphemisms in number and frequency, but researches on death euphemism in cross-cultural communication are not systematic compared with its wide application. The authors point in this brief review of euphemism, especially death euphemism, is that since death euphemism is a socio-cultural language phenomenon, the study of death euphemism should consider its cultural context 2 Definition Euphemism is a common and long-standing linguistic and cultural phenomenon in both western communities and China. The English word euphemism comes from the Greek eu, meaning well or sounding good, and pheme, meaning speech or saying that is, speaking with good words or in a pleasant manner. According to Allan and Burridge1991:11,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 ones own face or, through giving offence, that of the audience, or of some third party. English euphemism can date back to the Norman Conquest in 1066. Considering Anglo-Saxon words vulgar and obscene, Normans and the native upper English circles borrowed elegant Latin words to substitute them. Gradually these Latin wor