摘 要
委婉语(euphemism)这个词来自于希腊语，前缀eu是良好的，美好的或者听上去好的意思，pheme是讲话的意思。因此整个词的意思就是适当的讲话。做为英语词汇中不可分割的一部分，委婉语一直引起人们的关注和语言学家的研究。
在过去的几十年里，许多学者从不同的角度对委婉语做了多方面的研究，成果斐然。但之前的研究还局限在修辞和社会语言学的层面，对于委婉语的研究还主要停留在委婉语这一语言现象本身，对于说话者使用委婉语的目的并没有给予应有的关注。人们很少不含目的地进行语言交流。而为了达到交际目的，人们通常会采取一些语言手段和策略，委婉语的使用就是这其中之一，因此从语用学的角度研究委婉语就显得非常必要。
因此，本文将从语用学的角度对委婉语进行分析，提出当人们在交流过程中有时刻意使用委婉语，实际是对于“合作原则”的违背，从而达到“使对方感受到你的友善”的目的。委婉语的使用就是对于“合作原则”的违背和对“礼貌原则”的维护。为了验证这一假设，作者将先分析语用学中可以被用来分析委婉语的语用原则，然后再通过对实例进行具体分析，实例将按照Neaman & Silver对于委婉语的11种分类分别进行分析。
关键词：委婉语；语用学；合作原则；礼貌原则；Neaman & Silver
ABSTRACT
The word “Euphemism” originated from Greek. With the prefix “eu” meaning fine, favorable or nicely-sounded, and “pheme” meaning speech, the word as a whole conveys the meaning of proper or felicitous speech. As an indispensable part of English vocabulary, euphemism has received an incessant attention from people and constant study from linguists.
During the last few decades, many scholars have made various studies of euphemism from different aspects, which were so brilliant that they are still cherished these days. However there still exist some limitations in terms of completeness and depth of the studies. The previous studies are confined to the level of rhetoric and sociolinguistics. The linguistic phenomenon of euphemism itself is focused on, whereas the motives of the speaker’s using euphemism is to some extent neglected. People seldom make language communication without specific purposes. In order to achieve their purposes, they usually adopt some linguistic means and methods, which are inclusive of euphemisms. Therefore, it’s real need for us to study euphemism from the perspective of pragmatics.
Therefore, this thesis tries to analyze euphemism from the pragmatic perspective and propose a hypothesis that when people use a euphemistic expression in communication, they choose not to cooperate, for they want to show their politeness to other person. They tend to use euphemism is to violate the cooperative principle and maintain the politeness principle. In order to verify this hypothesis, the author first discusses the pragmatic principles that can be used to analyze the euphemism and then offer a pragmatic analysis of euphemistic examples which are labeled according to Neaman & Silver’s classification.
Keywords：euphemism; pragmatics; cooperative principle; politeness principle; Neaman & Silver
Contents
1. Introduction 1
2. Literature review on euphemism 3
2.1 Definition and classification of euphemism 3
2.1.1 Definition of euphemism 3
2.1.2 Classification of euphemism 4
2.2 General review of the study on euphemism 5
2.3 Pragmatic study on euphemism 6
3. Pragmatic analysis of euphemism 8
3.1 The cooperative principle and euphemism 9
3.1.1 The violation of the maxim of quality 10
3.1.2 The violation of the maxim of quantity 11
3.1.3 The violation of the maxim of relevance 12
3.1.4 The violation of the maxim of manner 12
3.2 The politeness principle and euphemism 13
3.2.1 Face theory 13
3.2.2 The politeness principle 14
4. Pragmatic analysis of euphemism on the basis of Neaman & Silver’s eleven categories 17
4.1 Parts of the body: forbidden territory 17
4.2 Parts of the body: neutral territory 18
4.3 Blood, sweet & tears: secretion, excretion & bathrooms 18
4.4 The seven deadly sins & sundry peccadilloes 19
4.5 Sickness: fear & trembling 19
4.6 Death 20
4.7 Crime & punishment 20
4.8 Sex: amateur & professional 21
4.9 Placement & outplacement: the word of work 21
4.10 The language of government: bureaucratese and urbababble 22
4.11 The game of war: the players, the props, the strategies 22
5. Conclusion 24
Acknowledgements 25
References 26
