Social Fuctions of Euphemisms

1 Introduction Since the 1970s, one of the biggest changes in modern English has been the return of euphemism. The English word "euphemism ' ' originated from the Greek word "euphemismos", which means "fair or good speech". The prefix "eu" means "good, sounds well good" and the root ' 'pheme ' ' means ' 'saying or speech ' '. And thus the literal meaning of ' 'euphemism ' ' is ' 'good speech ' ' or ' 'saying something that sounds well good” (Liu Chunbao, 2001). (This is ungrammatical. It should be “sounds good”. If Liu actually said this, I would use another quote or paraphrase what he said.) In primitive society, people could not explain disease and many other natural phenomena, so they revered and worshipped the power of nature, which was the origin of religion and euphemism. Originally, in the fetes of the ancient Greeks, people always used words of good omen to avoid diseases and calamities. Ancient Greek culture spread through Europe, naturally later was introduced into England. But others say that the Written records of English euphemism earliestly??? first appeared in the Old English Period. Actually, from the perspective of human history, in all kinds of languages, even at the oral stage before the appearance of written language, English euphemism has already arisen (2001). English euphemism is based on appeared for two reasons. One, the euphemism took the aims to take place of a ' 'taboo” word. When giving up a taboo word, people will find another new one to take its place of it, thus creating a euphemism. Two, the new euphemism avoids offensiveness during the communication (Ma Yiyun, 2005). It is a figure of rhetoric by which an unpleasant or offensive thing is described or referred to by a milder term. Of course, as the changes of time and the development of society, besides the religious reasons, etiquette, feelings of likes and dislikes, pursuit of elegance, demand of communication, and so on, also greatly affected or changed

References: Channell, Joanna. 2000. Vague Language [M]. 上海：上海外语教育出版社。 Neaman, J Rawson, Hugh. 1981. Dictionary of Euphemisms and Other Doubletalk [M]. New York: Crown Publisher.