文档介绍：Euphemisms and Taboo
2008级4班 吕佳佳
There exists a close relationship between euphemisms and taboo. Taboo can be used as a criterion to judge whether a word is euphemisms or not. Taboos and euphemisms exist in every language. They play an important part in culture. Dealing with them appropriately enables us to successfully communicate. And euphemisms and taboo plays an important role in our daily life. Therefore it is necessary for people to have a clear view of some fundamental knowledge about them.
No doubt, euphemism is a widely and frequently used figure of speech. As a hot research issue in the field of linguistics, it needs a concise and definite criterion to judge the scope of euphemism. Western linguists think the word “euphemism” comes from the Greek “eu”( meaning “good”) and “pheme”(meaning “speech” or “saying”), and thus it literally means “to speak with good words”. Later on, euphemism is defined differently and more precisely. As traditional western linguistics restricts euphemism study to the lexicon, euphemisms are, therefore, words or phrases in place of things considered to be rude or unpleasant.
In simple terms, an euphemism is just a less explicit substitute for an explicit term or phrase. It manages to conceal the offending nature of the word or phrase, but still gets the meaning across. This has led to the birth of many satirical movies, shows and books