Similarities and Differences Of EnglishChinese Euphemisms in Culture.docx

1、Similarities and Differences Of EnglishChinese Euphemisms in Culture英汉委婉语在文化上的异同Similarities and Differences Of English-Chinese Euphemisms in CultureContentsAbstract1Keywords.1I. Introduction.2II. Literature Review4III. Euphemism and Culture.7IV. The similarities of English-Chinese Euphemisms in Cul

2、ture71. The human body82. Disease and death 83. Sex84. Social status or grade85. Age86. Religion8V. The Differences of English-Chinese Euphemisms in Culture.91. Culture background92. Value orientations.10 3. Cultural custom.11 4. Ethics and moral concepts12VI. Conclusion.13References14Abstract: Euph

3、emisms are mild, agreeable, or roundabout words used in place of coarse, painful, or offensive ones. The term “Euphemism” comes from the Greek, of which eu meaning “well” or “sounding good”, pheme means “speech”, and the whole term literally means good or pleasant speech. As an indispensable and nat

4、ural part of language, euphemism has been arousing wide interest. Many linguists and scholars have studied this linguistic phenomenon from the perspectives of rhetoric, semantics, pragmatics and sociolinguistics. When we carry on the contrast of the similarities and differences of Chinese and Englis

5、h euphemisms, we can find that the euphemisms in these two languages are actually implanted in its own culture, which is the chief aim or purpose of this thesis, that is, to tell us the differences of euphemisms of both the English and Chinese languages in culture.Keyword: English and Chinese euphem

6、isms, orientations of culture, the similarities and differences 摘 要：委婉语是用一种不明说的、能够使人感到愉快或含糊的说法代替具有令人感到不悦的含义或不够尊敬的表达法。从辞源角度看，在英文单词euphemism中，eu 是希腊前缀，意为“好”；phemism意为“说法”，整个单词euphemism的字面意义为 “好的说法”。委婉语是语言中不可或缺的一个组成部分，引起了人们广泛的关注。许多语言学家、学者已从修辞学、语言学、语用学及社会语言学的角度对委婉语进行了广泛研究。目前，这方面的研究硕果累累。本文将借鉴其他学者的研究成果，通过

7、对比英、汉委婉语的语言及文化特征，对英、汉委婉语进行充分地对比分析。在进行委婉语映现的英、汉文化对比时，我们发现英、汉委婉语相似的“外观”实际上根植于相异的“文化内涵”, 从各自文化中的可以看出英、汉委婉语差异。关键词：英汉委婉语， 文化价值，异同之比较I. IntroductionFrom the time the word came into being, there followed, at an undetermined but one assumes decent interval, private, harsh, and dirty words. Invention here is

8、 the mother of necessity, the need for euphemism arose. Epstein (1985:56)In every society there are certain things that are not supposed to be speakable or mentioned directly. A fair number of words in English are labeled as frivolous, vulgar, or at least inconsiderate. But in the communication, in

9、order to maintain social relationships and exchange ideas, people have to resort to a kind of language form, which can make distasteful ideas seem acceptable or even desirable. This type of language is defined as “euphemism in linguistics, which is represented in a variety of forms and used for a va

10、riety of reasons. Much research has been done on euphemism because of its prominence in language since the word was coined. A lot of great works came into being during the study of euphemism, which lay a solid foundation for further research. In 1936, in his book The American Language, American ling

11、uist, Mencken, fully discussed why hundreds of euphemisms had been born and became popular on the basis of American history and social cultural background. His book has become a valuable legacy for euphemism study. In 1981, British linguist Hugh Rawson compiled A Dictionary of Euphemisms and Other D

12、ouble talks, which embodies the achievements of research on euphemisms over the decades by many British and American linguists. In its tenpagelong preface, Hugh Rawson not only traced the history of euphemism, but also widely accounted for characteristics of euphemism as well as its definition, clas

13、sification, and scope of use. The year 1983 saw the publication of Kind WordsA Thesaurus of Euphemisms, compiled by Neaman and Silver, which is of great value to euphemism study. In 1985, Enright D.J. published a collection of essays on euphemism, The Uses of Euphemism, in which some specific topics

14、 like euphemisms and the media, euphemisms and children, and euphemism and sex, etc. were put forward in relation to the different euphemistic uses in the social field. Last but not least, Allan and Burridge published the book Euphemism and Dysphemism: Language used as shield and weapon, in which an

15、 interesting perspective on the human psyche is to be gained from the study of euphemism used as a protective shield against the anger or disapproval of natural or supernatural beings. This book is of great significance to the study of English Euphemisms from the pragmatic perspective. Compared with

16、 those flourishing studies on euphemism in western countries, Chinese scholars theories on euphemism seem rare. Although the research of euphemisms in China has quite a long history and we can find the earliest recordation in The Book of Songs（诗经, scientific and systematic research had not been done

17、 in this field until several decades ago. In 1976, Chinese scholar Chen Wangdao (陈望道,1976) published the book Introduction to Rhetoric(修辞学发凡) which describes a definition of euphemism and studied euphemism from the angle of rhetoric, so the Chinese euphemism study in terms of rhetoric is not restric

18、ted to the lexicon level, but is extended to the level of sentence and discourse. During the 70s and the 80s of the 20th century, western theories of linguistics were introduced into China in succession. Inspired by the newly introduced theories, some Chinese scholars expanded the scope of euphemism

19、 study into the perspective of social functions, and one of the most famous is Chen Yuan (陈原,1983)，who published the book Sociolinguistics, which contributes a lot to the study and analysis of euphemism. In the following years, a number of Chinese scholars published many a article to air their views

20、 on euphemism from different angles, such as Yu Yalun (于亚伦，1984), Li Guonan (李国南，1989), Shu Dingfang (束定芳，1989), etc. All of these papers have widened our vision and enriched the study of euphemism.II. Literature Review Euphemism as a widely and frequently used figure of speech and a hot research is

21、sue in the field of linguistics 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,

22、 euphemism is defined differently and more precisely. Some of the definitions are listed below:1) Euphemisms is kind of figure of speech which consists in the substitution of a word or expression of comparatively favorable implication or less unpleasant associations, instead of the harsher or more o

23、ffensive one that would more precisely designate what is intended. (Oxford English Dictionary, 1989)2) Euphemism is the substitution of a mild, indirect, or vague expression for one thought substituted. (Websters Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary of the English Language, 1996) 3) Euphemizing is gen

24、erally defined as substituting an inoffensive or pleasant term for a more explicit, offensive one, thereby veneering the truth by using kind words. (Enright D.J., 1985) 4) Word, etc. used in place of one avoided as e.g. offensive, indecent, or alarming. (Oxford Concise Dictionary of Linguistics, Sha

25、nghai Foreign Languages Publishing House, 2000) 5) Used as an alternative to a dispreferred expression, in order to avoid possible loss of face: either ones own face or through giving offences, that of the audience, or of some third party. (Allen, K. and Burridge, K., 1991:18)As traditional western

26、linguistics restricts euphemism study to the lexicon, euphemisms are, therefore, words or phrases in place of things considered to be rude or unpleasant. Given from the perspective of rhetoric, all the above definitions are determined in a narrow sense. Many linguists think that the definition of eu

27、phemism needs to be framed in a broad sense, one of whom is American linguist, Bolinger Dwight. He once pointed out: “Euphemism is not restricted to the lexicon; there are grammatical ways of toning something down without actually changing the content of the message.”(1981:148) The application of eu

28、phemism (委婉语) has existed in the Chinese language for thousands of years, Which can be found in The Book of Songs(诗经). This is a book containing Chinese poems composed between the 11th. and the 6th century B.C. The Chinese euphemism “习习谷风，以阴以雨” taken from The Mountain Gales(谷风) indicates that the un

29、fortunate event is going to take place through describing cloudy weather and rain. When Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty (汉武帝, 15687 B.C.) proscribed all nonConfucian and espoused Confucianism as the state ideology and abolished other schools of thought （罢黜百家，独尊儒术）, people enjoyed rare ideological free

30、dom and had to be careful with their words and deeds or they would be punished or even executed. Because of this euphemism ( 委婉语 ) developed and flourished in Chinas feudal society.The Chinese equivalent for “euphemism” is “委婉”，“婉转”，or the most popular one “婉曲” containing “婉言” and “曲语”.“婉言” means “s

31、ubstituting an implicit expression for an explicit one”, while “曲语” implies the original meaning through describing things relevant to it. Lets compare:1) 我尝想：公文书里罢黜一个人的时候常用 “人地不宜”四字，总算是一个比较体面的下台的借口。（梁实秋骆驼祥子）2) 阿刘哑告诉，姓孙的那几个人打牌，声音太闹，给法国管事查到了，大吵其架，自己的饭碗也砸破了，等会就得卷铺盖下船。（钱钟书围城）Example 1 falls into“婉言” ,using an implicit parlance to reduce the provocation. Example 2 belongs to“曲语” in Chinese, or “periphrasis” in English respectively. So it is apparent here that “euph