Analysis of Euphemism from the Perspective of Cooperative Principle and Politeness Principle
Analysis of Euphemism from the Perspective of Cooperative Principle and Politeness Principle
[Abstract]: Euphemism plays an important role in our daily interaction with others. Appropriate use of euphemism guarantees smooth communication between speakers. Likewise, the Cooperative Principle and the Politeness Principle also ensure efficient and successful communication among people. However, it is notable that the actual use of euphemisms violates the Cooperative Principle while observing the Politeness Principle to some extent. This essay provides a general view of the two pragmatic principles as well as euphemisms, and tries to work out the relations among them by specific analysis of conversational examples.
[Key Words]: Euphemism; Cooperative Principle; Politeness Principle
1. Introduction: Paul Grice proposed the Cooperative Principle to demonstrate a series of maxims one has to observe to achieve efficient communication. Generally speaking, the principle requires speaking sincerely, relevantly and clearly, while at the same time providing sufficient information when conversing with others. In real life, however, a person at some time or other tends to violate the above principle. For instance, an official will possibly talk about some other unrelated issue when he is challenged a question in an interview to avoid his embarrassment. In order to maintain desirable social relationships, human beings prefer more indirect expressions or rather choose more euphemistic expressions. A euphemism is a word or phrase that is harmless or sounds pleasing which replaces a direct, rude utterance. In the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, “euphemism” is defined as “an example of the use of pleasant, mild, or indirect phrases in place of more accurate or direct ones”. In English, for example, “pass away”, “breathe one’s last”, “decease” are euphemistic alternatives for “death”. Why, then, do people bother to use these indirect expressions during communication? Leech
[Abstract]: Euphemism plays an important role in our daily interaction with others. Appropriate use of euphemism guarantees smooth communication between speakers. Likewise, the Cooperative Principle and the Politeness Principle also ensure efficient and successful communication among people. However, it is notable that the actual use of euphemisms violates the Cooperative Principle while observing the Politeness Principle to some extent. This essay provides a general view of the two pragmatic principles as well as euphemisms, and tries to work out the relations among them by specific analysis of conversational examples.
[Key Words]: Euphemism; Cooperative Principle; Politeness Principle
1. Introduction: Paul Grice proposed the Cooperative Principle to demonstrate a series of maxims one has to observe to achieve efficient communication. Generally speaking, the principle requires speaking sincerely, relevantly and clearly, while at the same time providing sufficient information when conversing with others. In real life, however, a person at some time or other tends to violate the above principle. For instance, an official will possibly talk about some other unrelated issue when he is challenged a question in an interview to avoid his embarrassment. In order to maintain desirable social relationships, human beings prefer more indirect expressions or rather choose more euphemistic expressions. A euphemism is a word or phrase that is harmless or sounds pleasing which replaces a direct, rude utterance. In the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, “euphemism” is defined as “an example of the use of pleasant, mild, or indirect phrases in place of more accurate or direct ones”. In English, for example, “pass away”, “breathe one’s last”, “decease” are euphemistic alternatives for “death”. Why, then, do people bother to use these indirect expressions during communication? Leech
Bibliography: [1]Geoffrey Leech, Principle of Pragmatics [M]. Longman, London and New York, 1983 [2] Grice, H. Paul: Logic and conversation. In Syntax and Semantics 3: Speech Acts. Peter Cole and Jerry L. Morgan (eds.), New York: Academic Press, 1975: 41- 58. [3] Hugh Rawson, 1981, A Dictionary of Euphemisms and other Doubletalk, Grown Publishers, Inc. [4]戴炜栋；何兆熊，2010，A New Concise Course in Linguistics for Students of English，上海外语教育出版社 [5] A. S. Hornby, 2000, Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary of Current English (Sixth edition), Oxford University Press