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hese scholars’ studies are mainly focus on or restricted in three areas: dictionary compiling, rhetoric, and semantics. However, those linguists concerned with the details of language structure pay little attention to the context in which speech is embedded or to the conditions which the socio-cultural factors use. There will lacks systematic and contrastive analysis with theoretical support. The brief review of euphemism, especially death euphemism, is that since death euphemism is a socio-cultural language phenomenon, the study of death euphemism should consider its cultural context. B. Definition of Euphemism Hugh Rawson (1981) says: “Euphemism is society’s basic lingua franca (通用交际语). As such, they are outward and visible signs of our inward anxieties, conflicts, fears and shames. They are like radioactive isotopes (放射性同位素). By tracing them, it is possible to see what has been and is going on in our language, our mind, our culture.” According to Allan and Burridge(1991), the definition of euphemism is: A euphemism is used as an alternative to a dislike expression, in order to avoid possible loss of face: either one’s own face or, through giving offence, that of the audience, or of some third party. Ⅱ. Theoretical Backgrounds and Bases This chapter mainly provides social-linguistic theories concerning the context of culture that serves as the theoretical bases in death euphemism. And, Florence Kluckhohn’s Five Orientation for the contrastive analysis of cultural patterns illustrated. A. Context of Culture According to Malinowski (1923), context can be distinguished into three types: context of utterance, context of situation and context of culture. The context of utterance here is similar to the linguistic context that later scholars argue, which refers to the words and sentences in which a particular words or sentences embeds. Malinowski further argues that the concept of context has to be broadened and that the situation in which words are uttered can never be passed as irrelevant to the linguistic expression. Therefore, he put forth the term “context of situation to refer to the wider idea of context or the general conditions under which a language is spoken.” And the context of culture, Malinowski observes that it is the reality of the culture, the life and the customs of a person in which language is essentially rooted. To sum up, Malinowski find that to understand the meaning of what is said, we should not only consider the particular context of utterances, but also take into account the culture characteristic of the society. Later, J.R.Forth maps the notions of context of situation into a general theory of levels of language. Forth makes very little use of context of culture. The notion of culture as a context for a language is more fully articulated in the work of his contemporaries Sapir and Whorf.Sapir does not adopt the expression of context of culture, but he does interpret the language as expressing the mental life of its speakers. Both of Sapir and Whorf.Sapir developed their powerful view called “Sapir-Whorf hypothesis” which the culture provides the context within words are interpreted. This thesis also adopt the context of the theories of famous linguists at home, 冯广艺(1997) has the following classification of context.Sanskrit “virvana” (death) was translated into Chinese “涅磐”(niepan) (lit. the state of being awake) and “圆寂”(yuanji) indicate that death is the best choice for him as he practices Buddhism