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1.3 The social functions of euphemism From the origin of euphemism, we can see that the original function of euphemism is to be used in talking about taboos. In our daily life, there are some tabooed things that are believed to be dangerous to certain individuals, or to the society as a whole, or to be disgusting and unpleasant and cause fear. Such taboo things include disease, disabilities, death, sex, body excretion and body elimination process, etc. People can use euphemisms to talk about what cannot be talked about. With the development of our society, some new functions came into being during the communication in the civilized society. In our daily communication, besides, taboo topics, there are other sensitive and unpleasant topics which we do not feel like talking about directly, such as occupation, appearance, form of address, social status, poverty, murder, and so on. If we talk about such things directly, we may feel or make others feel embarrassed or unhappy. Such psychology in communication results in another function of euphemism, that is to show politeness and conceal feelings. For instance, unemployment and poverty are very dreadful things nowadays. In the modern way of thinking, to mention somebody’s unemployment and poverty is to speak pejoratively of his condition. So the replacements for them keep appearing. The miserable fact of unemployment is said to be “involuntarily leisured”, “between jobs”, etc. The poor becomes “the underprivileged”, and “the disadvantaged”. In Chinese, we refer to 失业 as 下岗，炒鱿鱼；被裁掉 as 给优化掉，etc. And the poor are descried as 拮据，手头紧，手头不便，囊中羞涩，etc. From the above examples we can see that euphemisms can help to keep us more distant from the unpleasant reality, or in other words, the harsh truth has been concealed to a certain extent, that is to say, in reality，euphemisms are also often used to cover the truth. The euphemisms related to Politics given excellent explanation for this. For example, the Watergate Scandal made people more sensitive to political language. It became necessary to use euphemisms to make the sensitive political concepts softened and vague. Hence，the “Caper incident” substituted “phones taps”， “go the hangout road” for “tell the truth”，and “stone wall” for “flatly refuse to cooperate”.[2] George Orwell once illustrated the bitter irony of such linguistic phenomenon，“political language…is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable，and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.” Based on the above descriptions about the social functions of euphemisms，we can make the generalizations as follows: (1) Euphemisms not only help the speaker avoid talking about the dreadful or embarrassed things directly, but also help the speaker or the listener feel relaxed talking about the things that might probably make him/her appear disgraced or embarrassed if spoken directly. (2) Euphemisms are used to cover up the true nature of events, deceiving the public with nice-sounding and pseudo-technical work, and in the meanwhile it also can help some people avoid talking about sensitive things directly so that they can escape their due responsibility, even punishment. 1.4. Rhetorical application of euphemism 1.4.1. The definition of rhetoric Before we study the rhetorical application of euphemism，it is necessary to make clear what is rhetoric. Rhetoric is “the art of using language impressively and persuasively, esp. in public speaking.”(Oxford Advanced Learner