uphemism helps people to reach this goal. From the moment euphemism came into existence, it has played a very important role in our daily communication, and help establish a good relationship between human beings and even strengthen the social stability. Euphemism are motivated by the desire not to be offensive. People use them to show their politeness, to avoid being offensive and to meet the psychological and beneficial needs of both speakers and hearers in communication. But sometimes they are used to conceal or cover something. Accordingly, euphemism serves three basic communicative functions: evasive function, polite function and cosmetic function.
4.1 The evasive function of English euphemism
The evasive function of euphemism is to evade using taboos, enabling the speaker to talk about tabooed things freely. These tabooed things 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 tabooed things include: disease, disabilities, death, sex, body excretion and body elimination process, etc. People can use euphemisms to talk about what cannot be talked directly.
4.1.1 In terms of disease and disabilities
People yearn for health, and fear for specific disease and every sort of disability. So people always use tactful way to express them. For example, sexual or venereal disease such as syphilis, gonorrhoea, ADIS, etc. are called “social disease”, ‘communicative disease”, etc. in English. Besides, disabilities are very sensitive area in every culture. In English, “the disabled, the handicapped, the inconvenienced, the invalid, auditory impaired, hard of hearing, talk with one’s fingers”, etc. are put into service.[9] So euphemism plays a very important function in our social communication. Without it, we sometimes cannot continue our talk.
4.1.2 In terms of death
Death is an inevitable stage at the end of life’s journey. It is common experience of human beings. Yet it has been the source of fear—fear of the loss of loved ones; fear of the end of one’s life; fear of the actual process of dying. Therefore, all these fears, worries, and unpleasant feelings combined lead to verbal taboo of death. Euphemisms concerning death are extremely rich. In English, there are more than seventy euphemisms for “death”, including “to be gone, to be gone to a better world, to be with God, to breath one’s last, to close one’s day, to depart from the world forever, to depart to God, to fall asleep, join the great majority, pass away, etc.[10] No matter why this word is used in a certain language, people always tend to use less harsh words
4.1.3 In terms of sex, body excretion and body elimination process
Words relating to sex, procreation and excretion are highly restricted to mention because they may evoke disgusting responses of people. Verbal taboo on them is probably motivated by the intuitive disaster, shame. People all have certain feelings of which they are so ashamed that they don’t like to admit even to themselves. In people’s daily life or in some formal occasion, if the talk or discussion refers to something about drainage, people will try to avoid using vulgar language. They tend to use some implied or neutral words to make conversation comfortable. For ordinary people, the safest way to avoid mentioning these things that they have to mention in many circumstances is to use another expression—euphemism to replace the true name of such a thing. For exa
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