1. Introduction
English euphemism, from the Greek word “euphemismos” meaning “good fame “or “good speech”, is the use of a pleasant, polite or harmless sounding word or expression to mask harsh, rude or infamous truths (Qin Xianmei &Li Yang, 2006: 212 ) . It is also defined in the new edition of The Oxford Concise Dictionary (1979) as “Substitution of mild or vague or roundabout expression for harsh or direct one” (Feng Cuihua, 2004: 221). English euphemism is a language phenomenon that exists popularly in English people’s lives and the “death” euphemism is just one of the most important parts in euphemistic culture. During the process of communication, people, in English culture,本
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英语论文网www.51lunwen.org整理提供 create a great majority of euphemistic expressions about “death” in order to make the “death” not sounding so scared. Of course, the “death” euphemism is both a language phenomenon and cultural phenomenon, which makes people avoid this terrible and mysterious word directly, and expresses their miss feeling and respect, their sympathy and comfort more effectively, which people can easily to accept. Death is an unfortunate thing and a disaster, even everyone in the world can not resist this natural law of birth, age and death. People merely use other words as substitutes of “death” for its linguistic taboo. People, from social man’ psychology, consider that talking about the death is unlucky, because in the mind of tradition, people refer to death and misfortune would occur. Therefore, many euphemisms in the English language are used to cover up “death”. For instance, in “David Copperfield”, Charles Dickens wrote: “and, it being low water, he went out with the tide.”(余立三,1985:63). “He went out with the tide” is a euphemism that expresses “he died”. To master this kind of euphemistic culture is good for social communication. This paper provides more detailed analysis from English “death” euphemism, its origin, development, metaphor, age vs. relationship, before or after death vs. dead cause, oral expression vs. slang, occasion vs. value. Meanwhile, it studies the culture on English “death” euphemism even deeply and helps the English learners understand the language’s inner relations as well as how to improve the ability of using this euphemistic language effectively.
2. English “Death” Euphemism and Culture
Culture, in a broad sense, includes customs, ideas, objects, techniques, language, civilization, art and literature, etc. of a particular society or group of people. (Wehmeier, 2001:227). The English “death” euphemism is a special language. As we all know, England is a hometown of prevailing euphemism. People there are inclined to apply a lot of euphemistic words to express something terrible. As a story tells: a guest from Paris was travelling and living in England, one day, his landlord told him with grief on face: “My husband has just passed to the other side.” This Paris man looked toward the other side of the garden, but he saw nobody and was puzzled at that time. So his landlord explained further to him: “I mean he is kicked the bucket.” He comforted her and said: “I hope his foot will be better soon.” But landlord did not understand what her guest said, and she explained: “No, he wasn’t here, he snuffed it ….you know.” Still the Paris man couldn’t get what his landlord wanted to express. He blurted out suddenly: “But you’ve got electricity here. (李观仪, 2000: 24). We can know from story why the Paris man answered th
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