英语委婉语负面影响研究

论文总字数：33001字

摘 要

本文首先阐述委婉语的定义，然后从社会语言学的角度，结合实例，从三个方面重点讨论委婉语在社会交际过程中产生的负面影响：女性歧视、掩饰国际事务中的真相和引发心理自卑感。最后本文讨论如何避免英语委婉语的负面影响，并提出有效措施。了解和掌握好英语委婉语负面影响对大学生进行跨文化交际有着一定实践意义，并有助于我们更深入的了解英语国家人们的思维方式、社会价值观、道德观和文化风俗。

关键词: 委婉语；女性歧视；掩饰真相；自卑感；规避方法

Contents

1. Introduction ………………….…….............……………..…………......1

2. Literature Review……………………………………............ ...… ……2

3. Definition of Euphemism...........................…….................................…..3

4. Negative Influences of English Euphemism…………….................…..4

4.1 Leading to Gender Discrimination against Women......…....................…4

4.2 Whitewashing the Truth in International Affairs…….........................…5

4.3 Bringing Psychological Inferiority Feeling to People……................…..8

5. Methods of Avoiding the Negative Influences of Euphemism.............10

5.1 Getting Guidance from the Teacher While Studying the Euphemism....11

5.2 Considering the Situation While Using the Euphemism…....................12

5.3 Showing Our Stand While Using the Euphemism…….......................12

6. Conclusion……….……….………………...………...............………...13

Works Cited. …………………………………………................………...15

1.Introduction

In the culture context, people shall choose consciously to avoid discussing some topics or using some words because people are unwilling or can not to talk about those topics. Some ambiguous and pleasant words or interpretations are produced to replace those embarrassing words or expressions. The same meaning may have different comprehensions, and may be expressed in different ways. It is easy to have some misunderstandings between two people, so selecting elegant and suitable words to convey feeling is so important. These words and interpretations are called euphemism.

The use of euphemism is in according with the ever-changing need of social life. With personalized language, the character of people shall be livelier and the figure of people will be more vivid in the process of interpersonal communication. Nevertheless, the more euphemisms are adopted, the more problems will be followed such as female discrimination, the lie on international affairs and people’s psychological inferiority feeling. These problems are often overlooked by people. Lack of the cognition of the negative influences of euphemism makes people easy to suffer loss in the process of using euphemisms.

College students are made up of a special group who often come into contact with euphemisms in our daily life. Someone may get into government agency or choose to be a businessman or to be a soldier after graduating from university, so it is easy for us to suffer the shock of the negative influences of English euphemism. We may be in derision when we are looking for a job just because the company does not need female employee. We may be cheated when we are buying some articles. We may produce some inferior sense when we get refused from others. The use of euphemism is not suitable for anyone or anywhere, we need to consider the negative sides of euphemisms and try our best to avoid the side effects. On the base of that, the research on negative influences of English euphemism will afford a practical significance to college students in the process of cross-culture communication.

1. Literature Review

People have researched the term “euphemism” for a certain time. Scholars make a study on the term “euphemism” from different fields in order to master the functions of languages and solve the problems of communication.

Xu Mei made an analysis of the errors which exist in the process of communication through the comparison of English and Chinese euphemisms. She thought the improper use of euphemism is usually easy to cause misunderstanding, which may result in the failure and obstacles of communication. To achieve the purpose of cross-cultural communication, she illustrated that we should understand their features between English and Chinese euphemism and improve the sensitivity to Chinese and western culture, which will reduce errors in cross-culture(Xu Mei, 2007: 53).

Jia Ping and Zhang Sumin discussed the euphemism from the aspect of psychological basis. They divided the psychological basis into four types: taboos, respect, whitewashing the political truth and reducing the negative influences. They thought that euphemism is a form of language in the human daily communication. Different social status and language communities have the specific language means to use the euphemism(Jia ping, 2009: 89). According to their thesis, all sorts of euphemisms reflect all kinds of social psychology: taboo and fear, respect, whitewash and cover-up, reduce the negative effects, etc.

Wang Xiaoling studied the euphemism from the perspective of cross-culture. Firstly, she stated the relation between euphemism and culture, and then put the key point on cultural similarities and differences by comparing English and Chinese euphemisms. Finally, she researched the application of euphemisms in cross-culture communication. Wang thought the use of euphemisms is a common linguistic phenomenon in all languages(Wang Xiaoling, 2013: 67). By using euphemisms, people can indirectly and politely express their ideals without making the listeners feel awkward and unpleasant.

There are a few of foreign language materials related to euphemism. Most of domestic experts make researches on the positive impacts of euphemism and hope to apply these euphemisms accurately in social communications. On the contrary, this thesis will study the negative influences of euphemism. The goal of this thesis is to make up the deficiency of research on the negative influences of English euphemism and to help us to avoid communication failure and contradiction and to realize the effective cross-cultural communication.

1. Definition of Euphemism

The word “euphemism” derived from Greek “euphemismos”. The affix “eu” means well or good and the stem “phemism” represents speech. Therefore, the implication of euphemism is “word of good omen”. Routledge Dictionary of Language and Linguistics (2000) defines “euphemism” as “A kind of expressing method which aims at making people feel less embarrassed by using some words with vague and ambiguous meaning instead of those which may make people feel unpleasant and not respected”(Wang Xiaoling, 2013: 66). The formation of English euphemism is various and colorful, which can be divided into the following several types: word-formation methods, spelling methods, vocabulary methods, grammar methods and rhetoric methods. For examples, compounding, phonetic distortion, synonyms, borrowing, fuzzy words, negation, metonymical transfer and periphrasis are the most frequent means of expression in euphemism. English euphemism can be divided into two types: traditional euphemism and stylistic euphemism. The so-called traditional euphemism is related closely to taboo language which also called shadow language such as birth, death, disease, funeral, sex, nude and forth. If these words mentioned-above are expressed directly, you would feel it vulgar, harsh and impolite. On the contrary, if you say these words indirectly, you would have the impression of decorousness and elegance. The so-called stylistic euphemism is a kind of moderate flattery or praising. For the sake of elegance and politeness, people often use some exaggerated or modificatory methods to beautify some unpleasant expressions.

Euphemisms have a sort of meanings in different conditions. Hence, the application of euphemism is extensive. Euphemism is a type of rhetorical devices, which use harmless or melodious words to take the place of direct and brusque words. We make use of kind speech to conceal the truth in order to express feelings in a milder and more pleasant manner. As a worldwide language phenomenon, euphemism plays an important role in the improvement of interpersonal relationship, the enhancement of communication activities and the achievement of ideal communication effect.

However, euphemism is doubled-edged sword. Although it has existed since ancient times and becomes stronger today, it is not necessary for us to use them at anytime or anywhere. We should consider the occasions and objects, and also coordinate the relationship properly and make out the consequences of using the euphemism. Using too many euphemisms in communication will make your expressions too excessive and confused. It also makes people think there is too much unreal information in your words and even think you are a dishonest person. If you use inappropriate euphemism, it will make your speech lack of polite and be full of rude meanings and be incomprehensible.

4. Negative Influences of English Euphemism

4.1 Leading to Gender Discrimination against Women

From ancient times to the present, the status of men and women in society is different. It is normal for women to suffer oppression and discrimination. Instead, the men are the leadership force in the process of the development of the society. The status of women is not as equal as men’s. Women are easy to get refuse from some company because the interviewer thinks their gender is female. Some euphemisms are used to maintain the dignity of men. Some words which indicate women’s designation will be related to some disgusting people or things.

4.1.1 Euphemism in gender descriptions

An interesting phenomenon is that some words applied for women to describe men mean insulting the masculinity. However, some words related to men to describe women mean praising femininity. For example, we use “bachelor girl” to represent a single woman who can earn her own living. If you call a man as spinster or old maid, it would be impolite to him because you think he is a overcautious, neurotic and conservative person. For instance, “He was a real old maid about burning rubbish”, this sentence is apparently full of the discrimination and affront against women. However the situation shall be different if using “masculine” to describe women such as the sentence “She is a girl with masculine mind or as a man among the womenfolk”.

People are used to insulting someone with feminine vocabulary, but they are not aware that their inappropriate behaviors may do harms to women. Different language contexts have different meanings. One word in the different language contexts can derive a variety of senses, so we must pay more attention to the meaning of the sentence. A large number of time and energies will be wasted and more pity things will be produced because of misunderstanding.

4.1.2 Euphemism in sex taboos

According to some statistics, there are about 220 words related to sex applied for women, while 20 words related to sex applied for men. An investigation shows that there are 45 terms about sexual behavior. 20 expressions are about the women, 19 terms are neutral and the rest of terms are only 6 about the men. The ratio of terms applied for women is higher than men. From the proportion of distribution for words, we can conclude that women are at a disadvantage.

There are lots of descriptions of sex taboos for women in English euphemism. It shows that women are one of tools to satisfy sexual desires and sexual behaviors are dirty behaviors. These traditional opinions make a contact between women and dirty, dissolute, profligate and shame. This is a gender discrimination against women in the society! Sex is a taboo topic in our daily life. When we talk about it, we are used to avoiding some harsh words. If we take something about sex, the content of our talking often refers to women. Besides, women are usually to be the object of laugh.

4.1.3 Euphemism in metonymy appellations

In western countries, it is usually to use men’s name to represent the euphemistic appellation of nations or races. For example, “John Bul” means “England or the English people”, “Ivan” represents “the Russian people” and “John Joe” means “ordinary American citizen”.

However, some descriptive names about women are often used to express some bad things. For example, a kind of big black toxic spiders living in South America is called “black widow spider” in English. The prison van to lock up prisoners is called “black Mary”. At the same time, some destructive hurricanes in America are also named by women’s name such as Alice Barbara, Carol, Dolly, Edna, Florence, Gilda, Hazel, Irene, Tina and so forth(Jia ping, 2009: 89). These euphemisms may help people to remember the special article easily, but these words are sorts of discrimination against women and are the promotion of the male chauvinism.

4.2 Whitewashing the Truth in International Affairs

The government is good at using large amounts of euphemisms to whitewash the dark aspects of society, the misfortune of war and the baseness of diplomacy. The intention of government is to cheat the public and ease the tension situation in the process of dealing with international affairs. The euphemism will help the government to get obvious effects and enormous benefits, but the public have been sacrificial lamb or victim of euphemism. The government uses euphemisms to describe an illusory blueprint and to make government seems to be the savior of people. People are innocent, but they have to undertake all the misfortunes.

4.2.1 To whitewash the political events

There is no doubt that it has close relation between the politics and life. Therefore, the research on political euphemism arouses increasing attention of people. Western political life is the rich soil to produce euphemisms, especially when political situation is changing. Analyzing the application of euphemism in political stage can not only improve the comprehensibility of foreign language, but also enable people to catch the essence of domestic and international political events accurately. Under the circumstance, we can fully understand the complex and changeable social environment which we are living in and we can avoid suffering cheats from the government when we meet some political events.

In the era of Reagan-Administration, government used “revenue enhancement” to replace “increase taxes” as a form of expression for taxation policy. In the other aspect, “needy people” took the place of “poor people”, and then it was changed into “culturally deprived people”, “underprivileged people” and finally was “disadvantaged people”. On that situation, the government showed the public that the nation was flourishing and peaceful. No disaster and no starvation existed in the country. In modern life, government use “backward nation” and “developing nations” or “emerging nations” instead of “poor nations”, but it is obvious that the fact the public have seen is opposite to the declaration of government. The problem is still not resolved, so the government has to use euphemisms to maintain its perfect figure. It is just a deceit method!

4.2.2 To whitewash the commercial activities

Commercial competition has been fiercer in the area of economy and business spots frequently have the phenomenon of using euphemism. The merchant uses some euphemism to cater to consumer psychology so as to appeal customers and get benefits. For examples, the lack of commodity is called “have the low availability factor”. The commodity on sale is called “downgrade economic readjustment”. The markup of commodity is called “upward price readjusting”. Like “economical”, “budget” and “reasonable” have taken place of “cheap” just because the word “cheap” combines with low quality and old-fashionable style. These euphemisms will satisfy the vanity of consumers. Some low-quality products will be sold rapidly with the use of the euphemism, but the legal rights of consumers are violated. If everything goes on this way, customers would suffer a certain loss from merchants and the credibility of merchants would vanish eventually.

Take another example. In order to get more profits, some airlines have even changed the Deluxe Class into First Class, Business Class into Second Class and Economy Class into Third Class. This action makes passengers not know whether they can get corresponding services after paying money.

4.2.3 To whitewash the social issues

At the beginning of last century, the tension of labor-capital relationship and the movement of strike was the worst problem in social issues. In order to cover the truth of contradiction, the press changed the “labor-capital relationship” into “industrial relation” and changed the “labor-capital dispute” into “industrial dispute”. The statement of the press is ambiguous, so someone who does not know the truth will suffer huge loss in benefits.

What’s more, when the scandal between ex-president Clinton and the White House Fellow was exposed, the journalist hid facts with using “improper relation” instead of “sex scandal”. To America citizens, the figure of President Clinton was still frank and forthright. However, a few months later, the scandal became a laugh for people when citizens got the news through other channel. Therefore, President Clinton had to hand over letter of resignation to United States Congress. It has been a stain in the whole politics life of President Clinton. Euphemism does not defuse the image crisis. On the contrary, the career of President Clinton is destroyed.

4.2.4 To whitewash the military operations

When the war took place between America and Vietnam, American stated that the military actions of bombing to Vietnam were “logistical strikes” and “close air support”. Besides, American changed “the civilian casualties” into collateral damage”. In the 1983, US army invaded Grenada, but they called its military actions as “a rescue mission”. In addition, US attacked Libya by air force, which was described as “surgical strikes” and the despicable “Surprise attack” was beautified to “preemptive strikes”.

There are some other examples. “Invasion” and “raid” are disguised as “incursion”, “involvement” and “military action”. “Failure in a war” is disguised as “break off contact with enemy”. The thousands of homeless people in the war are called “transfer of population”, etc. They use euphemisms to remove the terror and ruthlessness in the unfair war. Under this circumstance has euphemism been an executioner to Vietnamese. US government’s euphemism is harmful to tender and painful heart of Vietnamese and to the people of the rest of the world. War is merciless and cruel. These cosmetic words should not be the excuse of government to cover truth and should not play an evil role in the war. But for the politicians, these euphemistic words are good tools to whitewash themselves and protect themselves from being charged.

4.3 Bringing Psychological Inferiority Feeling to People

Human communication is inseparable from the use of language. Mild and indirect language is a kind of lubricant in communication which can not only overcome the psychological barriers, but also can eliminate unpleasant emotions caused by straightforward words in interpersonal communication. Asian like considering the issues on the others’ stand, they seldom express their true feelings and often use some euphemisms to deal with problems. Without considering the negative influences of euphemism, Asian is easy to be cowardly and self-abased.

4.3.1 Negating the value of oneself

In order to care for the feelings of the listeners, speakers often use some mild and indirect words to make conversation smoothly. However, we usually ignore the negative influences of euphemism which is also applied for us. From the angle of psychology, we can view the euphemism as a sort of self-denial. This situation is often embodied between teachers and students, bosses and employees who are involved in the context of “status”.

In Chinese, we are used to calling ourselves as “bi ren” but we address others as “ge xia”. We call our wife as “jian nei” but address other ladies as “zun fu ren”. We call our son and daughter as “quan zi” and “xiao nv” but address other children as “ling lang” and “ling yuan”. Nowadays people pay attention to the belief that all men are created equal. Although our intention is to show our good manners and to reflect our humility and respect to others, westerns think that the appellation of “bi ren” and so on is form of negating the value of oneself. People should not belittle us so as to praise others, especially to praise the people who have higher status than you. In order to be closer, the use of euphemism is relatively few between friends or classmates.

4.3.2 Excluding the outstanding people

It is embarrassing for students to discuss the scores and the class rank after an important examination. Some inferior students pretty mind that others’ scores are higher than theirs. For example, “how did you do?” an excellent student asked, who had an outstanding behavior in the examination. The inferior student responded “well, I wrote something down for every question. Actually, “I wrote something down for every question” means “I had a poor performance in the exam.”

The inferior one is not willing to tell the fact to the top student due to jealousy or awkwardness. They use euphemisms to express their strong dissatisfaction at their scores and they want to have the same point as the top student. Usually they spend much time on studying and make more efforts but the result is awful, so they think they have enough reasons to complain. This situation often produces a vicious circle. Inferior students will be worse on study and often feel themselves inferior to others, which is not beneficial to the development of physical and mental health.

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