浅析委婉语和礼貌原则

浅析委婉语和礼貌原则

［Abstract］As a kind of language phenomenon and an important communicative means, euphemism is widely used in human life. Politeness principle is an essential pragmatic principle as well as complement of Cooperative Principle. This paper analyzes Leech’s Politeness Principle and its maxims, explains the theoretic foundation of euphemism in communication, and discusses relations between euphemism and Politeness Principle.

［Key words］euphemism,Politeness Principle,relations

I. Euphemism

The word “euphemism” derives from the Greek, “eu”, means “good”, and “pheme” refers to “speech” or “saying”, and the whole word thus means literally “to speak with good words or in a pleasant manner.” That is to say, euphemism is a polite, mild or tactful expression substituted for one thought to be direct, harsh or unpleasant. In human conversations, there are some topics that people don’t like to talk about directly, such as, death, sex, disease, excretion, etc. In such cases, people are willing to choose some mild or pleasant expressions to replace these taboos. Taking the word “pregnancy” for example, since pregnancy usually make us think of sex, which is regarded as a taboo topic or an inelegant thing in

people’s minds, we use other phrases like “lady-in-waiting”, “eating for two”, “in an interesting condition”, “to sprain an ankle” etc. to substitute for it. As a very common cultural phenomenon and an important means of communication, euphemism is wildly used in every society, every speech community and every social class. Therefore, euphemism deeply roots in social life and it strongly reflects social values and cultural values.

Ⅱ. Politeness Principle

Grice believes that people will communicate more efficacious if the participants be willing to obey Cooperative Principle, which goes as: “Make your conversational contribution such as is required, at the stage at which it occurs by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged.”[1] It is divided into four categories: The Maxim of Quantity; The Maxim of Quality; The Maxim of Relation; The Maxim of Manner. However, conversation participants do not always observe these maxims strictly, and they violate CP intentionally. In other words, people in speech communications sometimes use the indirect and implied way of speaking to express their ideas. In order to explain such language phenomenon, and make up for this deficiency of CP, Leech proposed Politeness Principle from the pragmatic and interpersonal rhetorical viewpoint, which might be c onstructed as: “Minimize (other things being equal) the expression of impolite beliefs” and “Maximize