Кантур К. О.
Національний
університет «Одеська юридична академія»,
доцент
кафедри іноземних мов, кандидат філологічних наук
VARIATIONS IN MODERN EUPHEMISMS CLASSIFICATION
Euphemisms can be classified according to
different criteria, rules, or principles. The following is a presentation of
some possible classifications of euphemisms.
Rawson
divides euphemisms into two general types, namely, positive and negative which
are distinguished according to the evaluative aspect (Rawson H. A Dictionary of
Euphemisms and other Doubletalk. 1983. – 312 p.). Positive euphemisms can also
be called stylistic euphemisms or exaggerating euphemisms. The positive ones
inflate and magnify, making the euphemized items seem altogether grander and
more important than they really are.
In order to avoid thrill, to be polite or to achieve
cooperation, British and American people, especially contemporary Americans,
prefer using the technique of exaggeration to euphemize something unpleasant
and embarrassing. The positive euphemisms include the many fancy occupational
titles, which save the egos of workers by elevating their job status. For
example, ‘exterminating engineers’ is
used for rat catchers while ‘beauticians’ stand for hairdressers. It might be said that
quite a few positive euphemisms are doublespeak and cosmetic words. They usually
appear in the political, military and commercial vocabulary. Other kinds of
positive euphemisms include personal honorifics such as the colonel, the honorable, the major, and the many institutional euphemisms
which convert madhouses into mental hospitals, colleges into universities,
and small business establishments
into emporiums, parlors, and salons. The
desire to improve one’s surroundings also is evident in geographical place
names, most prominently in the case of the distinctly nongreen Greenland, but also in the designation
of many small burgs as cities.
The negative
euphemisms deflate and diminish. They are defensive in nature, offsetting the
power of tabooed terms and otherwise eradicating from the language everything
that people prefer not to deal with directly. The negative euphemisms can be
called traditional euphemisms or narrowing euphemism. They are extremely
ancient, and closely connected with the taboos. An euphemism and its
corresponding taboo are in fact two faces of the same coin. They refer to the
same thing though they have different looks, the euphemism having a much more
pleasant face than the taboo.
Euphemisms, whether positive or negative, can be also
divided into unconscious euphemisms and conscious euphemisms. The criterion for
classification is the euphemistic meaning whether correlative with the original
meaning or not. Unconscious euphemisms, as its name implies, were developed
long ago, and are used unconsciously, without any intent to deceive or evade.
For example, now standard term as ‘cemetery’
has been a replacement for the more deathly ‘graveyard’ since the fourteenth century. ‘Indisposition’ has been a substitute for ‘disease’ for a long period; people seldom realize that its original
meaning is incapacity for dealing with something. Take ‘dieter’ for another example, the original meaning taking food by a
rule or regulation has been substituted by the euphemistic meaning ‘the one moderate in eating and dining for
losing weight’. From the above we can conclude that unconscious euphemisms
were developed so long ago that few can remember their original motivations.
Conscious euphemisms are widely employed, which involves more complex
categories. When people communicate with each other, speakers are conscious to
say tactfully, and the listeners understand their implied meanings. For
example, when a lady stands up and says that she wants to ‘powder her nose’ or ‘make a
phone call’ at a dinner party, the people present realize the euphemism
means ‘something else’, that is, ‘going to the ladies’ room’ (Holder B. A
Dictionary of Euphemisms: How not to Say what you Mean. 2008. – 412p.).
Besides the divisions mentioned above, euphemisms can
be divided into six semantic categories:
In western countries, mental
work is considered to be the high job whereas physical labor is recognized as
humble work, besides there is a great difference in the remuneration. Thus,
most of the people hold that people with different occupations have different
status in society. Some lowly paid or indecent jobs are often used in English
culture just for saving face and expressing politeness. Therefore there are
fewer occupations called jobs, many have become professions. Some words and
forms like engineer are more popular among people in the communication. English
euphemisms are used to express some fancy occupational titles, which can
elevate the people’s status. Many previously unwelcome professions have now
taken more appealing names. For example, in profession euphemisms, people
always use cleaning operative for road sweeper or dustman, sanitation
engineer for garbage man,
meat
technologist for butcher,
and hairdresser has turned into beautician, etc.
In the disease euphemisms, people always use long
illness replaces for cancer, social disease
replaces for syphilis and AIDS, also they use lung
trouble substitutes for tuberculosis and so on. And if someone with a mental illness, we cannot
say psychosis directly, we should say he
or she is a little confused, meanwhile, we should use hard of hearing
in stand of deaf.
In many societies, because death is feared, so
people tend to avoid mentioning death directly and talk about it in a
euphemistic way. They try to employ pleasant terms to express the ideas. So
death has hundreds of soft, decent, and better-sounding names, such as breathe
one’s last, fall asleep, go west, join the majority, lay down one's life, pass
away, pay the debt of nature, reach a better world, to be at peace, to return
to the dust, or he worked until he breathed his last, etc.
Euphemisms concerning sex: the great divide, willing
woman, gay boy, lost girl can be used to
replace divorce, loose woman, male homosexual and prostitute.
In the field of crime euphemism: five-fingers,
gentleman of the road, hero of the underground, the candy man are often used to
substitute for pickpocket, robber, heroin, and drug
pusher.
Since the function of euphemism can reduce the
unpleasantness of a term or notion, it is natural that announcements of
governments will often resort them to understate the facts: student unrest can
be used to replace student strike; police action, search and
clear, war games are used to substitute for aggression,
massacre and war exercise.