A Prototypical Category Theory Study in English Euphemism

Abstract: Euphemism has been a topic of concern among linguistic researchers both at home and abroad for a long time. In recent years, cognitive linguistics becomes a new paradigm of linguistics and scholars begin to shift their focus of the study of euphemism on this new perspective. This paper attempts to combine this language phenomenon and human's cognition together to give a new interpretation of English euphemisms within the framework of prototype theory.

Key words: English euphemism；cognitive linguistics；prototype theory中图分类号：G648文献标识码：B文章编号：1672-1578（2014）08-0001-011.Introduction

Euphemism has been a topic of concern to linguistic researchers for a long time. This study proves that prototype theory is applicable and powerful as a framework for the explanation of euphemism system and so it offers a new perspective to analyze euphemism.

2.Prototype Theory

2.1Rosch's theory of prototype.The notion of focal colors is taken as one of the most significant steps leading to the prototype theory. In the process of researches, Rosch finally used the term "prototype" to replace the word "focus" used by Berlin and Kay. The prototype effects indicate that the membership between category members is asymmetric, and most of the categories are formed in terms of prototypes, with different degrees of membership.

2.2Basic level categories.One characteristic of natural categories is that they have different levels. This basic level category provides the maximum information while needs the least cognitive effort. The category that exists above this basic level category is called superordinate category, which is more abstract and more general. And the category below the basic level category is defined as subordinate category, which is more specific.

3.The Interpretation of Euphemism with the Prototype Theory

3.1Euphemism on the word and phrase level.Language is usually related to certain natural phenomena. And human beings tend to believe that language itself can bring good fortunes or disasters (Chen Yuan, 1983).

(1) His friend unfortunately passed away last year.

(2) She went out of this world because of cancer.

The two examples are actually talking about "death". From the view of the prototype theory, die can be considered as the prototype member of this semantic category, for it possesses more distinctive semantic attributes like a. stop living; b. come to the end of one's life; c. leave no sign of life. These semantic attributes, which have more prominence in cognition, originate in people's basic knowledge of death. The expressions Iike pass away, fall asleep forever can be treated as the peripheral member of the same category with die, for they share some attributes of the prototype die while lacking in part of the typical attributes.

To sum up, we can get the point that euphemisms and the taboo subjects are semantically related to each other and they are of the same category, with taboo subjects serving as the prototypical member and euphemisms as the peripheral ones.

3.2Euphemism on the sentence level.Euphemism is not just restricted to the level of a word or phrase but may even be a whole sentence or several.

(1) Could you please open the window for me?

Can you please open the window for me?

(2) I wondered if you could help me.

I wonder if you could help me.

For the two groups of sentences listed above, the request seems to be more indirect and polite in the former sentences than in the second ones, for the verbs could, would, wondered are in the past tense, making the action psychologically away from us. As is known, the past tense are usually employed when we describe an action or state happened or existed before the present time, which is the most common use of past tense and can be treated as the prototypical using, and for the past tense to show euphemistic meaning as above, they can be considered as the marginal member of the category of PAST TENSE. Because of the verbs in past tense, which makes a time distance between the past and the present, the listeners thus have more space to make choice. And thereby the euphemistic effect is achieved.

4.nclusion

Considering both the achievements and deficiency of the previous studies on English euphemism, through the study, we get the finding: euphemism and its corresponding taboo expression form a prototypical category.

In comparison with the studies conducted from the perspectives of rhetoric, semantics, pragmatics and sociolinguistics, the number of studies within cognitive linguistics are relatively few and not systematic. So much is still to be done on this aspect.Reference

[1]gerer&Schmid. (2001). An introduction to cognitive linguistics. Beijing: Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press.

[2]aylor, J. R. (2003). Linguistic categorization. New York: Oxford University Press.

[3]赵艳芳. 认知语言学概论. 上海:上海外语教育出版社2001

[4]束定芳，徐金元. 委婉语研究:回顾与前瞻.《外国语》.1995.

作者简介：

唐文荟（1990-）女，四川南充，西南大学外国语学院2011级研究生，研究方向：英语语言学