摘要

委婉语是人类使用语言过程中的一种普遍现象，是人们谈论那些令人不快或尴尬的事情时所使用的较为礼貌的说法。它不仅是一种社会语言现象，更是一种文化现象。随着社会的进步，人类文明的发展，委婉语始终伴随着整个社会的言语交际过程，表现出极强的言语交际功能。本文通过对新闻英语中委婉语社会交际功能的浅析，旨在分析委婉语社会交际功能对于新闻英语的影响和作用，加深对委婉语的了解，以便更好的使用委婉语，为日常生活带来更多便利。

关键词：委婉语；新闻英语；社会交际功能

Abstract

Euphemism is a common language phenomenon as well as a cultural phenomenon. It functions as the lubricator of communication to avoid something unpleasant or embarrassing. With the development of modern science and civilization, euphemisms, with its social functions, have become more and more important in our communication. This paper is mainly to discuss the relationship between euphemism and English news reports to make sense of the social communicative functions of euphemism in journalistic English, and to hint the importance of euphemism in communication, thus getting a further understanding of euphemism and making better use of the functions of euphemism in our daily life.

Key words：euphemism; journalistic English; social communicative function

1    . Introduction

Euphemism is a common phenomenon, which functions as the lubricator of communication. In our daily life, as well as in news media, people prefer to choose euphemisms to avoid embarrassment or to ease the sting of harsh words. And with the development of modern science, technology and civilization, euphemism has become more and more important in news papers to express the ideas better. This paper is mainly to discuss the relationship between euphemism and news English to make sense of the social communicative functions of euphemism in English news, and to hint the importance of euphemism in communication, thus getting a further understanding of euphemism and making better use of the functions of euphemism in our daily life.