Abstract

Euphemism is not only a linguistic phenomenon but also a social and cultural phenomenon existing in both eastern and western countries. Euphemistic expression of death is a vital component of euphemism, which plays an important role in linguistics.
This thesis tries to explore the deep cultural connotations under this cultural and linguistic phenomenon by collecting data on the subject of “euphemistic expressions of death”, looking for the expressive forms they show, and comparing the different details of these two different languages to find out the differences of the expression in both Chinese and English.   
In this paper, the author elaborates four chapters. Chapter one introduces the definition of euphemism and death euphemism, and states the previous studies of euphemistic expressions of death. Chapter two expounds the reasons of the appearance and applications of euphemistic expressions of death. Chapter three and chapter four are the main parts of this paper. Chapter three works on finding out the different expressions in both Chinese and English and makes a classification of the expressions used for different people in China and English-speaking countries. Chapter four focuses on the analysis of the similarities and differences in the euphemistic expressions of death in both Chinese and English, the similarities are stated in the following sections: meaning for death, way for valuing and method for description，which are the originality of this paper. Simultaneously, the differences are summarized in three parts: differences of religion, differences of social customs and differences of cultural patterns.

Key words: euphemistic expressions of death; linguistic phenomenon; culture

摘  要

委婉语的应用在中西方文化中不仅是一种语言现象，更是一种文化现象。死亡委婉语作为委婉语中的重要成分，在语言的发展中有很重要的作用。
本文通过收集关于“死亡委婉语”的资料，找出其不同的表达形式，并通过比较找出它们在中英文表达里的不同，来探究语言现象背后的深层的文化内涵。
本论文有四个章节。第一章介绍了委婉语、死亡委婉语的定义以及目前国内外对于死亡委婉语已有的研究。第二章解释了死亡委婉语的出现及其广泛运用的原因。第三章和第四章是本文的重点。第三章着力于找出死亡委婉语在中国和英语国家中的一些不同的表达，并进行了分类列举。第四章主要讲述的是对于中英文死亡委婉语的异同及其背后的文化影响，相同表现在以下几个方面：死亡的意义，死亡的价值观念和描述死亡的修辞方法，这也正是本文的新颖之处。同时，不同点从三个方面进行表达：不同的宗教信仰，不同的社会风俗和不同的文化模式。

关键词:死亡委婉语；语言现象；文化