摘 要

 人类交际离不开语言。美国语言学家格莱斯的合作原则语用学的理论基石之一，是指导人们语言交际的基本原则。委婉语是人类社会发展过程中的一种普遍的语言现象，是语言交际中协调人际关系和社会关系的重要手段。它不仅是一种社会语言现象，更是一种文化现象。而在实际交际中，委婉语并不遵循合作原则，通常是违反某一项次准则或者同时违反几项次准则。
本文旨在以语用学为背景，以合作原则的四项次准则为框架来浅析委婉语，以促进会话交流的顺利完成。

关键词：委婉语；合作原则；准则

Abstract

Human communication can not be without language. As one of the most important pragmatics theories, cooperative principle, which is put forwarded by American linguistic Grice, is the cardinal principle to guide people to make good communication. Euphemism, being a universal phenomenon in the development of human society, is a significant means of coordinating relationships between people and society. It is not only a social language phenomenon, but also a cultural phenomenon. Nevertheless, in actual communication, euphemism does not abide by the categories of cooperative principle. In contrast, it often violates one maxim or several maxims at the same time.
   This paper regards pragmatics as a background and analyses the euphemisms in the framework of the cooperative principle, so that communication can be well continued.

Key words: euphemism; cooperative principle; maxim

1 Introduction
1.1 Background
With the development of our society, there is an increasing close relationship between people from various backgrounds. In our daily life, we communicate with others nearly every moment. Euphemism, as a good tool for helping people carry on communication smoothly, is widely discussed by famous linguisticians and sound reasons of using it can be efficiently provided.
The word "euphemism" is originated from the Greek. Its prefix "eu" means good or sounding well, and the root "pheme" means speech or saying. So the meaning of the whole word seems speaking with good words or communicating in a pleasant manner. Neaman pointed out in his book A Treasure of Euphemism that euphemism is “substituting an inoffensive pleasant term for a more explicit offensive one, thereby veneering the truth by using this kind words.”(Neaman, 1990:29) For example, when people refer to the dead, they prefer to say that someone is in heaven rather than expressing the real but cruel condition in a direct way. Hence, to some extent, people called euphemism “lubes” in communication, which can help them keep far away from unfriendly situation. Because of the different cultural backgrounds and customs, we would better learn the correct way of using euphemism, avoiding the awkwardness among communication.