English Euphemism Teaching 英语委婉语教学.doc

English Euphemism Teaching By P Under the Supervision of Prof. A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in the School of Foreign Studies University April,2005Acknowledgements I am most greatly indebted to my supervisor, Professor , whose enlightening advice and valuable guidance have been an ongoing encouragement to me over the long period of preparing and writing this dissertation, and I am especially grateful to her for her patience in reading my manuscripts and in providing detailed comments. I would like to thank all my teachers in the Foreign Language School of University, whose classes have exposed me to new horizons in the field. I also wish to express my appreciation to my colleague Li for her help and valuable advice and my former classmate, Miss of China University of Science and Technology, for her offering the reference books upon request and her support in making my computer work. My thanks also extend to my students in Anhui University who have provided me with the data which supported the discussion in the dissertation. Finally, I would like to take this opportunity to show my gratitude to my mother, my brothers and my husband, who have faithfully supported me in every way in the past two years. Abstract Euphemism, which is frequently used in both English and Chinese, is a linguistic phenomenon as well as a cultural one. In a sense, without proper application of euphemism, communication would be impossible. Euphemism has become one of the major subjects of cross-cultural studies as people come to realize the significance of euphemism. Therefore, English teachers should pay attention to euphemism teaching so as to improve students’ cross-cultural awareness and communicative competence. In China, as far as euphemism teaching is concerned, there are no monographs or treatises. The papers concerning euphemism teaching mainly discuss the importa