ABSTRACT:Death euphemism is the most universal cultural phenomenon in the society. People express “death” differently under the cultural background in America and China. It plays an important role in the daily communications. What’s more, certain death euphemism reflects on the stable social value, religion beliefs and customs.
Death euphemism is generally regarded as the basic language in the communications, which accumulates abundant cultural connotations. However, the previous studies on the cultural connotation of death euphemism have been mainly conducted from pragmatics perspective. Cultural connotations consist of religion, traditional morality, social customs and psychological factors, etc. All the scholars who conducted the research from semantics, pragmatics and rhetoric perspectives have made significant contributions to the cultural gap between the two languages.
Death euphemism exists in every language and culture, which shows much alikeness, while a given culture implies some distinctions in its euphemism. This article aims to probe into how the social and culture factors affect Chinese and American death euphemism through a contrastive study in the two languages, analyzing cultural gap from religion, hierarchy, environments, and social customs, etc. Furthermore, this thesis tries to reveal the reality of culture by death euphemism, and then provides a comfortable environment for communications.
Keywords: death euphemism; cultural gap; cultural reasons; contrastive analysis
摘要:死亡委婉语是人类最常见的一种社会文化现象。在中美文化的大背景下，人们对死亡的委婉表达也大相径庭。而这些委婉语在人们的日常交流中起着很重要的角色，并且特定文化的死亡委婉语反映了这一特定文化群体的价值观，宗教信仰和社会习俗。
作为人类社会的基本交际用语，死亡委婉语积淀了丰富的文化内涵。遗憾的是，目前学界对于死亡委婉语背后的文化内涵较为系统的研究则相对较少，主要是基于语用的视角。文化内涵包括宗教、传统道德﹑社会习俗﹑心理因素等。无论是从语义、语用，还是修辞的角度，这些研究都对委婉语动机研究做出了巨大贡献，而且都有很强的阐释力。
存在于每一种语言和文化中的死亡委婉语多多少少都有相似之处，但是，特定的文化总会在其委婉语中突显特别之处。本文通过对比分析，探讨社会和文化因素如何影响中美死亡委婉语的使用，系统地阐述了其间所反映的两国在宗教、制度、生活环境以及社会习俗等方面所存在的差异，旨在更好地了解其背后的社会文化特色，揭示了文化的实质，使人们在文化交流时更加顺畅。
关键词: 死亡委婉语；文化差异；文化成因；对比分析
