汉英禁忌语的禁忌手段分析

Ways of avoiding language taboos in Chinese and English

禁忌语是言语交际中被禁止使用的某些不好的言语。然而交际过程中某些客观存在的事物和理念又不能够避免,因此人们采用了多种手段来禁忌某些言语,从而产生了委婉含蓄的表达方式,形成了委婉语。言语禁忌的手段大致可以分为修辞手段、语法手段和语用手段。

Language taboos are those words or other language units that have been labeled ＂bad＂ or ＂improper＂ thus proposed not to use. But in real language communication, some things or ideas in our daily life have to be expressed. In this case, communicators often try to use an indirect and mild way to take place of those impolite words or sentences. Therefore, euphemisms appear in languages. Generally speaking, there are mainly three ways of avoiding language taboos： rhetorical way, grammatical way and pragmatical way.