英语职业委婉语语义模糊和扬升的隐转喻研究

A Cognitive Study of the Semantic Obscurity and Elevation Mechanism in English Euphemisms for Occupations

从认知语义学的角度出发,运用概念隐喻和转喻理论对英语职业委婉语的语义模糊和扬升机制进行微观分析。分析表明,概念隐喻和转喻在职业委婉语实现委婉的过程中扮演了重要角色。其中,概念转喻借助整体与部分间的同域映射主要实现语义模糊,而概念隐喻则借助相似认知域间的跨域映射主要实现语义扬升。

Based on cognitive semantics,this paper studies the semantic obscurity and elevation mechanism in English euphemisms for occupations.By applying the cognitive metaphor and metonymy theory,we find that conceptual metaphor and conceptual metonymy both play an extremely important role in euphemisms for occupations.With a mapping between the whole and the parts within one domain metonymy mainly works to achieve semantic obscurity,while metaphor mainly serves to achieve semantic elevation with a cross-domain mapping.