从合作原则看英语委婉语的使用

　　They can conceal the things people fear most —death, the deador the supernatural. Euphemisms can also eliminateunhappiness, embarrassment and fear etc. so as to relievepeople psychologically.

　　3.2 PolitenessPoliteness is another very important function thateuphemisms serve in social life. "Some of the euphemisms areused to avoid crudeness and indecency for the sake of a politeconversation."[15] Grice formulated Cooperative Principle ofutterance in which the Maxim of Manner was defined as “Beperspicuous and specific; To avoid obscurity; To avoidambiguity; To be brief and to be orderly.” The roundaboutnature of euphemisms goes against the Maxim of Manner, whichcan only be fairly explained well by Leech’s PolitenessPrinciple “Approbation Maxim: minimize dispraise of other,maximize praise of other”. In other words, euphemisms are tominimize impolite expressions and maximize polite expressions.

　　3.3 DisguiseBesides the two functions of euphemisms mentioned above,there is still another one more important function at work ineuphemistic communication, namely, the Disguise Function. Herewe mean that because of the vagueness of euphemisms, it hasbecome a very important tool for political leaders or thediplomats or statesmen to distort the facts or and present afalse picture of peace and prosperity and to beautify whateverthe authority have done. For example, in the Iraq War, theyuse “Operation Iraqi Freedom” for beautifying their militaryinvasion, “possible movement” refers to military attack, “airoperation” or “air strikes” for air attack, “enter the war” toshow their reluctance to fight the war etc. and we may findmany such kind of these euphemisms in press conferences. Themost important and ultimate function or purpose of the use ofdiplomatic euphemisms in press conferences is to disguise orbeautify their invasive essence or other evil actions or theseparation of words from truth. In American and Britishsocieties nowadays, diplomatic euphemisms are always purposelydevised to disguise scandals in wars and politics,deliberately invented to beautify lowly occupations andexcessively inflated to promote sales in advertisement.