Abstract: Euphemism is a typical and common cultural phenomenon in both Chinese and English communities, which has a long standing history. Death euphemism, which plays a vital role in linguistics, is an important component of euphemism. The thesis describes Chinese death euphemisms and English death euphemisms respectively and makes a contrastive analysis of death euphemisms in Chinese and English, which mainly based on three aspects, namely, religious beliefs, social customs and social value. From these, we can roughly understand the difference between Chinese and western culture.   

Key Words: “Death” euphemism; cross-culture; difference

CONTENTS

Abstract

中文摘要

1.Introduction1

2.Literature review.2

  2.1 The development of “death” euphemism

3. Classification of euphemisms3

3.1 Negative euphemism

  3.2 Positive euphemism

4. A contrastive analysis between Chinese and English Euphemisms.4

4.1 Different social classes

  4.1.1 Emperors

  4.1.2 Scholars

  4.1.3 Common people  

4.2 Different social values

4.2.1 Heroes and soldiers

  4.2.2 Thieves and bad guys

  4.3 Different Religious beliefs

4.3.1 Influence of Taoism, Buddhism and Islamism

4.3.2 Influence of Christianity

5. Conclusion9

Bibliography.10

Acknowledgements11