Abstract: Desperate Housewives, a currently well-known American TV series, is a comic series with respect to the private lives of Bree, Lynette, Gabrielle, Susan and other homemakers living in Wisteria Lane. And it created spectacular breakthroughs in rapid succession when it broadcasted in 2004. Therefore this comic series is appropriate to be used to do some linguistic research. The television series Desperate Housewives is taken as the research material to study the rhetorical features，such as simile, metaphor, hyperbole and female language features. In order to help the audience have a better understanding of the TV series, some translation strategies are explored too in different context.

Key words: Desperate Housewives; rhetorical features; female language features; translation strategy

CONTENTS

Abstract

摘要

1. Introduction1

2. Literature Review.1

3. Language Features of Desperate Housewives2

3.1 Rhetorical Features of Desperate Housewives

3.1.1 Simile

3.1.2 Metaphor

3.1.3 Hyperbole

3.1.4 Personification

  3.2 Lexical Level

3.2.1 Intensifiers

3.2.2 Extravagant Adjectives

3.2.3 Expletives

3.3 Syntactic Level

3.3.1 Tag Question

3.3.2 Euphemism

4. Translation Strategies8

  4.1 Literal Translation

  4.2 Free Translation

  4.3 Omission

4.3.1 Omission of Pronoun

4.3.2 Omission of Preposition

4.3.3 Omission of Associated Word

5. Conclusion.11

Bibliography12

Acknowledgements.13