NATIONAL AND CULTURAL SPECIFICITY OF INDIRECT STATEMENT (BASED ON AMERICAN ENGLISH)
DOI: 10.23951/1609-624X-2017-11-85-89
The paper focuses on national and cultural peculiarities of indirect euphemistic expressions in American English. The author suggests that euphemism is a strategic communicative device varying within and under the influence of the historic, socio and cultural linguistic context. The major emphasis of the article is the concept of “American football” as a means of understanding American cultural mind set and source of equivocal euphemistic vocabulary. The paper explores some American cultural traits and values (related to sports traditions and rules) that are deeply impressed in mind and influence language choice: individualism, high risks, strategic planning, obsession with technology, competitiveness, religious affiliation, nationalist beliefs and aggressive business behaviour. The article highlights the popularity of American football and sports in the USA that results in the corresponding euphemistic vocabulary generation. Some sports terms borrowed from American football get in general use and are widely employed in political rhetoric and everyday speech. Therefore, American euphemisms are believed to be a class of their own, principally because they involve American realia and appeal to basic American values, thus becoming challenging to decipher for outsiders and at the same time sounding familiar and picturesque to American English speakers. Accordingly, euphemisms under study provide cultural insight and bespeak cultural identity.
Keywords: culture, indirect statement, euphemism, sports term, culture metaphor
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Issue: 11, 2017
Series of issue: Issue 11
Rubric: GERMANIC LANGUAGES
Pages: 85 — 89
Downloads: 826