A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF RUSSIAN, ENGLISH AND POLISH EUPHEMISMS OF A DELICATE THEME

Abstract

Background. The problem of speech euphemisation has been considering by European and American linguists for more than a century. In Russian linguistics the issue was raised only at the end of the XX century. However, there are no universally recognized criterion of euphemisms, models of euphemism formation and definition of this phenomenon. Interlingual study of euphemisms is at the very beginning. Purpose, materials and methods. This paper aims at investigation and comparison of euphemisms of three contemporary languages, two of which (Russian, Polish) belong to the group of synthetical languages and one (English) belongs to analytical languages. The materials of the investigation are euphemistic words and expressions, presented in the dictionary of Russian euphemisms, the dictionary of Polish euphemisms and in modern dictionaries of English euphemisms. The research focuses on toilet euphemisms. The corpus of analyzed euphemisms amounts to 1179 units. All the units are classified and compared according to the meaning and the formation devices used. Findings. Consistent to previous studies the research offers the modified definition of euphemisms and classification of euphemism-formation patterns. The study shows that the patterns of euphemism-formation in three languages have much in common, though the use of euphemism-formation devices and their frequency may differ in Russian, Polish and English. Contrary to expectations, no evidence is found that the type of language may influence euphemism-formation capacity of the language. Conclusion. In general, common euphemism-formation patterns are likely to be a manifestation of universal cognitive bases for nominative space of language. Significant amount of interlingual euphemisms that are fixed in almost all euphemism-formation patterns in three languages may indicate a certain correlation between the verbal and cognitive structures in different languages. Further study is required to confirm the hypothesis.