Euphemization at Different Levels of Language: Evidence From UK Public Signage

Abstract

The article examines euphemy in UK public signage. The study is based on a mini-corpus of about 300 signs collected in public places around the UK. The authors offer a broader understanding of euphemy positing that euphemy exists not only at the lexical level and thus is represented as words, or lexemes, serving to introduce more socially and culturally appropriate or politically correct notions, or concepts. On the contrary, euphemy can also be found at the level of grammar, style, discourse features of public signage and pragmatics. Half of the public signs in the corpus are prohibitive and directive speech acts, which makes euphemy essential in order to avoid social tension or confrontation in society and to enhance political correctness related to different social, age, cultural and ethnic groups in the UK. Grammatical means of euphemization comprise a wider use of “soft” modal verbs can and may compared to the more rigid must. The incidence of can and may taken together is twice as high as the use of must in the research sample. Lexical means of euphemization of prohibitives and directives are “benevolence” words help, save, support, respect, enjoy, discover, etc. used in formulas of politeness and intended to ameliorate the unpleasant, negative effects of strict prohibition. The use of humour, rhyme, alliteration and allusion makes up the favourable stylistic effects of signage thus facilitating successful communication between two parties: the authorities who issue the signage and the recipients, in many cases children. Euphemization is also presented by specific discourse features: there are signs comprising a number of sentences (in some cases up to 15) explaining the reasons, purpose or consequences of a prohibition, which makes the prohibition more digestible and acceptable for the public. Pragmatic means of euphemy comprise indirect speech acts which express a prohibition or a directive implicitly through an ameliorative or antonymic wording (lexis) or an interrogative overt structure of the utterance (syntax). The finding of the research is that almost each text in the sample presents euphemy expressed by an ensemble of means provided by different levels of language all working together to achieve a perlocutive effect of a public sign. In light of that it can be concluded that euphemisms emerge and function at different levels of language and are not limited to vocabulary, or the level of lexis.