Euphemism comes from Greek, which means "say something nice". Its main feature is to use more abstract and vague concepts or metaphors and commendations, so that the two sides can talk about things they shouldn't say directly in a more indirect way, so that they don't have to be embarrassed to talk about these things. Euphemism is not a unique language phenomenon of Han nationality, but also reflected in the languages of other nationalities. However, there are far more euphemisms in Chinese than in other national languages, especially those about death. When talking about euphemism in China Historical Manuscripts, Mr. Wang Li once said, "? Die? The alias is the most. " [1] Indeed. A Qing and Liang Zhangju listed 19 aliases of "death" in the ninth volume of Wandering Tales. Gong Yanming's Alias of Ancient Death lists 67; Lv Youren and Feng added 186 to Addendum to Alias of Ancient Death. Many aliases of "death" are euphemisms for death. Of course, they only refer to the euphemism of death in ancient Chinese. With the development of the times, the number of death euphemisms is far more than these. What causes this unique linguistic phenomenon in Chinese? We should explore the deep cultural connotation behind the language. First, the spiritual worship of language.
Language was originally a communication tool that occurred and developed simultaneously with labor. However, in ancient times, people did not understand natural phenomena such as life and death, earthquakes, thunder and lightning, volcanic eruptions, and total solar and lunar eclipses. Under the influence of the concept of animism, people think that all kinds of phenomena, including speech phenomena, are caused by the changes of elves. They have magical fantasies about words, and at the same time they have reverence or fear. They think that words have a superhuman magical power, which can not only reduce happiness but also avoid disasters, so that they equate what words represent with the words themselves, that is, they regard the words themselves as blessings. Therefore, in their speech life, they carefully use words related to fate so as not to offend the gods. In this way, the worship of spiritual things in language is produced, and language phenomena such as taboos formed to avoid evil spirits are all from this. [2] (P342) As for "death", it is even more taboo. In fact, people's birth and death are irresistible physiological phenomena. Who hasn't died since ancient times? Regardless of Wei Lai, Han people dare not talk about "death", and even naively think that as long as they don't say the word "death", "death" will not come to them. Therefore, a large number of euphemisms about "death" came into being. Such as "old", "gone", "gone", "gone", "gone", "farewell" and so on. In fact, as the linguist Saussure said, "Language sign is the combination of signifier and signified. Any language symbol has its signifier and signified. Signifier refers to the phonetic form of language, but not the objective things represented by phonetic form. There is no direct or logical connection between them. So what is the relationship between the signifier and the signified of language symbols? Arbitrary? . This is only the result of social customs. " [3] (p171) Language symbols can't have any natural power, let alone any magical power. But the cognitive ability of primitive people is limited. They regard the connection between names and things as intrinsic and inevitable, so they worship language as a spiritual thing. Euphemism of death is a reflection of spiritual worship of language.