Analysis of Japanese Euphemisms from the Perspective of Metonymy

Abstract

This paper probes into the formation mechanism of euphemism in Japanese referring to metonymy cognitive model. And the result shows that metonymy is an important way to generate Japanese euphemism. In the process of euphemism replacing taboos, the correlation between the source domain (euphemism) and the target domain (taboo) is the key factor. People apply this correlation to language expression; replacing direct, vulgar claims with indirect, implicit expressions. There are many researches from the traditional semantics and pragmatics. However, this paper makes a further analysis of Japanese euphemism from the perspective of metonymy cognition. Keywords—Japanese; Euphemism; taboo words; metonymy