Investigating Euphemisms and Their Pragmatic Functions in Iraqi Arabic Facebook-Mediated Communication
Investigating Euphemisms and Their Pragmatic Functions in Iraqi Arabic Facebook-Mediated Communication
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Abstract
Euphemisms are linguistic choices used in place of disagreeable expressions to appear polite and avoid embarrassment, not only in oral or written communications but also in Facebook-mediated ones. This study is carried out to investigate euphemisms, their semantic formations, and their pragmatic functions on Facebook posts and comments by Iraqi Facebook users. Drawing on 68 euphemisms collected through observation technique in a three-month period, the researcher adopted a descriptive qualitative approach, relying on Warren (1992) and Changhuai Lu’s (2004) models. The study concludes that the Iraqi Arabic users of Facebook semantically construct euphemisms using particularisation, implication, metaphor, metonymy, reversal, understatement, and overstatement. It also concludes that these euphemisms perform different pragmatic functions: avoidance, politeness, elegance, and humour, except the disguise function, and that euphemisms are context based, made for particular purposes
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DOI: 10.33899/vp7k3174
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
