Silaški, N. (2014). Softening the blow – euphemisms and the language of dismissal in today’s...

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Z B O R N I K U Č A S T Draginji Pervaz ENGLESKI JEZIK I ANGLOFONE KNJIŽEVNOSTI U TEORIJI I PRAKSI Novi Sad 2014 Ovaj zbornik objavljuje se u sklopu obeležavanja 60-godišnjice Filozofskog fakulteta. 60 godina širimo znanje!

Transcript of Silaški, N. (2014). Softening the blow – euphemisms and the language of dismissal in today’s...

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Z B O R N I K U Č A S T

Draginji Pervaz

ENGLESKI JEZIKI ANGLOFONE KNJIŽEVNOSTI

U TEORIJI I PRAKSI

Novi Sad2014

Ovaj zbornik objavljuje se u sklopuobeležavanja 60-godišnjice Filozofskog fakulteta.

60 godina širimo znanje!

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Draginji Pervaz

ENGLESKI JEZIKI ANGLOFONE KNJIŽEVNOSTI

U TEORIJI I PRAKSI

Uređivački odbor:

Tvrtko Prćić, izvršni urednikMaja Marković, kourednicaVladislava Gordić Petković

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Novi Sad2014

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Nadežda SilaškiFaculty of Economics, University of BelgradeBelgrade, [email protected]

SOFTENING THE BLOW – EUPHEMISMS AND THE LANGUAGE OF DISMISSAL IN TODAY’S ENGLISH1

Euphemisms are often used to “soften the blow” in the process of dismissal, es-pecially in recent years characterised by massive lay-offs due to the impact of the global financial crisis and the need to mask the harshness of losing a job. In this paper we analyse euphemisms for dismissal in English, focusing particularly on figurative euphemisms which are the result of such cognitive instruments as meta-phor or metonymy. The framework used will be both of Cognitive Linguistics and the theory of euphemism and dysphemism as developed and elaborated by Allan and Burridge (1991). Such an approach will hopefully enable us to demonstrate “the mitigating capacity” of metaphor and metonymy used as a powerful source for euphemistic reference thanks to their ability to hide negative or undesirable aspects of the target domain.

Key words: euphemism, metaphor, metonymy, Cognitive Linguistics, dismissal, English

1. Introduction

As Allan and Burridge (1991: 5) state at the beginning of their famous book, whenever we speak “we have to consider whether what we say is likely to maintain, enhance, or damage our own face, as well as considering the effect of our utterance on others.” In order to avoid a clear and straightforward mention of something which is (or may be) perceived as unwanted, undesirable, offensive or negative we frequently use euphemisms, which traditionally have been regarded as purely linguistic phenomena. Thus Leech (1974: 53) defines a euphemism as “replacing

1 The research was conducted within project no. 178002 Languages and cultures across time and space funded by the Ministry of Education, Science and Technological Development of the Republic of Serbia.

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a word which has offensive connotations with another expression, which makes no overt reference to the unpleasant side of the subject”. However, as “many eu-phemisms are alternatives for expressions Speaker would simply prefer not to use in executing a particular communicative intention on a given occassion or set of occassions” (Allan and Burridge 1991: 12), researchers have also taken into ac-count pragmatic dimensions of euphemisms, “not confining them to their semantic meaning but shifting focus to the role euphemisms play in discourse, i.e. to their discursive dimension” (Silaški 2011: 103). This is clearly manifested in the defi-nition of euphemism given by Allan and Burridge (1991: 11), according to which “it is used as an alternative to a dispreferred expression, in order to avoid possible loss of face: either one’s own face, or, through giving offence, that of the audience, or of some third party” (Allan and Burridge 1991: 11). This definition is based on the assumption that “the default situation for nonhostile social interaction is a mutual expectation that the participants will try to avoid any potential face affront to the others“ (Allan and Burridge 1991: 6). Obviously, the authors define euphe-misms from a pragmatic aspect, claiming that “[t]o speak euphemistically is to use language like a shield against the feared, the disliked, the unpleasant” (Allan and Burridge 1991: 222).

“The feared, the disliked, the unpleasant” unfortunately occurs in many areas of human communication and when referring to such potentially face-threatening phenomena “[l]anguage users resort to euphemistic substitution to mitigate the po-tential dangers of certain taboo words or phrases considered too blunt or offensive for a given social situation” (Fernández 2006b: 11). As Linfoot-Ham (2005: 228) points out, “[t]he need for euphemism is both social and emotional, as it allows dis-cussion of ‘touchy’ or taboo subjects (such as sex, personal appearances or religion) without enraging, outraging, or upsetting other people, and acts as a pressure valve whilst maintaining the appearance of civility.”

In today’s English euphemisms are also used to “soften the blow” in the pro-cess of dissmissal, especially in recent years characterised by massive lay-offs due to the impact of the global financial crisis and the severe consequences it has had on economic situation around the world in terms of the ever-increasing number of the jobless. This in turn has resulted in the need to at least linguistically mask the harshness of the event, both on the part of the employer and the employee: the employer does not want to be responsible for or perceived as doing any damage to the future career of the dismissed, so they prefer to use the expressions which im-ply no personal incompetence or negligence on the part of the employee, whereas the employee wants to minimise the potentially adverse effects of the dismissal in the eyes of the future employer. As the dismissal may bring severe consequences for the life of the dismissed as well as for their family, both parties, the employer and the employee, are motivated to replace blunt and dispreferred expressions to

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refer to the act of dismissing and being dismissed with softer, neutral, sugarcoated phrases which appear to be less unpleasant and more acceptable in today’s society, conceiling or veiling the true nature of the event they are going through.

There are many ways of achieving euphemism in English: through remod-ellings, circumlocutions, clippings, abbreviations, substitutions, mispronuncia-tion, technical jargon, slang, as well as by means of figurative expressions realised through hyperbole, understatement, etc.2 In this paper, however, we focus only on figurative euphemisms for dismissal in English, which are the result of such cog-nitive instruments as metaphor or metonymy. The framework used will be both of Cognitive Linguistics and the theory of euphemism and dysphemism as developed and elaborated by Allan and Burridge (1991). Such an approach would hopefully enable us to demonstrate “the mitigating capacity” (Fernández 2006a: 14) of meta-phor and metonymy used as potent and powerful sources of euphemistic reference thanks to their ability to hide negative, offensive or undesirable aspects of the target domain.

2. Metaphor and metonymy in euphemistic reference

Unlike most classical theories of language where metaphor was regarded pri-marily as a matter of language not thought, Conceptual Metaphor Theory, as orig-inally developed by Lakoff and Johnson (1980), holds that thought has primacy over language – the language we use is only a surface, linguistic manifestation of a deeper conceptual system “in terms of which we both think and act” (Lakoff and Johnson 1980: 3). Metaphor in this theory is viewed as a cross-domain mapping in our conceptual system, i.e. as understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another or as a tightly structured mapping or set of correspondences between two conceptual domains which Lakoff and Johnson term the source and target domains. A concrete and more clearly organised source domain, being more closely related to human physical and bodily experience, is used to understand and talk about a more abstract and a less clearly structured target domain. According to Lakoff and Johnson, metaphorical systematicity “allows us to comprehend one aspect of a concept in terms of another” (1980: 10), which, in turn, necessarily leads to downplaying, neglecting or hiding other aspects of the concept. They state that, “in allowing us to focus on one aspect of a concept (e.g. the battling aspects of ar-gument), a metaphorical concept can keep us from focusing on other aspects of the

2 For a detailed account of these ways of achieving euphemism see Allan and Burridge (1991: 14-20). Although they rather extensively deal with euphemisms based on metaphor and metonymy, they do not explain them from the viewpoint of Cognitive Linguistics, which is the theoretical framework we use in the paper.

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concept that are inconsistent with that metaphor” (Lakoff and Johnson 1980: 10). Therefore, the cross-domain mapping is only partial, because “[w]hen a source do-main is applied to a target, only some (but not all) aspects of the target are brought into focus” (Kövecses 2002: 79). This basic and most relevant property of meta-phors serves as a suitable ground for euphemistic reference to concepts considered too blunt, unpleasant or offensive to be used without any mitigation in the form of linguistic hedging, since metaphors may hide, deny or mitigate those aspects of such concepts which may cause social embarrassment, inconvenience or fear, thus helping highlight and foregorund such aspects of those concepts which are com-forting, less harsh, less upsetting, less insulting, and most importantly, less straight-forward. In such metaphor-based euphemisms, “linguistic expressions in the source domain are used to replace the taboo expressions in the target domain” (Fan 2006: 72). In other words, conceptual metaphor allows us to systematically map the struc-ture of the source domain (euphemism expressions) onto the structure of the target domain (offensive or unpleasant or taboo expressions, which need to be avoided).

As far as metonymy is concerned, many authors claim that it is “a cognitive phenomenon that may be even more fundamental than metaphor” (Panther and Radden 1999: 1), a view which has been reiterated in a number of further volumes on metonymy and metaphor (e.g. Dirven and Pörings 2002, Barcelona 2003, etc.). While metaphor includes a projection from one conceptual domain onto another conceptual domain, metonymy, on the other hand, is according to the standard cog-nitive linguistic view understood as a conceptual projection whereby one domain is partially understood in terms of another domain included in the same experien-tial domain (Barcelona 2000b). It is, therefore, often understood as an intradomain phenomenon. Because of the difference in the number of domains used for the conceptual mapping between metonymy and metaphor (one versus two domains of experience), metonymy is said to be based on contiguity, i.e. on elements that are parts of the same idealised cognitive model,3 while metaphor is based on similarity or predictability between two domains of experience.When it comes to metony-my, this allows the relevant parts of the same idealised cognitive model to stand for the whole scenario or event, because “if categories are intentionally defined by a set of properties, these properties are necessarily part of the category” (Rad-den and Kövecses 1999: 35). Which particular property of the ICM will function metonymically depends, according to Radden and Kövecses (1999), on a number of cognitive principles, e.g. typical over non-typical (when “typical members of a category are [...] picked out when a category as a whole is described” [Radden

3 According to Lakoff (1987: 68), idealised cognitive models are primary ways in which human beings organise knowledge. They may consist of a number of entities forming a coherent whole in our experience of the world as they co-occur repeatedly.

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and Kövecses 1999: 45]). Although disagreements still arise among cognitive lin-guists concerning many unresolved issues surrounding metonymy as a cognitive mechanism,4 it has now been widely accepted that “metonymy plays a crucial part in the motivation of numerous conceptual metaphors, in prototype categorization, in certain types of symbolism and iconicity, in pragmatic referencing, in blending and conceptual integration, in gestures, etc.” (Barcelona, Benczes, and de Mendoza Ibáñez 2011: 2). In addition, metonymy plays an important role in euphemistic reference, inducing a number of expressions which are grounded in this cognitive mechanism, serving the purpose of mitigating reality by hiding offensive or un-pleasant aspects of phenomena.5 This is, inter alia, done by the deliberate violation of default cognitive principles such as clarity (clear over less clear) and relevance (central over peripheral).6

3. Data collection and methodology

The analysis which follows was conducted on a sample of about 150 expres-sions for involuntary termination of employment compiled from a number of web sites dealing with euphemistic reference to dismissal. Such expressions were care-fully examined by the author in order to establish whether a particular euphemism is achieved through either metaphor or metonymy. The expressions which we intu-itively felt provided instantiations of metaphor or metonymy were extracted from the original list of euphemisms. In order to check the figurativeness of the selected expressions, we applied a somewhat adapted method known as Metaphor Identi-fication Procedure (MIP) proposed by the Pragglejaz Group (2007), a tool which has already been proved to be suitable for this purpose. Finally, we classified the selected expressions according to the conceptual metaphor or metonymy they lin-guistically instantiate.

4 See Barcelona et al. (2011: 2) for a list of these issues. Some answers to the questions posed here are offered in Barcelona (2011).

5 Although Allen and Burridge (1991: 17-18) point out several metonymic relations responsible for the achievement of euphemism (e.g. general-for-specific or part-for-whole, together with a num-ber of subclasses), they choose not to refer to them as such, albeit noting that “these would tradition-ally have been called metonymies” (1991: 18). Still, the authors do not analyse euphemistic reference achieved through metonymy from a cognitive linguistic perspective. See Portero Muñoz (2011) for an account of metonymy as a tool in creating euphemisms.

6 See Portero Muñoz (2011: 141). This author illustrates the violation of cognitive principles for euphemistic purposes by the euphemistic word redundancy, which “focuses on a precondition of the ‘dismissal ICM’. The intended target is, therefore, not clearly accessible, so the metonymy also violates the communicative principle of clarity. In doing so, the intended camouflage effect of euphemisms is achieved.”

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The euphemisms for dismissal dealt with in this paper are diverse in the sense that they belong to several levels of formality, i.e. some of them are slang words while others belong to a rather formal register of employment contracts. However, no difference will be made in the level of formality between these euphemistic expressions. Our specific interest in the paper lies in exploring their figurativeness achieved through metaphor and metonymy as the main mechanisms of mitigating the said and camouflaging the true meaning of the employed expressions.

4. Metaphor in euphemisms for dismissal

From the point of the employee, the termination of the employment may occur for two main reasons: (1) when the employee’s actions are the cause of dismissal (e.g. poor work performance, absenteeism, incompetence, negligence, misconduct, etc.), or (2) when dismissal is due to circumstances beyond the employee’s control (e.g. generally poor economic conditions, business slow-down, cost-cutting mea-sures, relocation, mergers and acquisitions, outsourcing, etc.). In both cases, eu-phemistic reference may be useful in the protection of face of the parties involved. Thus, as Holder (2003: 211, cited in Portero Muñoz 2011: 146) points out, “[m]indful of public criticism or possible court proceedings, employers are selective in their language when announcing the dismissal either of a large number of staff or of a single senior employee”, which is why numerous euphemisms have been coined lately to mask the unpleasant event of losing a job and making people re-dundant. In addition, metaphor and metonymy play a clearly ideological role in the construction of dismissal discourse in English, since they shape the business world by deploying a situation-adapted and carefully selected set of camouflaging euphemistic words and expressions, hiding and downplaying and/or foregrounding and highlighting the aspects of unemployment that the individual and/or the organ-isation choose to focus on.

We have found that a number of conceptual metaphors are used for this pur-pose in euphemistic reference.

From the point of view of the employer, redundancies or, to use a more popular expression from (mainly) American English – lay-offs – which gained popularity during the recent global financial crisis, are frequently referred to by using a con-ceptual metaphor lean is healthy, i.e. fat is unhealthy, verbally realised by means of a number of metaphorical expressions. Thus, when employers make people re-dundant, they talk of downsizing, rightsizing, slimming down, delayering, excess reduction, or force shaping, when they conceptualise the company they own or run as a human body in need of removing excess of fat in the form of the employees who are thus trimmed, cut back, or rationalised, in order for the company to become

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fit and ready to face the challenges of the changed economic circumstances.7 The lean is healthy and the company is a human body metaphors are frequently inter-twined with another metaphor, orientational in nature, less is down, which is clearly manifested in metaphorical expressions for dismissal such as workforce reduction, reduce the headcount, personnel surplus reduction, as well as in a fair number of expressions using the prefix de-, with a clearly cognitively based semantic content, in Langacker’s (1991) terms, meaning “departing from the original state”. This is manifested in expressions such as decruit, defund, dehire, de-select, destaff, which are either antonyms of the original expressions used for hiring people (a case in point is decruit/recruit, grounded on the military business is war metaphor),or those that belong to the people are resources metaphor.

Another group of metaphor-based euphemistic expressions relies on the com-pany is a building metaphor, in which human resources are conceptualised as part of the structure on which the organisation is standing. Thus, any redundancy is metaphorically structured as jeopardising the balance of the corporate structure, which calls for the immediate correction or adjustment of the number of personnel to the needs of the company. This is evidenced in euphemistic expressions such as personnel realignment, resource reallocation, workforce imbalance correction, etc.

From the point of view of the dismissed employee, it is of the utmost impor-tance to present the act of dismissal to a prospective employer as something which happened beyond their control, i.e. something which was an almost voluntary ac-tivity, done deliberately, especially as a means of improving one’s career. Thus, metaphorical expressions for dismissal in this case tend to be based on the career is a journey metaphor because, as Deignan claims (2005: 17), “[m]ajor life events are talked about as landmarks along a journey, and developments in someone’s career or personal life are talked about as physical progress towards a destination”. This is clearly manifested in metaphorical expressions such as career transition, be in transition, be transitioned, be between the jobs, negotiate a departure, which are all euphemistic but metaphorical at the same time.

Finally, the relationship metaphor is frequently used to stress loyalty and gen-uine commitment of the employee to the company. Thus, when dismissed, employ-ees and employers alike talk of involuntary separation, using a host of metaphor-ical expressions which describe the “breaking-up” between the two parties which may have a long-standing relationship, such as free up for the future, let go, release, separate, etc.

Depending on which particular aspect of a concept they hide or highlight, met-aphors serve as a powerful means of euphemism. Furthermore, “[i]f metaphors

7 See Silaški (2012) for a detailed account of the downsizing metaphor used in corporate disco-urse.

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are carefully selected, they can influence employees’ thinking, feelings, and their construction of reality in ways that facilitate organizational transformation. They can initiate the process by triggering a perceptual shift, the choice of metaphors in-fluencing the direction, interpretations of, and feelings about the shift” (Sackmann, 1989: 468). We have seen that this shift in the perception of phenomena surround-ing employment also refers to the perception of dismissal in the eyes of both the dismissed employee and the public in general.

5. Metonymy in euphemisms for dismissal

Using their own terminology, which thoroughly differs from the one used by cognitive linguists, Allan and Burridge (1991) point out the employment of gen-eral-for-specific and part-for-whole euphemisms, referring to them as one-to-one substitutions, which “illustrate meaning-extension, and are arguably figurative” (1991: 17). Gradečak-Erdeljić (2005: 298, quoted in Portero Muñoz 2011: 144), however, using a clearly cognitive linguistic framework, demonstrates the use of a specific metonymy, part of the scenario-for-the whole scenario, in creating euphemisms, especially in political discourse, basically also emphasising the part-for-whole metonymy. Namely, Gradečak-Erdeljić (2005: 287, quoted in Portero Muñoz 2011: 144) claims that this particular type of metonymic relationship “(re)directs the attention of the receiver of the communicated message towards the more marginal aspects of the scenario which represents certain [sic] political situation”. This is, actually, how metonymy generally functions for the purpose of euphemism: the selection of one particular part of the ICM inevitably leads to downplaying oth-er, perhaps unwanted and undesirable, parts of the ICM.

Portero Muñoz (2011: 146) deals with two types of metonymic relationships which work as euphemisms: action for result and result for action. Both meton-ymies belong to a more broadly defined part of the event for the whole event me-tonymy. Namely, as the author convincingly evidences, expressions such as head-count management, headcount realignment and personnel realignment, all mean-ing ‘dismissing staff’, “are all based on the metonymy action for result, since the number of employees will be reduced as a result of the processes of adjustment, management or realignment, which avoids mentioning an unpleasant fact” (2011: 146). In these and similar expressions, metonymy helps in highlighting what comes before the actual act of dismissing, not the act of dismissing itself, which is now perceived as a mere result or unintended consequence of the original action. Portero Muñoz gives more examples of the action for result metonymy in euphemistic expressions for dismissal: resource reallocation, contract extension decline, per-sonnel surplus reduction, workforce rationalization, staff release and workforce im-

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balance correction. As we have already used some of these expressions to explain the functioning of metaphor as a cognitive instrument, it is obvious that metonymy and metaphor are so closely intertwined that many metaphors actually derive from metonymies and it is not always easy to determine which conceptual instrument primarily causes euphemism.

The opposite metonymy, result for action, emphasising within the dismissal ICM the perceived positive outcomes of unemployment such as getting a chance for career advancement, actually mitigates the harshness of losing a job and focuses on the results of the act of dismissal (see Portero Muñoz 2011:146), thus clearly functioning euphemistically. The focus on the outcome serves as a distractor from the original act, directing attention instead to the next step in the dismissed em-ployee’s career. Some of the expressions which may be put into this category are the following: career alternative enhancement, career transition, early retirement opportunity, career change opportunity, etc. The result for action metonymy also functions as a mitigating instrument in expressions like pursue other interests, pur-sue new career, pursue other opportunities, seek fresh challenges, even spend more time with your family or rethink your future, where the focus is on the “opportu-nities” and “challenges” allegedly offered to the employee by actually dismissing them.

The metonymy in which a whole ICM is accessed via one of its parts also works in euphemistic expressions for dismissal such as receive/get a pink slip, get the boot, show the door, etc. Namely, in the past companies in the United States used to dismiss employees by distributing notices printed on pink slips of paper, so in time the expression “pink slip” began to be associated with dismissal, func-tioning metonymically as well as euphemistically to refer to the act of losing a job. Getting the boot and being shown the door also involve metonymy. Both the boot and the door are parts of the dismissal ICM, since the former stands for kicking therefore being expelled from the position/company, whereas the latter stands for the act of being forced to leave (in this case, a company one is working for).

6. Conclusion

In this paper an attempt has been made to analyse figurative euphemisms for dismissal in English, which are the result of metaphor or metonymy as cognitive instruments. We have hopefully shown and illustrated how these cognitive instru-ments may be used as tools of euphemistic reference to talk about an unpleas-ant phenomenon in contemporary society – dismissal. The deliberate use of vague language, based on metaphor and metonymy, enables the parties involved in the process of dismissal to create “mutual consideration” (Allan and Burridge 1991: 6)

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by, firstly, ameliorating the pain people feel when they lose their job, and secondly, camouflaging the harsh truth behind the metaphorical or metonymical veil, or, more bluntly put, distorting it.

As for the suggestions for future research, it would be useful to conduct a comparative analysis of euphemisms used in dismissal vocabulary as an avoidance strategy in several languages, including Serbian, to establish whether different soci-eties pay equal attention to euphemistic reference to one of the most painful events in someone’s life – being dismissed. Such an analysis would be particularly fruitful if it was carried out contrastively in languages spoken in high-context and low-con-text cultures to establish whether we conventionally tend to deny unpleasant and frightful experiences and whether this inevitably shows in the linguistic realisations of human thoughts in general or only in the English language.

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ić (eds.) The First International Conference on English Studies English Lan-guage and Anglophone Literatures Today (ELALT)(Novi Sad, 19 March 2011) Proceedings. Novi Sad: Faculty of Philosophy, 313-325.

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KAKO UBLAŽITI UDARAC – EUFEMIZMI I JEZIK OTPUŠTANJA S POSLA U SAVREMENOM ENGLESKOM JEZIKU

Rezime

Eufemizmi se često koriste da bi „ublažili udarac” u procesu dobijanja otkaza, posebice poslednjih godina koje se odlikuju brojnim otpuštanjima zbog uticaja svetske ekonomske krize, kao i potrebe da se barem jezički zamaskiraju teškoće koji proističu iz gubitka posla. U radu analiziramo eufemistične izraze za gubitak posla u engleskom jeziku, usredsređujući se naročito na figurativne eufemizme, koji su rezultat dejstva kognitivnih instrumenata kao što su metafora i metonimi-ja. Teorijski okvir koji koristimo jesu kognitivna lingvistika i teorija eufemiza-ma i disfemizama autora Alana i Baridžove (Allan and Burridge 1991). Ovakav pristup će nam, nadamo se, omogućiti da ukažemo na „ublažujuću sposobnost” metafore i metonimije kao moćnih izvora eufemističkog izražavanja zahvaljujući njihovoj osobini da prikriju negativne i nepoželjne aspekte ciljnog domena.

Ključne reči: eufemizmi, metafora, metonimija, kognitivna lingvistika, otpušta-nja, engleski

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CIP - Каталогизација у публикацији Библиотека Матице српске, Нови Сад

811.111(082) 821.111.09(082)

ENGLESKI jezik i anglofone književnosti u teoriji i praksi [Elektronski izvor] : zbornik u čast Draginji Pervaz / urednici Tvrtko Prćić, Maja Marković, Vladislava Gordić Petković, Predrag Novakov, Zoran Paunović, Ivana Đurić Paunović, Ana Halas, Bojana Jakovljević. - Novi Sad : Filozofski fakultet, 2014.

Način dostupa (URL):http://digitalna.ff.uns.ac.rs/sadrzaj/2014/978-86-6065-276-0 . - Opis zasnovan na stanju na dan: 24.10.2014. - Radovi na srp. i engl. jeziku. - Rezimei na engl. jeziku uz pojedine radove. - Bibliografija.

ISBN 978-86-6065-276-0

a) Енглески језик - Зборници b) Енглеска књижевност - ЗборнициCOBISS.SR-ID 290684423

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