A Gender Based Study on the Use of Euphemistic Strategies Among Algerians (original) (raw)
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Effects of gender and degree of formality on the use of euphemistic strategies in Iraqi Arabic
Humanities & social sciences communications, 2023
Although euphemism has been studied in many Arabic dialects, it has not yet received due attention in Iraqi Arabic (IA). This study investigates the use of euphemistic strategies by IA speakers and the effect of gender and degree of formality on the use of these strategies. In order to achieve these objectives, a discourse completion test (DCT) was developed and distributed to 160 (80 males and 80 females) Iraqi university students. The data were analysed quantitively and qualitatively using strategies adopted from a number of previous frameworks. The findings show that the participants used a variety of euphemistic strategies, with the deletion strategy being the most frequently used when talking about the topic of death, the fuzzy words strategy for the topic of mental illness, and the implication strategy for the topic of obesity. The analysis also revealed that the degree of formality plays a key role in the use of euphemistic strategies in the topic of mental illness and that gender plays an effective role in the use of euphemistic strategies in all three topics.
Euphemistic strategies in Algerian Arabic and American English
ExELL, 2021
This study aims to explore the use of euphemistic strategies by Algerians and Americans when dealing with three unpleasant topics: death, lying, and disease. It also examines the effect of degree of formality on the use of euphemistic strategies. To achieve this objective, a discourse completion task (DCT) was distributed to 21 Algerians and 21 Americans. The data were analysed using SPSS. The data analysis revealed that there are some differences and similarities between the two groups. The euphemistic strategies used by the Americans when they deal with death topics are synonyms and part for the whole. The Algerians use part for the whole, overstatement, and synonyms when they deal with death. Regarding the topic of lying, the Americans employ strategies of understatement and deletion, whereas the Algerians use understatement and metaphor. As for the topic of disease, the Americans use vagueness, and the Algerians use vagueness, metaphor, and deletion. These findings reveal that b...
An intercultural study of euphemistic strategies used in Saudi Arabic and American English
Indonesian Journal of Applied Linguistics, 2018
People often use euphemistic utterances or expressions to avoid offensive or tabooed topics, to make them more implicit and considerate. This paper explores the euphemistic strategies used in Saudi Arabic and American English. The sample of this study includes 145 college students (78 Saudis and 67 Americans). A questionnaire adopted from Rabab’ah and Al-Qarni (2012) was used to collect the data of the present study. The results revealed various strategies used by the participants, such as deletion, synonyms, metaphor, understatement, part-for-whole, overstatement, and jargons. The most frequent strategies used by the Saudis were ‘part-for-whole’, ‘understatement’, and ‘general- for-specific’. The American participants tended to use ‘taboo words’, ‘general-for-specific’ and ‘synonyms’ more frequently than the other strategies. The findings also showed that there is no relationship between strategy choice and gender. The findings suggest that Saudi Arabic seems to use euphemistic str...
Euphemism in Saudi Arabic and British English
This paper investigates euphemism strategies used in Saudi Arabic and English. It shows that there are some similarities and differences, which can be attributed to cultural and religious beliefs and values. The strategies of euphemism found in the Saudi responses are 'part-for-whole', 'overstatement', 'understatement', 'deletion', 'metaphor', 'general-for-specific', and 'learned words and jargons'. The British participants employed 'understatement', 'deletion', 'learned words and jargons', 'metaphors', and 'general-forspecific'. This indicates that Saudi Arabic seems to have more ways of expressing euphemisms. The study also reveals that there is no relationship between euphemism strategy choice and gender. Another significant finding is that the Saudis and the British resort to taboos, when handling death and lying, but hardly ever for bodily functions. Euphemistic language, like language in general, is influenced by its users' cultural and religious beliefs, life-styles, and norms. The study suggests that increasing second/foreign language learners' awareness of euphemism is essential for intercultural communication.
SOFT-BOILED SPEECH: A CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS OF EUPHEMISMS IN ALGERIAN AND JORDANIAN ARABIC
The present contrastive study is geared mainly towards probing into the euphemistic language that Algerian and Jordanian Arabic speakers resort to when certain tabooed topics and concepts are brought to the fore. Intriguingly, such an analysis was done in the light of Brown and Levinson's Politeness Theory. To this end, the data were elicited by dint of two questionnaires which were prepared by first collecting the needed euphemisms from the native speakers of the two dialects under scrutiny. The first one was handed to a randomly chosen sample of 100 Algerian BA students of English at the University of Mohammed Seddik Ben Yahia, Jijel. The second one, however, was given to a randomly chosen sample of 100 Jordanian BA students of English at the University of Jordan. The findings indicate that euphemism is both a linguistic as well as a cultural phenomenon. Accordingly, despite highlighting some similarities between the two cultures under scrutiny in the use of euphemistic terms and expressions, one to one correspondence does not exist. Therefore, taking cognizance of euphemisms in different cultures is a sine qua non for facilitating intercultural communication.
This study measures the extent to which Arab EFL learners are aware of euphemistic expressions related to two areas, namely, courtesy and physical appearance and whether they are able to recognise them in context. The study also attempts to investigate whether the participants' gender and English proficiency level may play a role in their use of euphemism in their day-to-day lives. For the purposes of the study, we developed a multiple-choice test in which the participants were asked to choose the suitable answer out of four choices. The contextualized sentences used in the test were adapted from the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) to suit the participants’ English proficiency level. Results revealed that Arab EFL learners had little awareness of euphemistic expressions in English. Also, the participants' English proficiency level had little effect on their use of euphemistic expressions. However, the participants' gender played a significant role in their performance on the test. In particular, the female participants were significantly more aware of euphemistic expressions than the males. The study concluded with some pedagogical implications and recommendations for further research.
2014
ABSTRACT This research paper sheds light on the dark side of Algerian culture in relation to language use through investigating linguistic taboos and euphemistic usage. It shows that the attitudes of Algerian speakers are linked to certain socio-cultural and psychological factors including the social norms of the society, the social upbringing of its individuals and the social environment in which they get in contact in addition to their identity construction and other parameters. It also shows that Algerian people have developed a rich vocabulary which includes euphemistic substitutions. These substitutions are the results of societal, psychological and cultural pressures. In fact, euphemisms and linguistic taboos represent a wealth vocabulary of Algerian dialects and, henceforth, they provide a fertile soil for researchers in dialectology and sociolinguistics, although not much scholarly ink has been spilled on by Algerian investigators in this field of research. To these ends, we have relied on many research instruments including a questionnaire and an interview. Thus, the outcomes of this study show that the percentages of both taboos and euphemistic usage are nearly equal, although statistical analysis of the questionnaire reveals that the respondent’s attitudes towards taboos are highly positive. The results also show that Algerian people try to discuss taboo topics in single sex groups depending on their age and gender. Lastly, these research findings prove that sex has remained as the most tabooed topic, whereas death is also handled with care in Algerian society. KEYWORDS: Linguistic Taboos, Euphemistic Strategies, Attitudes, Algerian Culture and Language, Tlemcen Speech Community
To communicate with other people, a person has to select the appropriate words as well as the appropriate speech strategy. One of the strategies is euphemism which is used to minimize any face threatening. The aim of this paper is to shed light on how people use euphemism while communicating with each other. Two Saudi regional dialects were selected to be described on how speakers use euphemism to communicate to talk about death, sex, body parts and bodily functions. The description of the two dialects indicates that the speakers have the same intention of using euphemism to avoid being impolite and too direct when talking about death, sex, body parts and bodily functions. Besides, it is found that speakers of these two dialects are inclined to use some other strategies such as phonemic replacement, compounding, derivation and deletion.
EUPHEMISM AND DYSPHEMISM IN ENGLISH WITH REFERENCE TO IRAQI ARABIC
Journal For College Of Education For Humanities/ Tikrit University/ Iraq, 2017
This paper deals with euphemism and dysphemism as two contradictory linguistic phenomena. The first is used as a shield which attempts to protect both speaker and hearer (by concealing or veiling something unpleasant or offensive), while the second is used as a weapon to attack the addressee (by using an offensive, impolite or degrading language). Euphemism is making something sound better, while dysphemism is making something sound worse. In the theoretical part of the study, we attempt to investigate the relationship between euphemism and other linguistic phenomena, such as taboo, tact, politeness and face theory, on the one hand, and the relationship between dysphemism, impoliteness and taboo on the other hand. In the practical part, selected samples of both euphemisms and dysphemisms from Iraqi Arabic (IA) are located, discussed and analyzed. The results of the discussion and analysis of the samples shape up the conclusions we arrive at…