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X-PHEMISMS AS NON-LINEAR PHENOMENA

The present paper aims to define the status of x-phemisms as dynamic phenomena. A detailed analysis of the research data taken from English socio-political discourse presented in a range of English-language news sources, such as The Guardian, The Seattle Times, ABC News, The New York Times, English media discourse and dictionaries of Contemporary English has been carried out. The paper finds that x-phemisms are non-linear phenomena. Thus, when distinguishing between euphemisms, dyspemisms and orthopemisms one should take into consideration diachronic meaning change, the previous context, the current context, intention, subject-object relationship. For instance, in particular contexts ethnic pejorative words irrespective of their negative meaning can perform a function of either euphemisms or dysphemisms, which depends on the feelings of similarity or distinction generated by ethnic boundaries and experienced by the speaker. The paper reveals that an ethnic pejorative word is dysphemistic once it refers to the ethnic group the speaker doesn’t belong to, but becomes euphemistic once applied to one’s own ethnic group. This illustrates contextual and pragmatic nature of x-phemisms. The proposed approach to the study of x-phemisms has several empirical and theoretical implications for further research on these phenomena.