POLITICAL CORRECTNESS OF ENGLISH EUPHEMISMS

Abstract

The article depicts the usage of euphemisms in the life of society as means of substitution of incorrect, harmful/insulting words. They serve of much help to the speaker as they enable to hide the unpleasant straightforwardness of the utterance. The main sources of investigation have been supplied by the political speeches and articles in the media. Great and thorough attention as well as analysis has been paid to Barack Obama’s public speeches. He abundantly uses euphemisms that depict his personal viewpoint as to the development of American society in a mild, tolerant way. The aim of the article is to analyse and show euphemisms that feature political correctness of the utterance in public speech. The methodological approaches used in the article include the usage of logical method of analysis of scientific sources, descriptive method, the content analysis and comprehensive analysis. The scientific novelty has been revealed via a thorough semantic analysis of euphemisms used in politicians’ public speeches and political articles. The article contains different viewpoints as to the definition of the term «euphemism» provided by both Ukrainian and foreign linguists. The scientists have not reached common agreement as to the definition of the notion, hence their definitions are different. The notion «political correctness» is outlined from a scientific view point and its usage and meaning has been illustrated by numerous examples provided from the politicians’ speeches and political articles. It has been proven that the usage of euphemisms helps the speaker to depict the negative aspects of social, economic, political aspects in a positive way, which is both acceptable and not insulting for the addressee as they are deprived of negative content meaning. The speech of certain politicians is full of standard phrases and expressions that make it sound too complicated for understanding, so comprehensive euphemisms are used instead. To sum up euphemisms are used in a political speech because of the pragmatic reasons, thus making it sound milder, not so impressive for the listener. Euphemisms as means of tolerant expression of speech need further thorough investigation and analysis since they help to conduct human relationships in a friendly, amiable way without misunderstanding and arguments.