5.4 Violation of Manner Maxim
Violation of Manner Maxim means giving obscure and ambiguous information etc.. Sometimes under the communicative circumstances, the speaker, in order to avoid mentioning unpleasant and embarrassed things in a direct way, say something obscurely and ambiguously, then the hearers should carefully infer the conversational implicature of the speaker and what is their real intentions and meaning according to the specific context. So we may find many euphemisms tend to violate the Maxim of Manner so as to achieve the mild, agreeable, roundabout and pleasant-sound effects.
We can also take the following as examples to illustrate how euphemisms violate the Manner Maxim. "A educator cannot say a student is lazy, idle, stupid, or clever. Instead of them is educationally and socially disadvantaged groups, underachieved, those on the lower end of the ability-scale, high verbal- ability subjects, disadvantaged home enviornments, underprivileged child."[28] Obviously, these words violates Manner Maxim o f being brief.
Another example, "Perhaps you had better get your affairs in order." This is a notion of death from the doctor. it's wordy but not unnecessary. one-way-ticket is for die. It reflect one's experience and cognition.
6.Conclusion
As we stated earlier, euphemism is one of the important and universal linguistic phenomena. Due to the special characteristics like substitution, indirectness etc. it is becoming one of the main communicative approaches This thesis has attempted to study the euphemistic expressions used in the question-answer patterns from the perspective of pragmatics.
The article is an overview of the functions and communicative functions of euphemism, and from the pragmatic analysis of the materials, it can be seen clearly that the use of euphemisms basically violate the Quality Maxim, the Quantity Maxim, and the Manner Maxim of the Cooperative Principle and the frequency of violating the Quality Maxim is the highest among the three ones. That is to say, the euphemisms used in the question-answer patterns generally do not violate the Relation Maxim of the Cooperative Principle.
There is an old saying in English: Necessity is the mother of invention. The creation of euphemisms also cannot depart from people’s needs of them. People need euphemisms for social communication, to euphemize the taboo, to show their politeness and to disguise. As a sociolinguistic phenomenon, the formation of euphemisms is the result of the combination of various social psychological factors and pragmatic factors.
Studies on euphemisms from a pragmatic perspective reveal how euphemisms flout the Cooperative Principle so as to obey the Politeness Principle in communication and how factors from their sociocultural and communicational context influence their application in communication. Any change of one or more factors of a communication event, will have an effect on our decision of whether to use euphemisms. The expressive euphemisms play a non-fungible role in communication. It is euphemism that makes language more powerful, magical and pleasant. People’s speech does reflect their background, their activities, and the values they hold, therefore, we can learn much about the English people by looking at their use of euphemisms. The studies on English euphemisms can not only help to develop intercultural communicative competence, but also enlighten English language learning and teaching. Therefore, multidisciplinary, multi-angle, and multi-level studies on euphemisms are necessary for English learners to understand the English history and society and communicate with native English speakers better. There are still a lot in this field waiting to be explored, and euphemisms deserve more attention and comprehensive studies.