从合作原则看英语委婉语的使用(9)

(5) Q: General Naumann said … military targets?
   A: (Cohen): As we indicated the ACTORD was … Serbian forces were really posing a serious threat to several … the cold or from starving. That ACTORD was … innocent people. That ACTORD remains … General Naumann has referred to.
    Let us have a look at another example:
(6) Q: General, … Could you … in the event of a conflict and … in terms of a liaison with the NGOs and …?
   A: Well, their role is…civil-military affairs organizations, … in the CENTCOM theater …
    In the above two question-answer patterns in press conferences we may say that these diplomatic euphemisms violate the Quantity Maxim because they failed to give us the right amount of information we needed or we may also say that they provided less information. By using these euphemisms the speakers like the diplomats and statesmen etc. can avoid mentioning these unpleasant terms or notions like central command and activation order etc. in press conferences.
    Among the euphemisms used in press conferences, we may still find that some of the euphemisms can be regarded as a special case that violate both the Quality Maxim and the Quantity Maxim etc.. Hence in a broad sense we may say that euphemisms that violate the Quality Maxim can also be regarded as a special case that violate the Quantity Maxim because the two maxims are closely related. If a euphemism violates Quality Maxim, it also violates Quantity Maxim to a certain extent. For example, the euphemisms like “possible movement” for “possible military attack” or “possible war”; “brought the world together” mainly refers to those countries led by the USA. Hence from this point of view we may that euphemisms like “possible movement”, “brought the world together” etc. not only violate the Quality Maxim but also violate the Quantity Maxim because to a certain extent they distort the facts and provide less information than people actually need.
5.3 Euphemisms and the Relation Maxim
    As we mentioned before that the Maxim of Relation refers to “Be relevant” and violation of Relation Maxim means that the utterance of a speaker is irrelevant to the conversation or the specific context for some reasons or some purposes. Sometimes we may find English euphemisms are to use irrelevant utterances on the surface to express something that the speakers want to say and cannot say. In fact the implied meaning of the utterances is relevant partially because the formation of English euphemisms abides these formative principles like pleasant-sound principle etc.. For example,
(7) "I approached her very hesitatly.
   "Want to come and play?"
   Piquette looked at me with a sudduen flash of scorn.
   "I ain't a kid," she said.
   Wounded, I stamped angrily away..."[27]
     Here, "I ain't a kid" seems no relationto this conversation. But there implicature meaning is only kids play-- I ain't kid-- I won't play with you. So, it is indirect refuse of communicating. In English “to pass away” is used in a euphemistic sense for “to die” now. The denotation of “to pass away” is “to go away for a time”; while “to die” means “to go away forever”. “To die” is euphemized as “to go away” by violating the Relation Maxim on the surface, in fact, both the two phrases have the relevant meaning to “to go away”. Their difference lies only in the time, one is for a period of time, the other is forever. So when the speaker use “to pass away” to replace “to die”, the hearers may infer the conversational implicature of “to die” from the relevant meaning “to go away”. So with time goes on, it is now almost used as a fixed usage for “to die” in almost all the circumstances.