maxim of quantity

Euphemism, for a long time, has been discussed by many scholars, such as

Rawson, Leech, etc. in their respective fields of research. Their studies are mainly

focused on three areas: rhetoric, semantic, lexical and dictionary compiling. The

rhetoric view treats euphemism as a figure of speech, closely related to linguistic

taboos. It reveals the information, classification of euphemism and their relation to

taboos.

The semantic point view takes euphemism as an “associative engineering”, i.e.

replacing a word having offensive relationship with another expression, which makes

no overt reference to the unpleasant side of the subject, and may even be a “positive

misnomer” (Leech, 1983:45). The researchers explore the origin and formation of

euphemisms in terms of their semantic features. It largely focuses on the semantic

causes of euphemisms.

Lexical point of view or dictionary compiling is a way widely adopted by many

scholars whose major concern is to collect and categorize euphemisms for dictionaries.

This way mainly deals with the meaning of each euphemism and its relation to other

terms.

Euphemism is a socio-cultural language phenomenon. Socio-linguistists study

the effect of social classes, gender, age, profession, relationship of human beings and

social geography on language. So, this paper will make a research on how some of

these factors influence on euphemisms.

2. Cooperative Principle and Politeness Principle in Euphemism

2.1 Cooperative Principle

In social science generally and linguistics specifically, the cooperative principle

describes how people interact with one another. Cooperative Principle is proposed by

Paul Grice, who has concerned himself with philosophical issues with language. As

phrased by Paul Grice, “Make your contribution such as it is required, at the stage at

which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which

you are engaged.” The principle is intended as a description of how people normally

behave in conversation. In Logic and Conversation, Grice distinguishes it four

categories: Quantity, Quality, Relation, and Manner. (Grice, 1975:48)Under these

four categories, he further provides Maxims which guide the speaker and hearer in

conversations. The followings are the four maxims:

The maxim of quantity: a) make your contribution as informative as required; b)

do not make your contribution more informative than required.

The maxim of quality: Try to make your contribution one that is true. a) do not

say what you believe to be false; b) do not say that for which you lack adequate

evidence.

The maxim of relation: Make your contribution relevant.

The maxim of manner: Be perspicuous, and specifically. a) avoid obscurity; b)

avoid ambiguity; c) be brief; d) be orderly.