【正文】 ar of death, or vice versa. Hence, the prettying up of death and dying bees a linguistic necessity in a civilized emotional munity or society. People may refer to a harmless euphemism, a poetic metaphor like sleep or rest in place of dying. It is no wonder that a nice description on death can be seen in the following :“The loved ones are under the good care of the kind bereavement counselor, after an everlasting cosmetic by the derrma surgeon, they wear a slumber robe, and will be put in a slumber box, then carried to a final resting place, ., a memorial, and terminally go to the happy hunting grounds.” ( Zhu Xinhua amp。 human should conform to his fate and be calm to death since it is natural. As Chuang Tzu mentions in one of his dialogues, “In the beginning we lack not life only, but form. Not form only, but spirit. We are blended in the one great featureless indistinguishable mass. Then a time came when the mass evolved spirit, spirit evolved form, form evolved life. And now life in its turn has evolved death. For not nature only but man’s being has their season, its sequence of spring and autumn, summer and winter. If someone is tired and has gone to lie down, we do not pursue him with shouting and bowling.” (Birch，1965). So when his wife died, Chuang Tzu did not mourn for her but let his friends find him drumming and singing. And he believed that his wife had lain down to sleep for awhile in the Great Inner Room (another place), thus breaking in upon her rest with the noise of lamentation would but show that he knew nothing of nature’s Sovereign Law(the laws of nature). The philosophy of submitting to the will of heaven and being contented with one’s lot is probably the influence of Taoism. So there es such euphemism: 隱化,羽化,氣散,歸道山,etc.(disappear, ascend to heaven and bee an immortal, breathe one’s last, return to the hill, etc.) And to be immortal is the aim of Taoism, so there is such euphemism:升天,跨鶴,仙逝,駕鶴西游. (ascended to heaven, on Crane, to be among the immortal, journey to the west on Crane). Such euphemism reflects human’s wish to be immortal. Death euphemism and social statusDifferent cultures have different sources for their “death euphemism”. China had been a feudal society for more than 2,000 years and the social classes were distinct from each other. Under the deeprooted influence of Confucianism, Chinese made it clear that there should be an order in everything they do, even in death (Li Siguo, 2001). So in their death euphemism, there are different expressions for people in different social classes:“天子死曰崩,諸侯曰薨,大夫曰卒,士曰不祿,庶人曰死.” (the death of emperor to be called “beng” the heaven falls or collapses。 grand master to be called “zu” es to the end, intelligentsia to be called “bu lu” not taking wages forever。s social life. The euphemism for death originated with different ideas. At the end of Middle Age, the famine and plague happened frequently. And Grim Reaper bees the synonym to death. According to Longman Dictionary of English Language and Culture, “The Grim Reaper is often thought of as a skeleton in a cloak with a hood, carrying a scythe to reap his crop” (“death,” def. 1992). During the Renaissance of English, people use ‘a(chǎn) nap’ or ‘sleep’ as the metaphorical expression of death. From the middle age, death is always considered as a master of man. People try to defeat it. Life is like gamble, it never e back if you lose. So there are some euphemistical expressions that originated from gamble. The euphemism of death is evolving with the society developing. It changes with the changing of cultural background and transmits in different history periods. Even in the same history period, people in different social lifestyles use different euphemisms to express the meaning of death.Britain is an island nation which has always been famous on developed seafaring. Many sailors and the nautical jargon eventually bee a part of the universal language. There are many death euphemisms which e from maritime navigation: to be gone to Davy Jones’ locker, to coil up one39。s ropes. Most English and American are sportslovers, they concern about all kinds of sports, and some sports jargon has entered the daily social vocabulary, into the death euphemism. Such as: to be knocked out, to drop the cue, to jump the last hurdle, to run one39。 Silver, C. G. Kind Words: A Thesaurus of Euphemisms. NewYork: Facts On File, Inc., 1990.Oxford Dictionary of Euphemisms. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995. Rawson, Hugh. A Dictionary of Euphemism and Other Doubletalk. New York: Crown Publishers, 1981.Walfson, N. Perspectives:Sociolinguistics and TESOL. Philadelphia: Newbury HouseBub,1989.Wardhaugh, Ronald. An Introduction to Sociolinguistics. 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