Euphemism about "lying" in English and Arabic : a sociolinguistic study

Abstract EN

This paper deals with displays a set of "euphemistic expressions for the human quality of "lying" in English and Arabic which has been selected to be analyzed by relying on three distinct models namely, Burridge (2012), Salih (2017) and Laili (2012).

According to the mentioned approaches, this paper tends to uncover the euphemistic expression in both English and Arabic in terms of its lexical meaning, function, form, and the devices used in its formulation.

In addition, this paper shows the differences and similarities between English and Arabic of how to formulate the euphemistic expressions of the human quality of lying "linguistically" and how to employ them "socially".

To achieve the above aims, the paper hypothesizes that 1) The purpose behind the use of euphemistic expressions for lying is similar in English and Arabic 2) Some functions are used the most, according to the expected function of each expression 3) Forms of euphemisms vary depending on the amount of words used to express them 4) In both English and Arabic, particular devices in formulating euphemisms are more used than others.

The most important conclusions that the paper has come up with are: 1) the reasons behind the use of euphemisms, which are "preventing offense, replacing bad words and cover unpleasant facts" are similar in both English and Arabic 2) English exemplifies euphemisms in a less way than Arabic 3) Both English and Arabic use a large number of different euphemistic expressions for the quality of "lying".