Euphemisms and dysphemisms in experience construction

The article deals with one of the most topical issues of modern linguistics consisting in identifying semantic units of (im)polite or (un)cultured behavior in terms of euphemism and dysphemism (X-phemism). The authors aim to approach the language analysis of X-phemism from the psychological and empirical point of view focusing on the experiential dynamics of communication rather than logical statics of text. A critique of the way euphemisms and dysphemisms are defined and theorized about in language studies reveals a number of paradoxes incompatible with a truly scientific and conceptually coherent knowledge of the world and its phenomena. It is hypothesized that euphemism and dysphemism are ways of language construction of experience in the unstable dynamics of communicative interactions. These context-dependent interactions effect changes in the stance-taking process and affect the communicator’s construal of words as positive or negative, which is always experientially relative. It follows that one person’s euphemism may be another person’s dysphemism. The hypothesis is proved and explained on the basis of theoretical and methodological tenets of constructivism, relativism and enactivism. Empirical data of research are made up of the filmed and tape-scripted communicative interactions borrowed from the American TV-series Desperate Housewives where the preceding and proceeding lived experience of communicators becomes available for observation and interpretation. The methodological procedure of the investigation is based on the textological analysis of the scripts representing the actors’ interactions ‘on paper’ and empirical observation of the actors’ respective communicative behaviors as shown in the motion picture on the screen. A conclusion is made that X-phemism is a dynamic semantic unit characterized by affective valence and blurred lines between its positive and negative value. Linguists’ classifications of lexical units into those with positive or negative connotations must take into account the situational and experiential variables, i.e. dynamic contextual factors of meaning construction and the lived experience of those who engage in this participatory sense-making. Negative and positive meanings of words are not objective and ontological characteristics that can be deduced from words themselves and predicted before the communicative interaction. Instead, it is when, where and who utters these words that makes them sound good or bad. For example, insulting words may facilitate male bonding and appear evaluatively positive in the men’s construction of experience of each other during an interaction. The authors declare no conflicts of interests.

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