Study on the Similarities and Differences of Chinese Culture and Thai Culture from the Euphemism of “Death” in China and Thailand

DOI

10.2991/assehr.k.201215.363How to use a DOI?

Keywords

euphemism, death, cultural similarities and differences

Abstract

Language taboos are the most fundamental reason for euphemism. Since ancient times, “death” has been the most taboo word for people. Under normal circumstances, people avoid talking about death, and believe that the greatest misfortune for a person is death. Therefore, they always avoid the word “death” in language communication and try to replace it with related words. In the Chinese and Thai culture, the Chinese and Thai people also use metaphors, metonymy, euphemisms and other rhetorical methods in their own language to implicitly and circuitously talk about “death” with people of different identities in different ways. Also, the specific euphemistic expressions show the feelings and attitudes of people left in the world towards the deceased. Due to the differences in Chinese culture and Thai culture, especially the differences in political systems and religious beliefs, this article divides the death objects into imperial household, monks, old people, giants, celebrities, talents, heroes, women, and juveniles according to their status, gender and age, analyzes the differences in the euphemisms of “death” used in Chinese and Thai languages, and then reveals the similarities and differences between Chinese culture and Thai culture.

Copyright

© 2020, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press.

Open Access

This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Zhaoyang Duan
PY  - 2020
DA  - 2020/12/18
TI  - Study on the Similarities and Differences of Chinese Culture and Thai Culture from the Euphemism of “Death” in China and Thailand
BT  - Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Education, Language, Art and Inter-cultural Communication (ICELAIC 2020)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 385
EP  - 389
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/assehr.k.201215.363
DO  - 10.2991/assehr.k.201215.363
ID  - Duan2020
ER  -