The learning and teaching euphemism in business letters

English Department, School of Foreign Languages, Jiujiang University, Jiujiang, Jiangxi, China

Abstract

According to Flynn’s Principle Branching Direction (1984), English and Chinese belonged to two different language systems. English was right-branching language and Chinese was left-branching language, and that was the basic knowledge to interfere students to learn English well. Existing in different kinds of cul-tures, euphemism is a way of expression to substitute implicit language for harsh words. This paper is the analy-sis about learning and teaching of euphemism in business letters. Since business letters play more and more im-portant roles in business, businessmen have attached great importance to figure out how to establish long and friendly relationship with clients through business letters. This paper will make a thorough analysis about the realization of euphemism in business letters from two aspects as word and grammar, and it will introduce three main functions of euphemism in business letter.