Transfer of the Culture: Analysis of the Euphemistic Words Concerning the Death in Turkish and French

Abstract

Euphemistic words which are one of the examples that show the change in languages reveal the differences seen in language use of culturally different societies. Euphemistic words are linguistic signs that reflect the features of societies in terms of ethics, respect, confidentiality, fear, sorrow, grace etc. The Euphemism is a change at speech level made by the humans because of their fears and anxieties for the sake of their receivers. In reality implicit meaning is used as a consequence of the receiver impact and receiver's himself/herself. Thus, it is a method aiming at moderating the words. Briefly the euphemism is using an acceptable word instead of a word that may be regarded as offensive and annoying by the receiver. Hence, it depends on the whole socio-cultural and historical value of a language. Therefore, the Euphemism is in the center of the culture. As the death issue is one of the important fields in which the euphemism is used, we will analyze the euphemistic words of French and Turkish used within the context of death issue with a comparative method. We will try to put forward the differences and similarities between these two languages in explaining the same issue. Expression styles between the source and target language will be analyzed in terms of syntactical, morphological and semantical aspects. This study will present how these two languages see and express the same issue in terms of culture. For this study "TDK Atasozleri ye Deyimler Sozlugu" (Dictionary of Proverbs and Idioms prepared by Turkish Language Association (TDK) and "Atasozu ye Deyimler Sozlugu" (1991) (Dictionary of Proverbs and Idioms) prepared by Omer Asim Aksoy were selected as a corpus in Turkish. Le Petit Robert (2008) and online dictionary Lexilogos were selected as a corpus in French. Following the analysis of these resources, the euphemistic words in these resources were profoundly examined.