Background of the Study

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CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION

A. Background of the Study

Talking is one of the most significant social activities. It is used to deliver and express the idea, information, feeling and so on. People can do this activity if the interlocutor may recognize the certain conversation governing their own action, use of language, and also the interpretation of the action and utterance of others. The speakers do not randomly choose the forms and style to use in the conversation, they will bear in mind several aspects, namely how close to one another interlocutors, when and where the conversation take place, and whom the interlocutor are. Evey single time we speak, we tend to speak in good way in order to avoid insulting the listener, embarrassing the interlocutors, attacting the listener’s self-esteem, and judging people in the negative way. To overcome the bed effect, the speaker may conceal the truth by avoiding the “dengerous” words. The dangerous word is well known as “taboo” or “dysphemism”. Taboo word is a word known to speakers but avoided in some, most, or all forms or contexts of speech, for reasons of religen, decorum, politeness,etc. 1 It is like a way in which people show the disapproval believed to be harmful to other, either for supernatural reasons or for violating a moral code. 1 Peter Mathews, The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Linguistics New York: Oxford University Press, 1997, p.371 11 These taboo subjects can vary widely: sex, bodily effluvia, bogily function, death, religious matters, dangerous animal, political issue even diseasses. People may find these taboo words in every single corner in life such as: in the street, in the movie, in the bars, in the parties, in the office, at school and so forth. For those certain words that can not be said, people are going not to talk about these words, or, if these words are talked about, people shall talk about in roundabout way to rename and repackage them in getting ‘better’ sound. They may apply “Euphemism” so as to avoid mentioning to certain matters directly as mentioned above. According to Matthews Euphemism is word, etc. used in place of one avoided as e.g. offensive, indecent, or alarming. 2 Morever, euphemism is a polite substitute for taboo words, which fall under many types of euphemism. The Use of euphemism word is in order not to hurt anybody else by telling less than the truth or concealing the truth. For instance, we can take these euphemism words from the “American Pie 5’ scripts, the word “fuck” may be represented by freak on television, the words “death” is neutralized by passed Away, passed on, the word ‘penis’ for ‘tits’, the word ‘ladies room’ for ‘toilet’, the phrase “in bed” for “sexual intercourse” and so on. In addition, the word which relates to ‘God’ are strictly avoided to mention in vain for Chrsitian religious teaching. To 2 ibid. p.119 12 overcome this problem, jeeze, gee, gosh, holy, lord, gracious, laudy, and so forth are the euphemism for God. This euphemism term occurs in order to refine the taboo words. These eephemisms surely give rise to language change through the emergence or loss of some sense of lexems, or suitable replacement in the higher style. A euphemistic term usually arises “semantic change”, these semantic changes lead the new meaning to be broader, narrower, more favorable or less favorable. Besides, the other meaning may change because of the exchange of perception or the similarity of chracters. 3 Although each lexem undergoes semantic change, it is still tied by meaning relation. Hence, together with the above explanation, the writer has in mind to bring about the research “ Euphemism Analysis on American Pie 5 Scripts: An Approach of Meaning Relation and Semantic Change ”. Here, the writer intends to describe in detail what kind of meaning relatioan and semantic change undergone by euphemism term based on the theory cited in chapter II.

B. Focus of the study