Научная статья на тему 'Differences and similarities in frequency and occurrence of certain euphemistic expressions related to obesity in different genres of the English-speaking written media and at different time periods'

Differences and similarities in frequency and occurrence of certain euphemistic expressions related to obesity in different genres of the English-speaking written media and at different time periods Текст научной статьи по специальности «Языкознание и литературоведение»

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Ключевые слова
ЭВФЕМИЗМЫ / ПОЛИТКОРРЕКТНОСТЬ / ОЖИРЕНИЕ / COCA / IWEB / КОРПУС ТЕКСТОВ / EUPHEMISMS / EUPHEMISTIC EXPRESSIONS / POLITICAL CORRECTNESS / OBESITY / TEXT CORPUS

Аннотация научной статьи по языкознанию и литературоведению, автор научной работы — Laskova Marina, Kotikova Ksenia

Euphemisms are the main social lingua non franca. They allow speakers to mitigate the meaning of what has been said or what is going to be said if the words are offensive, indecent or unpleasant. Their analysis allows understanding what is going on in the language, minds and culture of people. The subjects that we tend to use euphemisms for change along with our social attitudes. Nowadays, one of the most vital subjects is a political correctness movement which criticizes the usage of words that may offend certain group members, that is why euphemisms are used instead. The word "obesity", like many medical terms, came into the vernacular vocabulary with the attached stigma. As a result, the association influenced people to use the words "obese" and "obesity" with care and replace them with euphemisms. A number of studies of euphemisms were conducted within linguistics; a number of studies in English were carried out in order to identify preferred terms and communication styles of speaking with the patients about obesity, fat stigma and ways of discussing it in the modern society. However, little research has been made in order to scrutinize the occurrence and periodicity of the related to obesity euphemisms usage in various media. Given the scarcity of such analysis, this study aims to analyze the occurrence and periodicity of the usage of related to obesity euphemisms in the different media and in different time periods. For this purpose, we collected data on euphemisms and analyzed it via language corporain the iWeb corpus (contains 14 billion words in 22 million web pages) and the Corpus of Contemporary American English (consists of more than 560 million words in 220,225 texts). Then, we presented the overall occurrences of euphemisms followed by their percentages in different genres and a more detailed analysis of certain euphemisms. Due to a limited number of analyzed euphemisms and mainly descriptive nature of this study, it is not fully conclusive, but it might be used for a future research analyzing larger expressions for a more complex analysis.

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СХОДСТВА И РАЗЛИЧИЯ В ЧАСТОТЕ УПОТРЕБЛЕНИЯ НЕКОТОРЫХ ЭВФЕМИЗМОВ, СВЯЗАННЫХ С ТЕМОЙ «ОЖИРЕНИЕ», В РАЗЛИЧНЫХ ЖАНРАХ АНГЛОГОВОРЯЩИХ СМИ И В РАЗЛИЧНЫЕ ПЕРИОДЫ

Эвфемизмы можно назвать социальным lingua non franca: они отражают человеческие тревоги, конфликты и страхи. Кроме того, они дают возможность говорящему смягчить сказанное, если тема оскорбительна, непристойна или неприятна собеседнику. Исследуя употребление эвфемизмов, можно понять, что происходило (и происходит) в нашем языке, сознании и культуре. Сферы жизни, которые подвергаются эвфемизации, меняются вместе с социальными установками. Одним из важнейших признаков нашего времени является политкорректность. Помимо всего прочего, политкорректность критикует использование слов, которые могут оскорбить отдельных членов группы; то есть использование эвфемизмов становится своего рода решением в ситуациях, когда приходится говорить о неприятных темах. Слово «ожирение», как и многие медицинские термины, пришло в разговорный язык с уже прикрепленной стигмой. В результате, негативная коннотация заставляет людей аккуратнее использовать слова obese и obesity и заменять их эвфемизмами. В английском языке был проведен ряд исследований с целью определения предпочтительных терминов и стилей общения врачей с пациентами на тему лишнего веса и последствий чувств и страхов, связанных с навешиванием ярлыков. Однако практически неизученным остался вопрос, связанный с использованием эвфемизмов на тему лишнего веса в различных жанрах. Учитывая ограниченность такого анализа, в данной работе проведено исследование частоты употребления определенных эвфемистических выражений, связанных с лишним весом, в текстах, принадлежащим к различным жанрам и написанных в разные периоды. Для этого, эвфемизмы, связанные с лишним весом, были проанализированы в двух корпусах Корпусе современного американского английского языка (COCA) и корпусе iWeb. После чего был выявлен процент употребления выражений в различных жанрах и в разные периоды; а некоторые эвфемистические выражения более тщательно проанализированы. Данная работа ограничена количеством анализируемых эвфемизмов и своим преимущественно описательным характером. Однако, полученные данные могут быть использованы для будущих исследований.

Текст научной работы на тему «Differences and similarities in frequency and occurrence of certain euphemistic expressions related to obesity in different genres of the English-speaking written media and at different time periods»

скФУ

УДК 811

М. В. Ласкова, К. М. Котикова

СХОДСТВА И РАЗЛИЧИЯ В ЧАСТОТЕ УПОТРЕБЛЕНИЯ НЕКОТОРЫХ ЭВФЕМИЗМОВ, СВЯЗАННЫХ С ТЕМОЙ «ОЖИРЕНИЕ», В РАЗЛИЧНЫХ ЖАНРАХ АНГЛОГОВОРЯЩИХ СМИ И В РАЗЛИЧНЫЕ ПЕРИОДЫ

Эвфемизмы можно назвать социальным lingua non franca: они отражают человеческие тревоги, конфликты и страхи. Кроме того, они дают возможность говорящему смягчить сказанное, если тема оскорбительна, непристойна или неприятна собеседнику. Исследуя употребление эвфемизмов, можно понять, что происходило (и происходит) в нашем языке, сознании и культуре. Сферы жизни, которые подвергаются эвфемизации, меняются вместе с социальными установками. Одним из важнейших признаков нашего времени является полит-корректность. Помимо всего прочего, политкорректность критикует использование слов, которые могут оскорбить отдельных членов группы; то есть использование эвфемизмов становится своего рода решением в ситуациях, когда приходится говорить о неприятных темах. Слово «ожирение», как и многие медицинские термины, пришло в разговорный язык с уже прикрепленной стигмой. В результате, негативная коннотация заставляет людей аккуратнее использовать слова obese и obesity и заменять их эвфемизмами. В английском языке был проведен ряд исследований с целью определения предпочтительных терминов и стилей общения врачей с пациентами на

тему лишнего веса и последствии чувств и страхов, связанных с навешиванием ярлыков. Однако практически неизученным остался вопрос, связанный с использованием эвфемизмов на тему лишнего веса в различных жанрах. Учитывая ограниченность такого анализа, в данной работе проведено исследование частоты употребления определенных эвфемистических выражений, связанных с лишним весом, в текстах, принадлежащим к различным жанрам и написанных в разные периоды. Для этого, эвфемизмы, связанные с лишним весом, были проанализированы в двух корпусах - Корпусе современного американского английского языка (COCA) и корпусе iWeb. После чего был выявлен процент употребления выражений в различных жанрах и в разные периоды; а некоторые эвфемистические выражения более тщательно проанализированы. Данная работа ограничена количеством анализируемых эвфемизмов и своим преимущественно описательным характером. Однако, полученные данные могут быть использованы для будущих исследований.

Ключевые слова: эвфемизмы, политкорректность, ожирение, COCA, iWeb, корпус текстов.

M. Laskova, K. Kotikova

DIFFERENCES AND SIMILARITIES IN FREQUENCY AND OCCURRENCE

OF CERTAIN EUPHEMISTIC EXPRESSIONS RELATED TO OBESITY IN DIFFERENT GENRES OF THE ENGLISH-SPEAKING WRITTEN MEDIA AND AT DIFFERENT TIME PERIODS

Euphemisms are the main social lingua non franca. They allow speakers to mitigate the meaning of what has been said or what is going to be said if the words are offensive, indecent or unpleasant. Their analysis allows understanding what is going on in the language, minds and culture of people. The subjects that we tend to use euphemisms for change along with our social attitudes. Nowadays, one of the most vital subjects is a political correctness movement which criticizes the usage of words that may offend certain group members, that is why euphemisms are used instead. The word "obesity", like many medical terms, came into the vernacular vocabulary with the attached stigma. As a result, the association influenced people to use the words "obese" and "obesity" with care and replace them with euphemisms. A number of studies of euphemisms were conducted within linguistics; a number of studies in English were carried out in order to identify preferred terms and communication styles of speaking with the patients about obesity, fat stigma and ways of discussing it in the modern society. Howev-

er, little research has been made in order to scrutinize the occurrence and periodicity of the related to obesity euphemisms usage in various media. Given the scarcity of such analysis, this study aims to analyze the occurrence and periodicity of the usage of related to obesity euphemisms in the different media and in different time periods. For this purpose, we collected data on euphemisms and analyzed it via language corpora — in the iWeb corpus (contains 14 billion words in 22 million web pages) and the Corpus of Contemporary American English (consists of more than 560 million words in 220,225 texts). Then, we presented the overall occurrences of euphemisms followed by their percentages in different genres and a more detailed analysis of certain euphemisms. Due to a limited number of analyzed euphemisms and mainly descriptive nature of this study, it is not fully conclusive, but it might be used for a future research analyzing larger expressions for a more complex analysis.

Key words: euphemisms, euphemistic expressions, political correctness, obesity, COCA, iWeb, text corpus.

It cannot be denied that a euphemism is an important and influential part of any social communication. Euphemisms allow speakers to mitigate the meaning of what has been said or what is going to be said if the words are offensive, indecent or unpleasant. Holder [16, p.6] in his Dictionary of Euphemisms argues that we use euphemism in speech and writing when dealing with taboo or sensitive subjects. He also states [16, p.6] that "it is therefore also the language of evasion, of hypocrisy, of prudery, and of deceit".

The first researcher to mention a term of "euphemism" was Thomas Blount. He defined it as "a good or favourable interpretation of a bad word" [12, p. 13]. According to Longman's [29, p. 533] Dictionary of Contemporary English, a euphemism is "a polite word or expression that you use instead of a more direct one to avoid shocking or upsetting someone". Rawson [24] says that euphemisms are "powerful linguistic tools that are embedded so deeply in our language that few of us, even those who pride themselves on being plainspoken, never get through a day without using them" [p.1]. He also states [24, p. 1] the following main functions of euphemisms: 1) they conceal the things people fear the most - death, the dead, the supernatural; 2) they cover up the facts of life - of sex and reproduction and excretion - which inevitably remind even the most refined people that they are made of clay, or worse.

Thus, euphemisms are main social lingua non franca. As such, they are outward and visible signs of our inward anxieties, conflicts, fears, and shames. By tracing them, it is possible to understanding what has been (and is) going on in our language, minds and culture.

The subjects that we tend to use euphemisms for change along with our social attitudes. According to Holder [16], in the last twenty-five years there has been a shift in our attitude to such matters as female employment, sexual variety, marriage, illegitimacy, the ingestion of illegal drugs, abortion, job security, and sexual pursuit.

We should mention political correctness movement as one of the most essential hallmarks of our time. Apart from everything else, it criticizes word usage that may offend particular group members; that is usage of euphemisms becomes a kind of solution in the situations when unpleasant words have to be said. A focal point of the political correctness is to retaliate against body shaming which is humiliating someone about their body, whether it be that they are too short, too tall, too heavy or too skinny. In particular, Collier [8] describes body shaming as one of the reasons for causing depression among those who are overweight. Thus, obesity became highly stigmatized condition associated with blame, and it is well established that obese people are subject to prejudice and bias as a consequence of their bodyweight [30, p. 187].

The word "obesity", like many medical terms, came into the vernacular vocabulary with the attached stigma. As a result, the association influenced people to use the words "obese" and "obesity" with care and replace them with euphemisms, such as

unhealthy weight, stout, corpulent (meaning excessively fat), large, big, voluptuous, curvy, curvaceous, well-built, plus-size, shapely, heavy set, having meat on the bones, etc. In order to respect patients' feelings on this delicate issue, some doctors prefer indirect language to ease patient worries and employ euphemisms to avoid these emotive terms and to help clients comprehend what it is to be obese. According to the studies made in the US [11 in 30, p. 186-187], physicians are reported to use terms such as weight, excess weight and unhealthy body weight more often than obesity.

A number of studies of euphemisms were conducted within linguistics (e.g., Brown and Levin-son, Enright, Allan and Burridge, Ayto, Halliday and Hasan, Hai-long, Tyurina, Sgeygal, Abakova, Krysin, Moskvin, Senichkina, Katsev, 1988, Larin).

A number of studies in English were carried out in order to identify preferred terms and communication styles of speaking with the patients about obesity and effects of feelings and fears related to the fat stigma. For example, Swift, Choi, Puhl and Glazebrook [30]; Barlosius and Philipps [4]; Finset [13]; Shannon [27] argued about fat stigma and ways of discussing it in the modern society. Whereas, Tailor and Ogden [31] and Collier [8] studied expressions which the doctors use and must choose while discussing obesity issues of their patients.

However, little research has been made in order to scrutinize the occurrence and periodicity of the related to obesity euphemisms usage in various media. Given the scarcity of such analysis, this study aims to analyze the frequencies and occurrences of certain euphemistic expressions related to obesity in different genres of the English writing media. This will be done via language corpora, which is more explained in the Corpus and Methods section. The expectation is that there will be more expressions in certain genres (magazines and newspapers).

Hence, this research aims to answer the following question:

• What are the differences and similarities in frequencies and occurrences of certain euphemistic expressions related to obesity in different genres of the English writing media and different periods?

In order to reply to this question, a list of euphemism related to obesity will be compiled and considered in two corpora - the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) and iWeb corpus. Afterwards, the percentage of occurrences in the genres will be calculated; some of the euphemistic expressions will be analyzed more closely in order to reveal certain lexical properties of the expressions.

This study aims to find differences and similarities in frequencies and occurrences of certain euphemistic expressions (Table 1) related to obesity in different genres of the English writing media.

First of all, we collected data on euphemisms according to a quite subjective criterion that the expressions should have been popular or frequently used. Some of the expressions were found in How Not to Say What You Mean: A Dictionary of Euphemisms by Robert Holder [16]. Published in 2002, this dictionary contains over five thousand euphemistic ex-

pressions, which are compiled in two ways: in alphabetical order and in accordance with thematic index. Here are some of the expressions from the obesity category: ample, battle of the bulge, bay window, big-boned, bit of a stomach, brewer's goiter, calorie counter, chubby, classic proportions, contour, corn-fed, couch potato, devoted to the table, differently weighted at, dine well, fond of food, full figure, heavily built, led astray, many pounds heavier, mature figure, middle-aged spread, people of size, puppy fat, quantitatively challenged, at contour, rubber tire, shorten the front line, spare tyre, tuck, weight problem, weight watcher, well-built, well-fleshed.

The second source of data was articles in online newspapers such as The Guardian, The Washington Post, as well as other online resources such as WordReference language forum, humor site Cracked, Clark and Miller, Bustle and Twitter. As for the last source, American online news and social networking service Twitter where users post and interact with messages known as "tweets"; a question "Which euphemisms for "fat" most irritate/frustrate/bother you?" was posted by a user Fellow fats who received many answers from other network members. This source of information enriched this research with a list of obesity euphemisms which are hated by the overweight people in the US (it should be noted that the most popular answers were fluffy and curvy).

After considering the expressions, we selected a list of euphemisms for analysis. It is presented in the Table 1.

Table 1

Euphemisms for analysis

Euphemism

overweight

obese

voluptuous

curvy

curvaceous chubby

morbidly obese

plus-sized

big-boned

well-built

well-nourished

vanity sizing

tubby

pleasantly plump well-fleshed full figure rubenesque heavily built horizontally challenged

The second stage included the application of the iWeb corpus and the Corpus of Contemporary Amer-

ican English (COCA). The iWeb corpus contains 14 billion words in 22 million web pages. It is related to many other corpora of English - the nearly 95,000 websites in iWeb were chosen in a systematic way and the websites have an average of 240 web pages and 145,000 words each.

The Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA), the largest genre-balanced corpus of English, consists of more than 560 million words in 220,225 texts, including 20 million words each year from 1990-2017. The latest addition of texts was made in December 2017. Unlike the iWeb corpus, the COCA is evenly grouped into five genres of Spoken (transcripts of unscripted conversation from more than 150 different TV and radio programs), Fiction (short stories and plays from literary magazines, children's magazines, popular magazines, first chapters of first edition books 1990-present, and movie scripts), Popular magazines (nearly 100 different magazines, with a mix between specific domains (news, health, home and gardening, women, financial, religion, sports, etc)), Newspapers (ten newspapers from across the US, including: USA Today, New York Times, Atlanta Journal Constitution, San Francisco Chronicle, etc.) and Academic journals (about 100 different peer-reviewed journals) for each year.

First, the overall number of occurrences was considered in both the iWeb and COCA. Afterwards the percentages of occurrences in the genres were calculated for the COCA. There is a suggestion that euphemistic expressions will be found more frequently in magazines and perhaps newspapers. First of all, it may happen because of these genres' format and audience interests - there are many articles about appearance and invented beauty standards which most people do not meet. This is a reason why popular editions use euphemisms in order to veil unpleasant statements about people's appearance, which may increase vagueness and distance in these texts.

The following section presents the results, starting with the overall occurrences, followed by the percentages in genres and more detailed analysis of certain euphemisms.

The first results are presented in the table below and provide a number of certain euphemism occurrences in the iWeb compared to the COCA. We should notice that, for some expressions found in both corpora, a number of analyzing euphemisms indicated in the Table 2 was limited by those in combinations with words related to overweight topic. It was done because some adjectives might be euphemistic under certain circumstances, in other cases they can be a part of explicit collocations without implicit meaning at all. Such expressions are asterisked. Others are presented in full. The column 'per million words' refers to a certain euphemism frequency per million words and provides estimate of how many times mentioned euphemism showed up in a sample of 1,000000. It is calculated using the formula: Frequency per 1,000000 words = frequency/occurrence of euphemism ■ number of words in corpus x 1,000000).

Table 2

The number of euphemisms and its frequency per million words

Euphemism iWeb Per million words COCA Per million words

overweight SS 120 6,294 4 S79 8,713

obese 60 200 4,300 2 S46 5,082

voluptuous 5 421 0,387 651 1,163

curvy* 4 051 0,289 133 0,238

curvaceous 3 661 0,262 196 0,350

chubby* 3 462 0,247 469 0,838

morbidly obese 2 91S 0,208 12S 0,229

plus-sized 1 662 0,119 52 0,093

big-boned 3S0 0,027 152 0,271

well-built* 335 0,024 32 0,057

well-nourished* 251 0,018 6 0,011

vanity sizing 235 0,017 S 0,014

tubby* 204 0,015 20 0,036

pleasantly plump 12S 0,009 13 0,023

well-fleshed 66 0,005 4 0,007

full figure* (calculated in collocations in iWeb, but solely in COCA) 65 0,005 50 0,089

rubenesque* 51 0,004 32 0,057

heavily built* 21 0,002 14 0,025

horizontally challenged 9 0,001 0 0,000

It is clear that the iWeb has more occurrences of expressions found. This fact can be explained by the volume of this corpus (14 billion words against 560 million words in COCA). However, the word usage frequency is not the same. The table shows that in most cases the frequency of euphemisms per million words in the COCA is much higher than in the iWeb. It may be caused by a fact that the iWeb corpus related to many other corpora of English such as Wikipe-dia Corpus (1.9 billion words), Hansard Corpus (1.6 billion words) which contains nearly every speech given in the British Parliament, Early (1470s-1690s) English Books Online (755 million words), Corpus of Historical American English (400 million words),

Corpus of US Supreme Court Opinions (130 million words) that contain literary, professional and historical lexis, while euphemisms are conventionally used in conversation vocabulary which is traditionally practiced in spoken and journalistic genres.

Thus, the following table presents the distribution of euphemisms found in the COCA according to different genres and shows expressions dominating in certain genres. We have studied only those euphemisms that were fully calculated in the previous table, that is they were not limited by combinations with extra words, which could assist to label them as euphemistic.

Table 3

Occurrences with percentages of genre distribution in COCA

Euphemisms Overall no' %, Spoken %, Fiction %, Magazine Newspaper %, Academic

overweight 4S79 15 12 33 11 29

obese 2S46 14 S 33 12 34

voluptuous 651 9 42 27 13 9

morbidly obese 12S 24 16 33 14 13

curvaceous 196 5 29 46 14 5

full figure 50 4 44 30 S 14

big-boned 152 4 71 14 7 3

pleasantly plump 13 15 62 S S S

plus-sized 52 3S S 33 21 0

vanity sizing S 3S 13 50 0 0

well-fleshed 4 0 75 25 0 0

Total: S979 14 15 32 12 27

The table clearly shows that the most frequent use is in Academic and Magazine genres (27 % and 32 % respectively). However, there are only two cases when percentage is quite high in Academic genre -with words overweight and obese. Moreover, these words are the most common in the analysis. It might be explained by a fact that these euphemisms are predominantly used by researchers studying obesity and using words with the most neutral, academic and even medical connotations among others.

As for other euphemisms, they are most frequently used in Magazine and Fiction, followed by Spoken and Newspaper genres. Earlier we suggested that euphemistic expressions would be more common in magazines and perhaps newspapers. The first part of this suggestion was proven right - it may be

because of Magazine genre's format and audience interests - popular editions use euphemisms to veil unpleasant statements about people's appearance in order not to hurt those who do not meet common beauty standards. In newspapers, there is a less frequent use of almost all euphemisms comparing to other genres. Moreover, this section has the least percentage of euphemism usage among others. This fact is quite surprising and the reason may be in newspapers' selection of topics - they have more articles about politics and economics than about fashion and looks.

The next table shows percentages of euphemisms' distribution per years. There are several evaluated periods: 1990-1994, 1995-1999, 2000-2004, 2005-2009, 2010-2014 and 2015-2017.

Table 4

Occurrences with percentages of distribution per years in COCA

Euphemisms Overall no' %, 19901994 %, 19951999 %,2000-2GG4 %,2005-2GG9 %, 2010-2G14 %, 2015-2G17

overweight 4S79 10 15 1S 19 29 S

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obese 2S46 9 9 15 20 37 10

voluptuous 651 20 1S 19 1S 1S 7

morbidly obese 12S 3 11 23 35 16 13

curvaceous 196 5 17 25 24 19 9

full figure 50 30 32 10 14 10 4

big-boned 152 13 1S 19 22 17 11

pleasantly plump 13 0 S 3S 3S 15 0

plus-sized 52 0 23 13 17 35 12

vanity sizing S 0 0 0 63 3S 0

well-fleshed 4 0 0 25 50 0 25

Total: S979 10 14 1S 20 30 S

As the table shows, 30 % of the total occurrences were between 2010 and 2014, 20 % in the period 2005-2009, 18 % between 2000 and 2004, 14 % in the period 1995-1999, 10 % and 8 % between 1990-1994 and 2015-2017 respectively. The unexpected fact about the year distribution is that in the latest period (2015-2017) the least number of euphemisms was used. At the same time, the previous period (2010-2014) was the richest with euphemistic expressions. Apart from this, there was a constant growth of euphemisms' usage from 1990 to 2014. But this trend applies only to certain expres-

sions: overweight, obese, plus-sized and partially for morbidly obese, curvaceous, big-boned, pleasantly plump, vanity sizing, which usage was increasing till 2005-2009 period and then started to fall. As for full figure and voluptuous, these expressions were popular in the early 1990's, but its frequency decreased steadily by the last analyzed period.

This study aimed to identify the differences and similarities in frequencies and occurrences of certain euphemistic expressions related to obesity in different genres of the English writing media and different time periods. For this purpose, a list of euphemism

related to obesity was compiled and considered in two corpora - the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) and iWeb corpus. Then, the percentage of occurrences in the genres was calculated and analyzed. Based on the results, we have concluded the following.

Most occurrences of expressions were in the iWeb. This can be explained by the volume of this corpus comparing to the COCA. However, the word usage frequency was not the same: in most cases, the frequency of euphemisms per million words in the COCA was much higher than in the iWeb. The reason may be that the iWeb corpus is related to many other corpora contained the literary, professional and historical lexis, while euphemisms are conventionally used in the conversation vocabulary.

The analysis of the expression frequency has demonstrated that Academic and Magazine genres had the largest number of euphemisms. But this was only because of the frequent usage of the most popular euphemisms (obese and overweight).

Other most frequently used euphemisms were in the Magazine and Fiction genres, followed by Spoken and Newspaper genres. Magazine genre's format and audience interests might be the reason of this result - popular editions use euphemisms to veil unpleasant statements about people's appearance in order not to hurt people who do not meet common beauty standards.

Литература / References

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As for the percentage of distribution per years, most of calculated euphemisms were used between 2010 and 2014. The least number of occurrences was done between 2015-2017. Furthermore, there was a constant growth of the most euphemisms' usage from 1990 to 2014. However, some expressions were popular in the early 1990's, but their frequency decreased steadily by the last analyzed period.

There were two unexpected facts in this study. First, newspapers had a less frequent use of almost all euphemisms comparing to other genres. Moreover, this section had the least percentage of euphemisms' usage among others. It might be explained by the newspapers' selection of topics - they focus more on politics and economics rather than fashion and appearance.

The second fact is that the least number of euphemisms was used in the latest analyzed period (20152017). While the previous period (2010-2014) was the most popular for euphemistic expressions.

The study is limited by a number of analyzed euphemisms and its mainly descriptive nature. Due to this, this study is not fully conclusive, but it may be used for a future research, that could analyze larger expressions for a more complex analysis of the differences and similarities in frequencies and occurrences of certain euphemistic expressions.

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Информация об авторах Ласкова Марина Васильевна - доктор филологических наук, профессор, заведующая кафедрой перевода и информационных технологий в лингвистике Южного федерального университета (Ростов-на-Дону) / mvlaskova@sfedu.ru Котикова Ксения Михайловна - магистрант института филологии, журналистики и межкультурной коммуникации Южного федерального университета (Ростов-на-Дону) / LeaS42004@mail.ru

Information about the authors Laskova Marina - Doctor of Philology, Professor, Head of Chair of Translation and Information Technology in Linguistics, Institute of Philology, Journalism and Intercultural Communications, Southern Federal University (Rostov-on-Don) / mvlaskova@sfedu.ru

Kotikova Ksenia - MA student, Institute of Philology, Journalism and Intercultural Communications, Southern Federal University (Rostov-on-Don) / LeaS42004@mail.ru

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