Since emotion plays such a significant role in counseling and since there is a considerable amount of confusion regarding it, it will be well to consider the language of emotion and action.
3.2 Interaction of emotions and ethnic culture in euphemisms
As we found out earlier English language was formed more than two thousand years ago and has its own peculiarities. In fact, all kinds of English language writings are to a greater or lesser degree both informative and evaluative. English language seeks to influence public opinion on political and other "matters". Though almost all newspaper features (brief news items, advertisements and announcements, the headlines and the editorials) are stylistically neutral. But apart from this newspaper style has its specific vocabulary features aimed to prompt the necessary associations and prevent ambiguity and misunderstanding. The authors use emotionally colored vocabulary in the headlines to lure the reader into going trough the whole of the item or at least a greater part of it Editorials comment on the political and other events of the day. Their purpose is to give the editor's opinion and interpretation of the news published and suggests to the reader that it is the correct one. Like any evaluative writing, editorials appeal not only to the reader's mind but to his feelings as well. Here the use of emotionally colored language elements, both lexical and structural.
While reading a newspaper a reader perceives some information and evaluates it from his own point of view. A newspaper article is aimed at the reader's mind and, being an important source of information, a newspaper article plays a big role in the formation of conceptual world view.
Newspaper articles are the product of the written language and as it was above mentioned language participates in the formation of the world view behind the language and reflects and expresses other world views. So, we can speak about the connection and we observe a great influence of materials given in the newspaper article on the reader's world view formation, judgments and evaluations. Here we can speak about anthropocentric nature of newspaper style articles.
These articles appeal to the feelings of the reader and call different emotions, negative and positive. Emotions come and appear after our intellectual evaluation of the thing as something possible, impossible, desirable, unexpected or expected. When we evaluate the events as positive, desirable, expected positive emotions appear (gladness, joy, hope), but when we evaluate the events as undesirable, unexpected we get negative emotions - sorrow, grief, indignation.
Nobody will deny that newspapers provide us with both negative and positive information. After reading good news we feel good and bad news call only negative feelings. Reading an article we often can not withhold comments and it reveals the level of the material influence on the reader's mind. Our comments are the outer realization of our emotions. Emotions are universal and ascribed to all people regardless of their culture, language and educational level. But universal emotions are characterized by national peculiarities.
The people of particular ethnic group have a peculiar perception, understanding of the objective world. They share the same values (wealth, job, family, success, etc.); but the most important values were formed in the process of own historical and cultural development. So, two ethnic groups will perceive the same thing differently.
In our work we consider Russian and English folks and try to describe their perception of newspaper material, political matters in particular. We say that emotional coloring in newspaper articles is achieved with the help of various stylistic devices, especially euphemisms. And it is true that all of us, not just poets, speak in euphemisms, whether we realize it or not? Is it perhaps even true that we live by euphemisms? Euphemisms not only make our thoughts more vivid and interesting but that they actually structure our perceptions and understanding.
Thinking of marriage as a "contract agreement," for example may lead to one set of expectations, while thinking of it as "team play," "a negotiated settlement," "Russian roulette," "an indissoluble merger," or "a religious sacrament" will carry different sets of expectations.
When a government thinks of its enemies as "turkeys or "clowns" it does not take them as serious threats, but if they are "victims" in the hands of the communists, they are taken seriously [28, p. 49].
3.3 Cognitive structure of source domain and target domain in the process of new euphemistic nomination
Euphemisms being a stylistic devise is often realized not through one euphemistic model but at least 2 or 3. Euphemisms may be dead (conventional) and alive bound together in this bunch. Euphemisms may be combined on the basis of linguistic and cognitive semantics. Lexical combinability allows the combinability of euphemisms on lexical and semantic levels. By cognitive level we mean combinability of cognitive structures, so to say the structures of knowledge. The types of combining different euphemistic models into one bunch can be explained through cognitive and semantic principles. Statistic data and conclusions have been made by Kacev and Zabotkina in 1981. The volume of data about 800 contexts which contained different types of political euphemisms has undergone the analysis. They think their conclusions have become obsolete. A new theoretical approach of describing the types of combinability of euphemistic models has been introduced by. Kacev and Zabotkina in 90s of the 20th century. It's so called the cognitive model of an euphemistic formation [24, p. 79-82].
Cognitive model of an euphemistic formation is based on the interaction of two structures of knowledge:
1. Cognitive structure of a source domain
2. Cognitive structure of a target domain
In the process of euphemization some target areas are groupped. This process is called euphemistic mapping. The hypothesis that the source domain is reflected and repeated again in the target domain is called invariant hypothesis. These projections are found at sentence and text levels.
We should pay attention to the idea of passiveness and dependence, which itself is a part of the cognitive structure "herd". We know a herd is governed by a cowboy.
The process of euphemization through the idea of cognitive euphemisms gives the explanation of the process on the whole, but there's no clear-cut answer in detail to explain the process of interaction of the source domain and the target domain. No language has been worked out to explain formal procedures of transformation of the language. The problem isn't in the description but how to present the information in the source and target domains which tend to be different.
According to Zabotkina’s theory "euphemisms give us a chance to understand very abstract things through structurally organized things at another level" [24, p. 87]. His theory of a linear direction of euphemistic mapping caused a lot of talks. It's not true to life. In thepolitical discourse politics is conceptualized as a member of a family in the euphemisms "a family free" and it doesn't meet the requirement of a linear direction of euphemistic mapping. Very often the target domain isn't clear-cut, it doesn't need any changes in the structure but it needs reconsideration. The target domain may be changed semantically in a short or longer period of time. The time is mentioned because on the lexical and semantic levels we must use different grammatical structures, stylistic meanings, and the vocabulary. But in the majority of cases the core of the euphemistic system brings into life euphemisms with a linear direction of euphemistic mapping. One and the most important function of euphemisms is getting a new knowledge or cognitive functions.
The area of the source domain contains: generalized experience about the men's world of the universe. Knowledge in the area of source domain is organized in the forms of image-schemas. They are basic and simple, regularly, physically reproduced in the process of a human's physical interaction with the real life.
These schemes are: "container", "balance", "way", "up-down", "forward-backward", "a part and the whole". Very stable correlations between the source and target domains are fixed up in the language means and cultural traditions of the given society. They are called conceptual euphemisms. To them people in Europe refer such metaphorical protections as: "time is money", "life is travel", "quarrel is war". Cognitive euphemisms which are stable form cognitive models. They are cognitive categories and thus belong to the sphere of cognitive psychology.
What is euphemistic mapping from a formal point of view? it has the function to reflect the elements of source domain and bring them to the target domain. We speak of the departure area and the area of destination. The stability of correlation between these two areas varies from a lesser stable in alive and new euphemisms up to dead metaphors found in stable correlations between the two areas.
When we start to examine language means in these areas we see they are not complicated but simple. The linear direction of euphemistic models comes to the place of destination, to the target domain. There elements which constitute the target domain are very complicated. This projection doesn't bring simplicity but complexicity.
Different euphemistic consequences and interpretations in the context vary.
But within one context it is easy. But it is not the case when we find a number of themes in the source domain. For example when a politician is likened to Fox Alice, then through euphemistic projection we establish the connection between "a fox" in the source domain "animals" and "politician" in the target domain. Secondly we establish euphemistic projection between Fox Alice in the source domain as a literary character and the correlated word "politician" in the target domain.
3.4 Differences of euphemistic projection in image schemes and newly nominated euphemisms
1)The category of cognitive metaphor is very close to the metaphorical model of image-scheme. Image schemes are the component parts of the correlated euphemistic models.
2)The second peculiarity and difference lies in different ways of the presentation of knowledge.
In literature image schemes are connected on the cognitive level, also on euphemistic consequences. Image schemes are cognitive structures, so to say structurally packed knowledge of the world. How are they presented? A familiar way is through the knowledge in our heads. Euphemistic models unite a great number of image schemes in one and the same conceptual field - semantic field.
Euphemistic projection of "euphemisms naming death and everything connected with it " in our heads includes such components as: “to breath one’s last (one’s last breath, gasp)”, “to depart this life”, “to pay one’s debt to nature”, “to go to one’s last home”, “to go the way of all flesh”, “to kick the bucket”, “to hop the twig”, “to join the majority”, “to be no more”, “God’s acre”, etc.
3)Image-schemas are independent and form cognitive models which are applied to a certain situation euphemistic model is global in its content, connected with other euphemistic models. This can be found in the tree. Each euphemistic model is characterized by various paradigmatic relations with other models, as some models are the constituent parts of a larger euphemistic models. Example " euphemisms naming death and everything connected with it " - is the constituent part of the euphemistic model " religious and moral factors are the driving forces of this group of phraseological euphemisms; fear before death and, sometimes, the desire not to hurt a person, to show one’s tact and courtesy can be considered to be the emotional basis of such phraseological euphemisms. This group of phraseological euphemisms is rather numerous".
4)The fourth difference lies in the fact that euphemistic model in a greater degree is connected with language meant. On the contrary cognitive structures of image- schemes may not be verbalized at all. In a way we may say that an image-schema is more cognitive than euphemistic model. Euphemistic model makes use of the vocabulary to fix euphemistic process on paper.
5)There is one more difference between image - schemas and euphemistic models. Image - schemas as cognitive structure appears on the basis of physical interaction of a man with the real world. It is the life experience of a man's body but not his social experience. Difference lies in the fact that a great number of euphemistic models are not based on the linear direction of euphemistic projections. They are different from this statement. For example, such euphemistic models as literature, medicine, religion, mythology, theater, play drop out of the image - schemes, through euphemistic models are widely used.
It is very important to focus our attention on the process of euphemistic mapping from the source domain to target domain. The interpretation of this mapping establishes various reflections of euphemistic models.
The source and target domains may be loaded hard. The more loaded the target domain is the more potential it has. It is possible to count how many denotative descriptors come out to one significant descriptor. Euphemistic model of "mechanism" was met in "the political discourse 1904 times. It means that one significant descriptor "mechanism" was used in 2 different descriptions of political economical life. This euphemistic model has a great potential in the interpretation of political events.
6)Euphemistic model is characterized by the stability of denotative projections in our real life, it's very important to recognize conceptual euphemisms which define our perception of the world at a definite time and culture.
3.5 The psychological aspect of studying euphemisms & dysphemisms
Introduction euphemisms and dysphemisms is better to do with the defining terms "euphemism" and "dysphemism". "A euphemism is used as an alternative to a dispreferred expression, in order to avoid possible loss of face: either one's own face or, through giving offence, that of the audience, or some third party". Euphemism is a word or an expression that people use instead of indecent, indelicate, rude, too direct or impolite words and expressions. The opposite sides of euphemisms are taboo words and dysphemisms. "A dysphemism is an expression with connotations that are offensive either about the denotatum or to the audience, or both, and it is substituted for a neutral or euphemistic expression for just that reason". It is important to say that euphemisms are opposed with taboo words because of cause and effect relations. Dysphemisms are opposed with euphemisms because of the evaluation content basis. The function of dysphemisms is to aggravate a denotatum with any evaluation content at the expense of more negative one.
A dysphemism is a word or an expression that is generally used to offend somebody deliberately. It paints a negative picture without seemingly lying. For example the phrase "My boss is something else" doesn't carry something swearing bit it is slanted towards negativity.
What is actually considered to be euphemistic and what is considered to be dysphemistic depends on the speaker and the way he or she interprets the message. At the same time a euphemism may loose its ennobling characteristics and turn into a dysphemism and it is required to be replaced. For example, the word "black" was a euphemism for the word with a negative connotation "negro". But the frequent using the word "black" as a euphemism had deleted its meaning and has transferred the word "black" to the category of the direct names.
The psychological aspect pays attention to "straight to the generating motives" [37, p. 61].
In lexicology the studying of euphemisms and dysphemisms from the psychological point of view is well-done. At present according to the generating motives there are five groups of euphemisms that have appeared because of: 1) superstition, 2) the feeling of fear, 3) sympathy and compassion, 4) the feeling of shame and, 5) the feeling of politeness.