PSYCHOLOGY OF USING EUPHEMISMS BASED ON A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF THE EUPHEMIZATION OF THE RUSSIAN AND ENGLISH LANGUAGES
The article discusses the problem of using euphemisms from the psychology side. The relevance of the problem under consideration is due to the fact that every day a person faces difficulties, conflicts that greatly affect his mental health. That is why, in order to avoid conflicts, unpleasant situations, more and more people are beginning to use euphemisms in their speech. The purpose of our study is to analyze the motives for choosing certain euphemisms, in accordance with a certain situation. To do this, we conducted a survey in which 45 people of various age groups took part. The respondents were 22 women and 23 men whose professional activity is not related to the study of foreign languages. The survey results allowed us to identify a number of motives for using euphemisms. Also in the course of the study, we compared euphemistic expressions of the English and the Russian languages, in order to prove their similarity, and therefore the similarity of a person's thinking, based on needs and fears. This study showed that both language groups have similar attitudes to the issues of death, that is, the main motive for using “euphemisms of death” is the unwillingness to hurt the interlocutor’s feelings.