Given that obituaries constitute a breeding ground for the proliferation of different means of coping with death, it is my purpose in this paper to provide an overview of the main linguistic devices used in a sample of Irish Victorian death notices and analyse to what extent such devices have a social purpose. In this regard, I consider the obituary as a socially oriented practice whose main function is carried out via a wide range of praising and consolatory devices, such as metaphors, metonymies, hyperboles or mitigating apology expressions, among others. The results obtained support the idea that obituaries go beyond the limits of a mere announcement of a death and faithfully represent the social attitude and conventions towards mortality. In fact, nineteenth-century death notices primarily served a social purpose, acting as a medium through which families could demonstrate their place in society, being the degree of linguistic elaboration parallel to the social status of the deceased.

Politicians resort to euphemism as a "safe" way to deal with unpleasant subjects and criticize their opponents without giving a negative impression to their audiences. In this regard, it is my purpose to gain an insight into the way euphemism is used by politicians from Norfolk and Suffolk both at word and sentence level using a sample of the regional newspaper Eastern Daily Press, published in Norwich (UK). To this end, I will rely on the frameworks of critical-political discourse analysis (Van Dijk 1993, 1997; Wilson 2001), pragmatic theory, particularly politeness and facework (Brown and Levinson 1987), and Cognitive Metaphor Theory (Lakoff 1993). The results obtained reveal that euphemism plays an important role in the "self-promotion" of regional politicians, who employ euphemism-mostly by understatement, litotes and underspecificationfor a variety of purposes, namely sensitivity to audience concerns, avoidance of expressions that can be perceived to marginalize socially disadvantaged groups, polite criticism and mitigation-even concealment-of unsettling topics.

Death is a timeless taboo in which psychological, religious and social interdictions coexist. In consequence, human beings feel reluctant to deal with the subject of death using straightforward terms and therefore tend to soften the effect of what they really wish to communicate. With this in mind, it is the aim of this paper to explore the euphemistic language on a sample of epitaphs from the Eastern Highgate Cemetery in London. As figurative language constitutes a potent source for death-related euphemism, the present study proceeds to trace an account of the different conceptual metaphors in epitaphs within the framework of Lakoff and Johnson’s Conceptual Metaphor Theory. The results obtained support the idea that most of the conceptualizations of death observed in the gravestones imply a positive value-judgment of human mortality and aim at assisting those left alive in coping with the pain of loss and the fear of dying.

Death is a timeless taboo in which psychological, religious and social interdictions coexist. In consequence, human beings feel reluctant to deal with the subject of death using straightforward terms and therefore tend to soften the effect of what they really wish to communicate. With this in mind, it is the aim of this paper to explore the euphemistic language on a sample of epitaphs from the Eastern Highgate Cemetery in London. As figurative language constitutes a potent source for death-related euphemism, the present study proceeds to trace an account of the different conceptual metaphors in epitaphs within the framework of Lakoff and Johnson’s Conceptual Metaphor Theory. The results obtained support the idea that most of the conceptualizations of death observed in the gravestones imply a positive value-judgment of human mortality and aim at assisting those left alive in coping with the pain of loss and the fear of dying.

Recibido junio 2005; aceptado septiembre 2005BIBLID [1133-682X (2005) 13; 77-86] Resumen El presente artículo analiza las implicaciones del eufemismo en relación con el concepto de imagen (Goffmann 1967) dentro del marco de la cortesía verbal (Brown y Levinson 1987). Para este propósito, la descortesía en los intercambios comunicativos se considera como un tabú de origen social sobre el que actúa el eufemismo mediante estrategias paliativas de carácter discursivo. De este modo, el eufemismo no se limita al plano léxi-co, sino que se constituye en una herramienta lingüística de carácter pragmático-discursivo cuyo objetivo es mantener la cortesía en comunicación, preservar la imagen pública de los participantes en el intercambio y, en consecuencia, facilitar la armonía social en las relaciones interpersonales.Palabras clave: eufemismo, estrategias eufemísticas discursivas, cortesía verbal, imagen, acto de habla AbstractThe present paper aims to shed light on the implications of euphemism in relation to the notion of face (Goffmann 1967) within the framework of linguistic politeness (Brown and Levinson 1987). For this purpose, I claim that impoliteness is a social taboo on which euphemistic mitigation acts and, with this in mind, I consider euphemism not only as a strictly lexical process used to tone down certain concepts deemed unfit for normal linguistic usage, but also as a more comprehensive phenomenon with a primarily discursive dimension. In this regard, a typology of strategies of non-hostile verbal communication is proposed. From this perspective, euphemism is understood as a powerful discursive tool used to enhance politenes, preserve the public self-image of the participants in communicative exchanges and, therefore, facilitate harmonious interpersonal relationships.