Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
TURK DILI VE EDEBIYATI DERGISI-JOURNAL OF TURKISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE, cilt.62, sa.2, ss.455-487, 2022 (ESCI)
This study discusses and compares the subject of euphemisms in Russian and Turkish. It first categorizes and then examines euphemisms based on `meaning' and `structure' in both languages. As a result of the examination, the study determined that items such as `semantic shift', `simile', `hyperbole', `using common nouns', and `domestication'-which were created for Turkish and included in the `meaning-based euphemisms' classification-were absent in the `lexical meaning-based euphemisms' classification in Russian. Similarly, the study also revealed that the items such as `the way of using paronyms', `the ellipsis method', `meiosis method', and `interjection method', which occur in the Russian vocabulary, do not have equivalents in the categorization created for Turkish. In this sense, the study semantically analysed one of the common aspects of the two languages in depth, the `metaphorization method' (in Russian) and `idiom transfer and metaphors' (in Turkish), and determined that meaning-based transfers in Russian were formed through commonalities of colour, shape, and function, while Turkish made transfers through the nature-human cycle. In contrast, the study evaluated `structure-based euphemisms' in both the Russian and Turkish vocabulary based on similar and divergent items in the two languages, which were explained through examples. The study results show that euphemisms, which are frequently used in daily life, politics or, literature, also appear in different languages and show differences/similarities at the morphological and semantic levels. As one of the elements that reveal this universal characteristic of language, euphemisms constitute one of the significant tools of the language phenomenon with their use to aestheticize vulgar terms or mask intended meaning.