2.2 Desperate Housewives

Desperate Housewives created by Marc Cherry started on ABC in 2004, which is a very popular American television serial. From the first season to the fifth seasons, it went to the top of the audience ratings and it was a great success in the 2004-2005 televisions season. The series was well received by viewers and critics alike. The TV is a multiple Primetime Emmy, Golden, Globe and Screen Actors Guild Award winner. From the 2004 to 2008 television seasons, its first five seasons were rated among the top ten most watched shows. In 2007, it was reported the most popular show in its demographic and worldwide, with audience of about 120 million and was also won the third most watched TV in 20 countries. The story sets in a fictional America town Fairview in the fictional Eagle State. The show followed the lives of a group of women and was narrated by a dead neighbor who committed suicide in the first episode. The storyline covers 13 years of women’s lives over eight seasons, between 2004 and 2008. Those women faced family life and domestic struggles, when meeting secrets, crimes and mysteries hidden behind the doors of theirs. Alice Young, the narrator of the story, she killed herself, but told the story of her neighbors alive from the grave. The story is mainly about the daily life of four housewives named Bree, Susan, Lynette and Gebarrila, who are living in suburbia and struggle with each other for some mysteries about their husbands,文献综述

friends and neighbors.

3. An Analysis of Euphemism in Desperate Housewives

This thesis mainly selects the lines of the series Desperate Housewives, so the thesis makes some analysis according to dialogues. And the thesis will analyze euphemisms from four aspects; they are in the age, in the death, in the weight and in the sex.

3.1 Age

In the value of everyone, the old  man  is  universally  respected,  in  China,  people often add“old”before or after the last name, however in western societies, once people grow

old, it means to be expelled from the mainstream of society and useless. In the west society, old is a taboo. The old becomes a word that people avoid to talk about. Old age is seen as a stage of useless and powerlessness, which is very unpleasant and even a cruel fact to the old people. There is no old people, only senior citizen or the longer-lived, because in their eyes, old is synonymous with old, useless, especially for old women. And some even are very sensitive to middle - aged.来!自~优尔论-文|网www.youerw.com

Example 1:

Lynette: I’m a woman of a certain age in a business values youth above all else.

Lynette decided to return to the workplace, but not sure and lamented: I’m a woman  of a certain age in a business values youth above all else. She uses “a woman of certain age” to express that she’s no longer young. It can be seen that she considers herself as old. In western countries, the word “old” means useless to society. So people would not use it directly even though they are in the old age. Lynette thinks that she is capable of doing something and useful to society.