EUPHEMISMS IN PUBLIC DISCOURSE – A MECHANISM OF POLITICALLY CORRECT LANGUAGE BEHAVIOR

Abstract

The proposed article emphasizes that public discourse should be considered as a process of gaining, preserving and exercising public power, which effectively manages public affairs, with the help of and in the field of public administration. An analysis of the main theoretical approaches to understanding the concept and content of euphemisms in the domestic and foreign scientific field has been carried out. It has been proven that for broad coverage of events in the political, economic, and social life of society, informing about decisions made by the authorities, forming a certain attitude of society to certain events that are taking place and prompting the necessary actions to be taken, the most effective and productive is the use of euphemisms, which are devoid of negative semantic load, and therefore are effective tools for influencing some individuals on others. It was established that euphemization is the process of spreading euphemisms in public discourse, in which they acquire a certain symbolic meaning and are able to influence the very meaning of the statement, therefore their use in public discourse leads to the fact that political correctness, as an effective language tool, can be used as policies to veil the true essence of what is happening in reality, distraction from negative aspects of reality, etc. It is emphasized that modern euphemisms contribute to the successful regulation of human relationships, form a loyal attitude to some concepts, from the point of view of social, political and everyday life of modern society. The relevance of the study of euphemisms in public discourse is explained by the growing interest in the study of domestic political discourse, namely, the study of political euphemisms as a characteristic part of it, which can become the basis for further investigations of political euphemism and the study of political discourse in Ukraine in general.