EUPHEMISMS USED IN DEATH NEWS ON THREE DIFFERENT ONLINE NEWSPAPERS: A STUDY OF SOCIOLINGUISTICS

Abstract

The aims of this research are to find euphemistic expressions in death news of three online newspapers (The Jakarta Post, The New York Times and The Guardian); then, the finding of euphemistic expressions will be categorized according to their types. Furthermore, euphemistic expressions will be counted to find the dominant use of them on the three online newspapers. After that, this research discusses more about the motives of using euphemism on death articles which have effect to the readers of the newspapers. The data in this research are words, phrases, or sentences on the death news that belong to euphemism. The theory of euphemism (Allan and Burridge, 1991, 2006) is applied to discover its types on death news of the three online newspapers. The theory of fear-based taboo (Allan and Burridge, 1991, 2006) is used to make a categorization of fears of euphemistic expressions on death news of the three online newspapers. The writer also applies some components of SPEAKING mnemonic (Dell Hymes, 1974) to make more description and interpretation of the data. This study employs qualitative research to describe and to interpret the euphemistic expressions on death news of the three online newspapers. The results of this research are: 1). The types of euphemisms which are used in the three online newspapers were metaphor, hyperbole, one-for-one substitution and understatement. 2). The Guardian online newspaper uses euphemistic expressions more than the two online newspapers with 50% data of the whole finding, while the Jakarta Post and the New York Times only have 35.7% and 14.3% respectively. 3). The motives of using euphemisms are varied. Some writers of the Jakarta Post, the New York Times and the Guardian use euphemistic expressions in order not to offend and also to upgrade the addressee.