Explaining the Construction of Euphemistic Meaning via ‎Schematization in Persian: A Cognitive Approach

Schematization is one of the general cognitive processes, which refers to the ability to ‎construe and conceptualize a given situation at a coarse level of granularity. In Persian, ‎the cognitive mechanism of schematization plays a very fundamental role in the ‎structuring of a pleasant semantic content. The purpose of this paper is to explain how ‎euphemistic meaning is constructed via schematization in Persian. Within the cognitive ‎linguistic framework, this study shows that the conceptualizer/the language user, using ‎the cognitive ability of schematization, conceptualizes and describes an unpleasant ‎situation at a high level of schematicity and at a coarse granularity. This process directs ‎the patterns of attentional distribution over a referent scene in such a way that lesser ‎attentional strength is assigned to the detail of the unpleasant scene and consequently ‎the particularities move out of the focus of attention. Decreasing the strength of ‎attention over the detail will decrease the resolution of the semantic representation of ‎an unpleasant situation. Therefore, by the general construal and conceptualization of an ‎unpleasant situation, euphemistic meaning will be constructed. Also, this research ‎illustrates that schematization is realized and expressed in Persian by the selection of ‎open- and closed-class forms.      ‎