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 closedclass forms.