She Is Up the Duff - Hon Har en Bulle i Ugnen : A comparative study of euphemisms in English and Swedish

Abstract: There has seemingly never been a study conducted on Swedish euphemisms in comparison to Englisheuphemisms. This study seeks to contribute to the insights regarding euphemisms in everydaysituations. After reviewing existing literature and relevant theoretical texts on this issue, research wasundertaken to garner primary data on this topic. This was effected by distributing a self-administeredquestionnaire in Swedish to fifteen Swedish-speakers and one in English to fifteen English-speakers. Inboth samples, eight individuals were female and seven were male while age and education variedgreatly. They were posed questions featuring different terms for which they were asked to assigneuphemisms in their mother tongue. A number of findings were made which distinguished between theusage of euphemisms by speakers in terms of their respective languages, i.e. English and Swedish, butalso within these language communities in terms of gender and age differences. The study seeminglyaccorded with the general view that males are more direct and do not tend to utilize euphemisms asmuch as females. A further conclusion was that native English speakers are more comfortablediscussing alcohol, in terms of the drinking-cultures, as compared to native Swedish speakers and apossible explanation for this difference was the state alcohol monopoly in Sweden. It may also beconcluded that, while many euphemisms appeared that were particular to the language, it was possibleto identify many cases in which there are closely corresponding euphemisms in both languages.