Euphemism And Comparison Of Euphemism Between The Bidayuh Bukar-Sadong And Bidayuh Biatah Dialects

Euphemism is a language phenomenon which alternate terms are used to substitute tabooed or harsh words. The culture and language reflect each other as the cultural beliefs are often mirrored in the languages spoken by the speakers. Within the scope of euphemism study, this study aimed to explore the euphemisms in two Bidayuh dialects, which are the Bidayuh BukarSadong and Bidayuh Biatah. This study is conducted in highlighting the aspects, strategies, and functions of euphemism as well as comparing the euphemism between the two Bidayuh dialects. The study also adopted Allan and Burridge (1991) theory on the nine aspects of euphemism, Warren’s Model (1992) on the strategies of euphemism, and Burridge (2012) on the functions of euphemism. The data for the study is collected from the participation of eight Bidayuh informants, four informants of each dialect variation, chosen according to the NORMF criteria suggested by Chambers and Trudgill (1980). The study resulted in the presence of all nine aspects of euphemism as proposed by Allan and Burridge (1991) which are derived from word-formation devices, phonemic modification, loan words, and semantic innovation strategy as suggested in Warren’s Model (1992). The euphemism within the dialects also functions as the protective euphemism, the underhand euphemism, the uplifting euphemism, and the cohesive euphemism as supposed by Burridge (2012). Upon the comparison of the euphemism in Bidayuh Bukar-Sadong and Bidayuh Biatah, this study discovered that the dialects are quite similar although numbers of differences also occurred in within. Despite the similarities in terms of cultural background and lifestyle, the beliefs which differed according to the areas of the speakers is what impacted the choices of euphemism in their speech