Euphemisms in the Mazandaran Language: A Sociolinguistic Perspective

This article explores the use of euphemisms in the Mazandarani language, analyzing them as a sociolinguistic phenomenon that cannot be fully understood without reference to the social context in which they occur. The study focuses on the lexical choices speakers make in particular situations, and how these choices are perceived within the Mazandarani speech community. The article examines the role of euphemisms in everyday communication, the socio-cultural factors that influence their usage, and the lexical-semantic strategies through which they are formed. It highlights the societal tendency to adopt euphemisms in response to negative attitudes toward certain concepts and phenomena, which are considered inappropriate, sensitive, or taboo. Speakers of Mazandarani, like other linguistic communities in Iran, frequently employ euphemisms in both social and interpersonal contexts to prevent communicative conflict and avoid causing discomfort to their interlocutors. Euphemisms are commonly used to discuss sensitive topics such as birth, death, physical and psychological illnesses, and bodily functions – particularly references to private body parts and acts associated with toilets – as well as to circumvent socially prohibited or taboo vocabulary. The analysis considers euphemisms at various linguistic levels, including phonetic, lexical-semantic, morphological, and syntactic. Special attention is given to the lexical-semantic mechanisms underlying euphemism formation in the Mazandarani language. These include borrowing, metaphorical and metonymic transfer, periphrasis, the use of hypernyms, and other rhetorical and linguistic strategies.