Euphemisms in economic discourse and their potential in readers’ opinion manipulation: functional aspect

Euphemisms and the process of euphemization go back to the nature of a human being, and their fear before natural forces that lead to creating a system of linguistic taboo. Socialization of a human being, their becoming a member of a society can be referred to one of the reasons for the new development of euphemisms. Reflecting by their topics and frequency of use the continuous process of society development euphemisms reflect changes in the cultural values of a certain ethnical people from generation to generation penetrating to almost all spheres of life and communication. The article is devoted to study of euphemisms in economic discourse based on articles on economic issues, their formation and function as well as their manipulative potential and the choice of manipulation models. Functional analysis showed that veiling and normalization functions dominate among euphemisms in economic discourse as they help to manipulate public opinion by softening the real state of the economy or hindering consequences of measures taken by the government or top-management and their effect on the public. As for chosen manipulation objects, reputation manipulation proved to be the most frequent one in economic discourse as veiling and normalization function are most often referred to this object.