Euphemism used in Political Articles

In this recent time, many interesting news show up both political and social phenomenon. That news is served with an interesting language by mass media. Mass media have tried hard for the best service to present actual and hot news that can be accepted very well by society. Mass media use euphemism to avoid the loss face.
Euphemism is endemic in our society due to the fact that it is part of language customs; therefore it has been on every culture. One of the principle of the euphemism is that the disprefered expressions should be replaced by the preferred expressions to execute user's communicative intention on a given occasion or context and to avoid the possible loss of face. Euphemism is an instrument to keep the relationship between reader and writer or speaker and listener in good harmony.

The objectives of this study are to find out the types, the styles and the functions of euphemism used in headline of political articles in reuters.com on 1st to march 31st 2008. The design of this research uses descriptive qualitative method.

The key instrument of this research is the researcher herself. The analysis of the data is conducted continuously through the data reduction, the political articles in reuters.com are selected then classified in the certain categories, and those are types, styles, and function. And the last is drawing conclusion based on research findings. The data of this research are political articles in reuters.com that use euphemism.

As the result, the researcher found 15 headlines related to euphemism. From those 15 headlines, the researcher found that there are 9 types of euphemism; they are metonymy, hyperbole, metaphor, synecdoche, acronym and abbreviation, association engineering, idiom, and cirlomcution. In term of styles of euphemism, the researcher found 4 styles; they are: frozen style, formal style, intimate style, and consultative
style. In addition, the researcher found 5 functions of euphemism, they are: to inform, to convince, to criticize, to reject or refuse, and to evaluate.

Finally this research only discusses what are the types, styles and functions of euphemism in written language; however, it is suggested for further researchers to conduct the research, which not only focuses on types, styles and functions of euphemism of written language but also in oral language.