Euphemising Strategies Underlying Sex Euphemisms Used in Selected Radio Talk Shows in Kenya

Abstract

Language is essentially a tool for communication, a means through which we pass information and express our attitudes, emotions, and worldviews. We argue in this paper that as an integral part of human social interaction, there is more to the communicability of language. We do not just communicate but do so in the ‘right’ way; this paper explores sex euphemisms as an effective tool for enhancing interpersonal communication in love and relationship radio talk shows. Radio talk shows form a common meeting point for people from different backgrounds and realities. It is our interest to study how these interlocutors manoeuvre the taboo topic of sex on Classic 105’s Maina and King’angi in the Morning Show. Using the cooperative principle and Warren’s euphemisms interpretive maxim, we extracted our data using the reading and note-taking technique. The paper adopted the descriptive research design, and the results showed that sex euphemism is an effective discursive strategy for discussing the taboo topic of sex. Further, the analysis revealed that Warren’s model of euphemism formation processes accounts for most of the euphemizing strategies deployed by interlocutors in the show, except for instances where participants borrow grammatical features from more than one language to form euphemisms. The model did not also account for euphemisms formed through the reduplication processes. Our data also showed that participants in the selected shows did not use blends and acronyms