摘 要
   
随着经济全球化的发展，中国酒店业作为最早一批向外资开放的行业迅速发展起来。然而，机遇与挑战并存，国际酒店集团在国内的生根发芽使得酒店行业对英语这样的国际性语言的要求越来越高。酒店服务人员不仅应当具备运用英语进行流畅地交流的能力，而且还要在面对客人的需求、投诉等问题时，恰到好处地运用委婉语。本论文的主要目标是通过介绍英语委婉语的定义和特点，联系当前时代背景，把委婉语和酒店服务联系起来，从委婉语与社会语言学中的语境、文化和社会变量如性别、年龄、社会阶层等的关系的角度来分析酒店服务中英语委婉语的应用。研究发现，委婉语深深植根于社会文化之中，是一种只有在特定的环境下才具有委婉色彩的交际方式；委婉语的使用还会因为社会成员的性别，年龄，社会地位等不同而变化。服务中若忽视了这些因素，就不能对委婉语有深刻的理解。研究本课题的最终意义是引起酒店从业者对在服务过程中理解使用委婉语的影响因素并灵活运用委婉语的重视，从而提高酒店的优质服务，在中国酒店业竞争最为激烈的领域——高级酒店中脱颖而出。

关键词：委婉语；社会变量；文化；语境；酒店服务

ABSTRACT
   
With the development of economic globalization, Chinese hospitality industry as one of the first industries which open to foreign capital expands by leaps and bounds. However, opportunities and challenges co-exist, and it makes English become more and more important for hospitality industry that international hotel groups take root and spread in the domestic market. Not only should hotel service people communicate with others freely in English, but also they should use euphemisms properly when facing guests’ demands and complaints. The paper aims at analyzing English euphemism which is applied to hotel service from two perspectives, the perspective of the relationship between euphemism and sociolinguistics factors such as context and culture and the perspective of the relationship between euphemism and social variables such as gender, age and social status by presenting the connotation and characteristic of English euphemism and relating euphemism with hotel service. The study shows that euphemism is a way of communication which is rooted in social culture and has euphemistic color in a specific environment; euphemism varies with gender, age and social status of individuals. It is impossible to have a profound understanding of euphemism if these factors are ignored. The implication of the study is to call on hotel senior managers to pay more attention to the factors of euphemism and the application of English euphemism in hotel service so that they can improve hotel service and stand out in the fiercest competition between the first-class hotels.

Key words: Euphemism; context; culture; social variable; hotel service