Abstract
Euphemism is a common linguistic phenomenon. It usually uses some indirect, implicative, cheerful sayings to replace the straightforward and disagreeable statements, with the purpose of avoiding taboos, of showing decorous, and of averting to harm other people. In journalistic English, the euphemism is widely used. It acts as the "makeup words" in the media, playing an significant role in the news. Through an analysis of large amount of euphemisms from the journalistic English examples, this paper will discuss its variations of euphemisms from the perspective of sociolinguistic.
Keywords   journalistic English   euphemism   variation   sociolinguistic

委婉语既是一种普遍的语言现象，它以间接、含蓄、愉悦的说法代替直截了当、令人不悦的说法,其目的是回避禁忌、显示礼貌、避免伤害他人。在当今英语新闻中，委婉语被大量的使用着。它作为媒介中的“化妆词”，在英语新闻中起着不可忽略的作用。本课题通过收集整理大量新闻英语中的委婉语，从社会语言学角度研究委婉语在不同时代背景下的功能以及变异情况，探讨其社会语言功能。
关键词   新闻英语   委婉语   变异   社会语言学

1. Introduction
Euphemism is a linguistic phenomenon that exists in almost every aspects of human society. It is deeply rooted in social life and has a great influence on social communication. As an indispensable and natural part of English language, euphemism has attracted people’s attention for a long time. Since Euphemism was coined, it has played a very important role in people’s communication. The communication without euphemism is unimaginable. Euphemism is used like lubrication, which makes the communication go on smoothly. The application of euphemisms is very extensive in our daily lives. Body parts, sex, crime and punishment, sickness and death, private locations, warfare, etc. are things that people usually need alternative names for mentioning them. This accounts for the spring of euphemisms in almost all languages. Euphemisms are created through ways of phonetic transformation, lexical transformation, and rhetorical transformation and so on.