A Brief Review of Euphemism Used in the Epitaph of Tang Dynasty

Written on the gravestone,epitaph in ancient China is a short piece of writing or a poem about a dead person,which normally gives a description of the dead person's name,birthplace,life story,death date and his / her kinship lineages.And it also expresses the mourning for the dead and the praise for his / her good virtues and deeds.Because of its specialty,euphemism has been excessively used in epitaph writing.In this article,the author has tried to classify and paraphrase the euphemism expressing the meaning of death appeared in the epitaphs of Tang Dynasty and has analyzed such expressions based on the theory of cognitive linguistics.