clac 22/2005 3 clac CÍRCULO de lingüística aplicada a la comunica ción EUPHEMISMS, PROVERBS, ALLUSIONS, AND COGNITION: A STUDY OF TWO POEMS BY ANTONIO MACHADO Pedro J. Chamizo-Domínguez, Carmen M. Bretones Callejas Universidad de Málaga, Universidad de Almería pjchd at uma es, cbretones at hotmail com Abstract Among the various devices that conform a given writer’s style (i.e. syntactic, semantic, and so on), we will ll analyse in this paper two of them, allusion and euphemism. And so, in order to illustrate how, by means of these stylistic devices, A. Machado gets cognitive effects and criticizes two given philosophical systems in two extremely short poems. Euphemisms and allusions do perform meanings in cognitive domains not merely aesthetic or rhetorical ones. And this function is related to previous knowledge and presuppositions of the speakers. For that reason several levels of readings are possible according to the different levels of presuppositions made by speakers. Key words: euphemism, proverb, allusion, Antonio Machado 1. Allusion, euphemism, and knowledge By comparing the plain style of the language of science and the one of literature and by using a word which alludes to theological jargon, the Spanish philosopher J. Ortega y Gasset agues that “en ciencia tiene valor precisamente lo que se puede repetir: mas el estilo (de un poeta/escritor) es siempre unigénito” (in science it is worth just what can be repeated: but the style (of a poet/writer) is always unigenit) (Ortega, 1983: VI 263. Our emphasis). This means both that a given author’s style can’t be repeated and that every writer uses a peculiar style which defines himself from the rest of the writers and, although it can be glossed, it can’t be “translated” into any other style.