The language of death: Euphemism and conceptual metaphorization in Victorian obituaries
Some experiences are too intimate and vulnerable to be discussed without linguistic safeguards. One of them is undoubtedly death, a timeless taboo in which psychological, religious and social interdictions coexist. It is the aim of this paper to explore the euphemistic language on obituary pages fro...
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| Formato: | artículo |
| Fecha de publicación: | 2006 |
| País: | España |
| Recursos: | Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha |
| Repositorio: | RUIdeRA. Repositorio Institucional de la UCLM |
| OAI Identifier: | oai:ruidera.uclm.es:10578/42368 |
| Acesso em linha: | http://www.linguistics.fi/skyjol-en.shtml https://hdl.handle.net/10578/42368 |
| Access Level: | acceso abierto |
| Palavra-chave: | Conceptual metaphor Euphemism Victorian obituaries |
| Resumo: | Some experiences are too intimate and vulnerable to be discussed without linguistic safeguards. One of them is undoubtedly death, a timeless taboo in which psychological, religious and social interdictions coexist. It is the aim of this paper to explore the euphemistic language on obituary pages from the mid-nineteenth century, a time when the sentimentalization of death provided a fertile soil for the flowering of euphemism. Given the pervasiveness of metaphor to refer to human mortality, the present study proceeds to trace an account of the different conceptual metaphors aiming at substituting the notions of death and dying in Irish early Victorian newspapers within the framework of the well-known Conceptual Metaphor Theory initiated by Lakoff and Johnson (1980). The results obtained support the idea that there was a tendency to present sentimental obituaries in which the taboo of death can be accounted for by various conceptual metaphors, most of which view death as a desirable event under the influence of Christian beliefs. |
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