Article published In:
Pragmatics and Society: Online-First Articles

Talking about the deceased in the Jish linguaculture

A semantic and pragmatic analysis

ORCID logo | Tel-Hai College

This paper has aimed to look into the terms and expressions used in the Jish linguaculture when talking about the deceased. Seventeen such terms and expressions are presented, discussed, and explicated using the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) approach. The explications appear in simple, (semi-)universal language, which makes them relatively easily understood and readily translatable into any language. This, in turn, means that the explications are accessible by linguacultural insiders and outsiders. In addition, the study provides anthropologists and linguists with precise analysis owing to its micro-level focus; it investigates the micro-linguaculture of Jish, which belongs to the macro-culture of the Arab world. Lastly, the study documents one aspect of this undocumented linguaculture; this documentation can preserve one part of this linguaculture from fading into oblivion.

Keywords: Linguaculture, deceased, euphemistic terms, dysphemistic terms, jocular terms, interjectional phrases, NSM
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Methodology
  • 3.Talking about someone’s death in the Jish linguaculture
    • 3.1Different ways of saying “someone died”
    • 3.2Different ways of saying “someone was buried”
    • 3.3Different ways of referring to the deceased
      • 3.3.1ḥayāt ‘life’ & Il-ḥarīʾ ‘the burned’
      • 3.3.2 alla yirḥamu ‘may God have mercy on him’
      • 3.3.3 yirḥam il-trāb illi lammu ‘may [God] have mercy on the soil that engulfed him’
      • 3.3.4 alla yghammiʾlu ‘may God make it deeper for him’
  • 4.Discussion
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Note
  • References
Published online: 8 March 2024
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ps.23034.hab
References
Al-Kharabshesh, Aladdin
2011 “Arabic Death Discourse in Translation: Euphemism and Metaphorical Conceptualization in Jordanian Obituaries.” Across Languages and Cultures 12 (1): 19–48. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ameka, Felix
2006 “ ‘When I Die, Don’t Cry’: The Ethnopragmatics of ‘Gratitude’ in West African Languages.” In Ethnopragmatics: Understanding Discourse in Cultural Context, edited by Cliff Goddard, 231–66. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2008 “He Died Old Dying to Be Dead Right: Transitivity and Semantic Shifts of ‘Die’ in Ewe in Crosslinguistic Perspective.” In Crosslinguistic Perspectives on Argument Structure: Implications for Learnability, edited by Melissa Bowerman and Penelope Brown, 231–54. New York, London: Taylor & Francis.Google Scholar
Brewer, John
2000 Ethnography. Buckingham/ Philadelphia, PA: Open University Press.Google Scholar
Corr, Charles A., Donna M. Corr, and Kenneth J. Doka
2019 Death and Dying, Life and Living. 8th ed. Boston, MA: Cenage.Google Scholar
Dixon, Robert M. W.
2010 Basic Linguistic Theory: Methodology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Emmons, Charles
2003 “Ghosts: The Dead among Us.” In Handbook of Death and Dying, edited by Clifton Bryant, 11:87–95. Thousand Oaks, California: Sage Publications. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Farghal, Mohammed
1995 “Euphemism in Arabic: A Gricean Interpretation.” Anthropological Linguistics 37 (3): 336–78.Google Scholar
Galal, Mohamed M.
2014 “Death Euphemism in English and Arabic: A Conceptual Metaphorization Approach.” International Journal of Linguistics 6 (1): 153–70. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Geertz, Clifford
1973 “Thick Descriptions: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture.” In The Interpretation of Cultures, edited by Clifford Geertz, 231–67. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Gladkova, Anna
2010 Russian Cultural Semantics: Emotions, Values, Attitudes. Moscow: Languages of Slavonic Cultures.Google Scholar
Goddard, Cliff
2021 “In Praise of Minimal Languages.” In Minimal Languages in Action, edited by Cliff Goddard, 1–26. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Goddard, Cliff, and Anna Wierzbicka
eds. 2002 Meaning and Universal Grammar – Theory and Empirical Findings. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
eds. 2014 Words and Meanings: Lexical Semantics across Domains, Languages and Cultures. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Habib, Sandy
2011 Contrastive Lexical-Conceptual Analysis of Folk Religious Concepts in Arabic, Hebrew, and English: NSM Approach. Unpublished Ph.D. Thesis. Armidale: University of New England.
2022a “The Ethnopragmatics of Jish Arabic-Speaking Culture.” Pragmatics and Society 13 (1): 67–84. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2022b “On the Verge of Extinction: The Semantics, Pragmatics, and Etymology of Eight Endangered Similes in Jish Arabic.” Intercultural Pragmatics 19 (4): 513–30. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2023 “Tense-Aspect Constructions in Jish Arabic: Morphological, Syntactic, and Semantic Features.” Russian Journal of Linguistics 27 (2): 363–91. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hammersley, Martyn, and Paul Atkinson
2007 Ethnography: Principles in Practice. 3rd ed. London, New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Hertz, Robert
1960 Death and the Right Hand. London, New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Hidalgo, Ivette, Dorothy Brooten, JoAnne M. Youngblut, Rosa Roche, Juanjuan Li, and Ann M. Hinds
2021 “Practices Following the Death of a Loved One Reported by Adults from 14 Countries or Cultural/Ethnic Group.” Nursing Open 8 (1): 453–62. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kamel, Abdulaziz M.
1993 A Sociolinguistic Analysis of Formulaic Expressions in Egyptian Arabic. Unpublished Ph.D. Thesis. Washington, DC: Georgetown University.
Levisen, Carsten
2012 Cultural Semantics and Social Cognition: A Case Study on the Danish Universe of Meaning. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mel’čuk, Igor, and Alain Polguère
2018 “Theory and Practice of Lexicographic Definition.” Journal of Cognitive Science 19 (4): 417–70. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Parkes, Colin M., Pittu Laungani, and William Young
eds. 2015 Death and Bereavement Across Cultures. London, New York: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Piamenta, Moses
1979 Islam in Everyday Arabic Speech. Leiden: Brill. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rabab’ah, Ghaleb, and Ali M. Al-Qarni
2012 “Euphemism in Saudi Arabic and British English.” Journal of Pragmatics 44 (6–7): 730–43. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Racy, John
1969 “Death in an Arab Culture.” Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 164 (3): 871–76. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rowling, Joanne
2007 Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. London: Bloomsbury.Google Scholar
Selin, Helaine, and Robert M. Rakoff
eds 2019 Death Across Cultures: Death and Dying in Non-Western Cultures. Singapore: Springer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wierzbicka, Anna
1972 Semantic Primitives. Frankfurt am Main: Athenaum.Google Scholar
1980 Lingua Mentalis: The Semantics of Natural Language. Sydney: Academic Press.Google Scholar
1985 Lexicography and Conceptual Analysis. Ann Arbor: Karoma.Google Scholar
2021 “ ‘Semantic Primitives’, Fifty Years Later.” Russian Journal of Linguistics 25 (2): 317–42. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ye, Zhengdao
ed. 2017 The Semantics of Nouns. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar