Publications
Publication details [#11719]
Herat, Manel . 2014. The final goodbye: The linguistic features of gravestone epitaphs from the nineteenth century to the present. International Journal of Language Studies 8 (4) : 127–150. 24 pp.
Publication type
Article in journal
Publication language
English
Keywords
Place, Publisher
Lulu Press Inc.
Abstract
The study is based on a corpus of 957 epitaph inscriptions from the 19th century to the present collected from three cemeteries in Liverpool, England. It attempts to explore whether the epitaph construction and the death rituals associated with it has changed over time, whether the age of the deceased plays a crucial role in the way their identities are reflected on the graveyard epitaphs, whether the use of metaphors and euphemisms for death have changed diachronically and whether contemporary inscriptions are viewed as exhibiting a lower degree of sacredness compared to the ones of the 19th century.