The Pragmeme of Accommodation: The Case of Interaction around the Event of Death

476 Pages·2017·6.06 MB·English

by  Vahid Parvaresh

Perspectives in Pragmatics, Philosophy & Psychology 13
Vahid Parvaresh
Alessandro Capone E ditors
The Pragmeme of
Accommodation:
The Case of
Interaction around
the Event of Death
Perspectives in Pragmatics,
Philosophy & Psychology
Volume 13
Editor-in-Chief
Alessandro Capone, University of Messina, Italy
Consulting Editors
Keith Allan, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia
Louise Cummings, Nottingham Trent University, UK
Wayne A. Davis, Georgetown University, Washington, USA
Igor Douven, Paris-Sorbonne University, France
Yan Huang, University of Auckland, New Zealand
Istvan Kecskes, State University of New York at Albany, USA
Franco Lo Piparo, University of Palermo, Italy
Antonino Pennisi, University of Messina, Italy
Editorial Board Members
Noel Burton-Roberts, University of Newcastle, UK
Brian Butler, University of North Carolina, Asheville, USA
Felice Cimatti, Università della Calabria, Cosenza, Italy
Eros Corazza, Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada
Marcelo Dascal, Tel Aviv University, Israel
Michael Devitt, Graduate Center, City University of New York, USA
Frans van Eemeren, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Alessandra Falzone, University of Messina, Italy
Neil Feit, State University of New York, Fredonia, USA
Alessandra Giorgi, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, Italy
Larry Horn, Yale University, New Haven, USA
Klaus von Heusinger, University of Stuttgart, Germany
Katarzyna Jaszczolt, University of Cambridge, UK
Ferenc Kiefer, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest, Hungary
Kepa Korta, ILCLI, Donostia, Spain
Ernest Lepore, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, USA
Stephen C. Levinson, Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen, The Netherlands
Fabrizio Macagno, New University of Lisbon, Portugal
Tullio De Mauro, ‘La Sapienza’ University, Rome, Italy
Jacob L. Mey, University of Southern Denmark, Odense, Denmark
Pietro Perconti, University of Messina, Italy
Francesca Piazza, University of Palermo, Italy
Roland Posner, Berlin Institute of Technology, Germany
Mark Richard, Harvard University, Cambridge, USA
Nathan Salmon, University of California, Santa Barbara, USA
Stephen R. Schiffer, New York University, USA
Michel Seymour, University of Montreal, Canada
Mandy Simons, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, USA
Timothy Williamson, University of Oxford, UK
Anna Wierzbicka, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia
Dorota Zielińska, Jagiellonian University, Kraków, Poland
More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/11797
Vahid Parvaresh • Alessandro Capone
Editors
The Pragmeme of
Accommodation: The Case
of Interaction around the
Event of Death
Editors
Vahid Parvaresh Alessandro Capone
Department of English and Media Department of Cognitive Science
Anglia Ruskin University University of Messina
Cambridge, UK Messina, Italy
ISSN 2214-3807 ISSN 2214-3815 (electronic)
Perspectives in Pragmatics, Philosophy & Psychology
ISBN 978-3-319-55758-8 ISBN 978-3-319-55759-5 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-55759-5
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017942772
© Springer International Publishing AG 2017
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Alessandro Capone dedicates this book to
the memory of his mother, Venerina, and his
father, Giuseppe, who are still watching over
him. Being indefatigable, honest, and caring,
they provided an outstanding example.
Acknowledgments
The publication of this collection of papers would not have been possible without
the tremendous help of each and every single contributor to this volume. We are
particularly grateful to all the contributors not only for their great cooperation,
timely submissions, and endless patience but also for serving as internal referees for
the other papers of the volume. Furthermore, we could hardly deny ourselves the
pleasure of thanking Jolanda Voogd and Helen van der Stelt who from the very first
day strongly encouraged the production of this book and were of great assistance
during the production process for accepted manuscripts. Kudos is also due to Istvan
Kecskes for all his help and support. Last but not least, Alessandro Capone would
like to give his warmest thanks to his friend Vahid Parvaresh for making the book he
dreamed of come true.
Vahid Parvaresh
Alessandro Capone
vii
Contents
Introduction: Death, Dying and the Pragmeme . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Vahid Parvaresh
Part I Death and Society
Catholic Rituals of Death and Funeral Homily:
A Socio-pragmatic Survey in Southern Italy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
Elvira Assenza
Pragmeme(s) of Sympathy Cards in the Midwestern US . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
Richard W. Hallett
Panegyrists, Vagueness and the Pragmeme . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
Vahid Parvaresh
Grief Interactions Among Emerging Adults on College Campuses . . . . . . 83
Mary Alice Varga
Pre-funeral Condolence Visits as Pragmemes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
Konosoang Sobane and Cyril Adonis
Socio-cultural Factors in Analyzing the Pragmeme
of Accommodation: A Case Study of the Official
Online Eulogy Request System in Taiwan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
Wei-lun Lu
The Pragmeme of Accommodation in Yorùbá Death Events . . . . . . . . . . . 129
Taiwo Oluwaseun Ehineni
Specifying Pragmemes: The Case of Expressing Condolences
in Memorial Advertisements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145
Gregor Walczak
ix
x Contents
Stories of Grief and Loss: How College Students Learned to Listen . . . . . 161
Barbara A. McDonald
Part II Death Across Languages and Cultures
To Be Headed for the West, Riding a Crane: Chinese Pragmemes
in the Wake of Someone’s Passing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183
Adrian Tien
English vs. Japanese Condolences: What People Say and Why . . . . . . . . . 203
John C. Wakefield and Hiroko Itakura
On Death in Artificial Languages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233
Alan Reed Libert
Toward a Pragmatic Study of Funeral Discourses
in Taiwan: Voice, Shared Situation Knowledge, and Metaphor . . . . . . . . . 259
Ming-Yu Tseng
Accommodating Language: A Comparative Investigation
of the Use of Euphemisms for Death and Dying
in Obituaries in English and in German . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 277
Philipp Hänggi and Catherine Diederich
Sacrificed, Lost or Gave Life for Their Country:
Cognitive Analysis of Euphemisms for Death
in G.W. Bush and B. Obama’s War Speeches. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 301
Ivana Moritz
Cross-Cultural and Interlanguage Perspectives
on the Emotional and Pragmatic Expression
of Sympathy in Spanish and English . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 319
Jocelly G. Meiners
Part III The Language of Death
‘The Bad Death’: Deciphering and Developing
the Dominant Discourse on ‘The Good Death’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 351
Michael Hviid Jacobsen
Closing the Book of Life: The Hospice Discourse
and the Construction of the Dying Role:
A Discourse-Theoretical Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 375
Leen Van Brussel and Nico Carpentier
Reclaiming Self by Working Through Loss: A Discourse Analysis
of Psychotherapy Sessions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 403
Joanna Pawelczyk
Contents xi
A Death in Late Victorian Dublin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 421
Keith Allan
Gray’s ‘Elegy’: A Polyphonous Elegy Sung to the Silence of Death . . . . . 441
Maria Grazia Dongu
The Fragile Nature of Human Glory: Death and Poetry
in Thomas Gray’s Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard . . . . . . . . . . . . . 459
Dario Tomasello
Talking Death: An Analysis of Selected Entries
in Frida Kahlo’s Diary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 463
Roxana Delbene