A sociocultural analysis of the bereavement discourse: a cross-cultural study

Abstract

Reactions to death have been examined in line with psychological, behavioral, and social perspectives (Zunin & Zunin, 2007). That being the case, the bereavement discourse has not been given sufficient attention appropriate to its communicative functions. This paper aims at investigating the bereavement discourse among Persian and English speakers, delving into the common communicative themes and extracting semantically meaningful categories. I also intend to make a cross-cultural comparison based on the common themes. The data of this study include 743 condoling sentences gathered through movie analysis, which can be a good source representing societal norms and cultural stereotypes (Pimentel, 2010). The bereavement discourse in movies was categorized under six general functions: (1) expressing regret; (2) offering condolence; (3) sharing feeling; (4) offering help; (5) extending sympathy; and (6) religious-oriented comments. The Chi-square test was conducted to find out whether the differences between these two groups of speakers are significant. I also discuss that the differences are meaningfully attributable to cultural conventions and social norms. Therefore, the relationship between micro and macro contexts is considered to make broader cultural inferences.