P-1447 - Word use and content analysis of six national anthems - preliminary findings of a comparative cultural suicide research

Abstract

Besides many, suicidal behaviour has socio-cultural and historical determinants. The purpose of this study was to determinate whether differences in suicide rates and attitude towards self-harm among different nations are reflecting in the lyrics of the national anthems. Word use and content analysis were used to compare anthems of 6 different countries with different suicide rates. The analyses were conducted by the members of the study group according to an assessment tool, developed for this study based on Weintraub's method. After careful analysis, results were compared with national suicide rates. The English and the Canadian anthem contain the most positive contents (like positive labelings, wishes or emotions), 17.24% and 10.90%, respectively, without any negative or aggressive hints. Glory was characteristic to most anthems (mainly to the German: 16.66%), but in the US anthem it was related with aggression (3.61%). Compared to these, the Polish, but mainly the Hungarian anthem contains more negative labelings (4.71%) and emotions (1.88%) while mentioning minimal glorious contents (1.80%). The assessment of word use and content analysis of the anthems of different countries revealed specific differences between national attitudes. Furthermore, anthems of countries with lower suicide rates tend to contain more positive contents, while with higher suicide rates, especially the Hungarian showed more ambivalence, denial, loss, or even aggressive hints. Our study is limited by the low number of anthems included in the analysis. In the future, more complete analyses of different anthems are planned to strengthen our preliminary data.