Messages Of Condolence Research Articles

Analysis of politeness strategies in kῖmwῖmbῖ (E531) condolence messages

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the politeness strategies used by condolers in expressing condolence in Kῖmwῖmbῖ. Death is a natural part of human life. Regardless of its cause, it is usually very painful and therefore, losing a loved one causes deep feelings of loss and sorrow not only to the family of the deceased but also to friends and relatives. The main purpose of expressing condolence is to convey sympathy or compassion to the bereaved. Yule (2017) argues that in linguistic politeness, face is the most important concept and claims that a person’s face in pragmatics is their public self-image. In expressing condolence, condolers threaten the face of the bereaved but also employ politeness strategies to formulate messages in order to save the bereaved’s face. The study adopted the qualitative and quantitative research approaches and used Brown and Levinson (1978) Politeness Theory. Politeness theory focuses on ‘saving face’ which is a key aspect in politeness. The study was conducted in Chogoria Division, Maara Subcounty, Tharaka Nithi County, Kenya. Purposive sampling was used to sample twenty condolence messages for analysis. A guiding card was used to categorize the condolence utterances with politeness strategies. The data was analyzed both qualitatively and quantitatively providing explanation of these politeness strategies and giving their frequencies and percentages in tables. It was established that the four politeness strategies proposed in the politeness theory are used in expressing condolence in Kῖmwῖmbῖ, with positive politeness strategy being the most used. The findings add to the existing knowledge in pragmatics, especially on politeness and burial discourse. Similarly, the study provides data which can be used to compare with other languages hence aiding in generalizing conclusions of condolence speech act.

Agency Attribution through Condolence Messaging in Tanzania

It is normal to pray that the deceased’s soul should rest in eternal peace, and even write ‘RIP’ in condolence books, which gets us closer to issuing a directive to the deceased: ‘You REST in peace’. This utterance attributes agency to the deceased. Analysing 525 condolence messages and discussing with 50 respondents from two major universities in Tanzania, this study reveals agency as clearly implicated among some condolers who address the deceased in the second person singular. Others issue directives to the deceased to perform acts other than resting peacefully. I present the respondents’ views as to the attribution of agency and recommend a further study in the pragmatics and semantics of condolence messages to further enhance our understanding of such messages.

‘I have just written a song which came out of my soul’: Lay Music Production and the Death of President John F. Kennedy

ABSTRACT The death of President John F. Kennedy in November 1963 drew a mass outpouring of public and private grief. Thousands of people from all over the world sent condolence messages to his widow, Jacqueline Kennedy. They also sent pieces of music, sometimes hurriedly composed, in response to their overwhelming grief. Most of these pieces have never been heard and sit in a silent archive. This essay examines the condolence music composed for Kennedy, focusing especially on the lay material in the condolence archive, and discovers men, women, and children who found solace in the songwriting process, pre-empting what we now know to be an effective form of grief therapy. It reveals the characteristics of lay music production in response to Kennedy’s death, and how the people who sent music to Jacqueline Kennedy explained what they were doing and why they were doing it.

Survey of the Relationship Between Online Committee of Friends Meetings, Burials, and Coping With Bereavement Among Nigerians in Ebonyi State.

Online committee of friends meeting is a new trend in Nigeria. There is a continuous online interaction that goes on among the group members. The qualitative research design was used to carry out the study. The unstructured interview method was used to get information from the study participants. It was found among other things that the bereaved read, digest and accept the online condolence messages which serve as a coping tool to the loss of the loved one. Online COF is also a veritable tool in soliciting for and raising funds from online to facilitate the burial of loved ones owing to rising cost of conducting burials in Nigeria. It was concluded that coping with death is achieved in online COF through formation of whatsapp group, condolence messaging, friends digestion of information and acceptance of the pieces of advice raised and as divine will which comes when it will.

Kahramanmaraş Depremleri Sonrası Afrika Ülkelerinden Türkiye’ye Yapılan Yardımlar

Although Türkiye's relations with African countries have continued since the Ottoman Empire, the measures taken over the past 20 years have taken an important place in Türkiye's foreign policy. These relations, which cover different areas, were mainly towards on the African countries from Türkiye. After the great destruction and loss of life suffered by the earthquakes of 6 February in Kahramanmaraş, assistance and messages of support from African countries to Türkiye highlighted. In this study, the appeal for international assistance after the earthquake in Türkiye and individual aid from African countries as well as official and civil institutions were examined. In the post-earthquake period, what kind of assistance was given to Türkiye from which the African country and the messages of support announced along with messages of condolence were discussed. On the other hand, the assistance of African students studying in Türkiye to the victims of the earthquake after the earthquake was discussed. As a result of this research, the reactions and actions taken by African countries during Türkiye's difficult days have been revealed and evaluated.

Beyond the Words in Print: Identity Construction in Messages of Condolence

Death is part of human existence. When a person hears the news of someone’s death, it is very common for that person to express their feelings about it. This feeling is in the form of condolences which express the speaker’s sorrow, and condolences fall into the category of speech act. Semantically, condolences have a social meaning which refers to language use. Identities are created in relationships with others, and condolences are major platforms for the construction of identities, in that, existing relationships are, clearly, manifested in the messages that sympathizers expressed. Using a qualitative approach, the study analyzed twenty condolence messages which were purposely sampled from condolence messages posted in the portals of International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP), when one of its members passed away. The analysis of the data revealed two main identity types enacted for the deceased: role identity and Social Identity. The major Role identity enacted, metaphorically, was Father while the least role was Achiever. Second, identity as an International Figure was dominant with the Social roles, but Good Personality was used less frequently. The present study adds to studies in identity construction, in general, and studies in condolence messages, in specific.

The Sky above and the Mud below: Two Books about Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs was the most charismatic businessperson in the modern era. When he died, on October 5, 2011, Apple was inundated with condolence messages from all over the United States and from around the world. These notes were sent not only to Apple headquarters in Cupertino, California, but to Apple retail stores. The stores posted them on their windows. In addition, bouquets of flowers were brought to the stores. Think of this—flowers in front of hundreds of stores in dozens of countries because of Jobs's death. No one knows how many notes were received at Apple and in the stores. According to the “Remembering Steve” page on Apple.com, “Over a million people from all over the world have shared their memories, thoughts, and feelings about Steve.” As he was dying, people made a pilgrimage to his home in Palo Alto. His daughter has written that “a few people he didn’t know came to the doors wanting to see him … , wandering into the garden. … A stranger in a sari begged to talk with him. A man came in through the gate and said he had flown in from Bulgaria just to see my father.” After Jobs's death, California governor Jerry Brown declared October 16 to be “Steve Jobs Day.” The president of United States and the First Lady, Barack and Michelle Obama, posted a condolence note. Nothing remotely like this outpouring had ever taken place on the occasion of the death of an American CEO.

Preface

PREFACEThe “Victor Villanueva Memorial Meeting” to pay homage to our friend and colleague Victor Manuel Villanueva Sandoval was held at the premises of the Institute of Physics and Mathematics, University of Michoacán in Morelia, Michoacán, Mexico, on December 6, 2013, about 3 months after his tragic demise. This gathering was attended by his close friends, family, collaborators, colleagues and students. Several of those who could not physically be present for this commemorative gathering sent their messages of condolence and/or scientific contributions for this proceedings volume for which we are immensely grateful.The meeting started with personal recollections by Victor’s wife Ana Rosa Tenorio Lúa and his sisters Alejandra and Gabriela Villanueva. His daughters Ana Paola, Daniela and Mariana were also present to grace the solemn occasion and later provided us with their heart-felt messages. The academic part of the meeting started with Adnan Bashir presenting a summary of Victor’s scientific life, his research and its impact.Research talks were then presented by Luis Villaseñor (Ultra energetic cosmic rays - recent results), Mauro Napsuciale (A formalism for higher spins based on parity), Christian Schubert (Amplitudes with many photons in QED), Naser Ahmadiniaz (Amplitudes with gluons in a string inspired formalism), Carlos Vaquera (Second order fermions and renormalization) and Adnan Bashir (Strong interactions - peculiarities and challenges). There were several potential and interested speakers who were unable to physically attend the meeting but, as we have mentioned before, agreed to send their contribution for the proceedings volume at a later date. They are Dmitry Antonov (University of Lisboa, Portugal), Fiorenzo Bastianelli and Roberto Bonezzi (University of Bologna and INFN, Italy), Olindo Corradini (University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Italy), Pietro Dall’Olio (University of Michoacán, Mexico), Jan Govaerts (Université Catholique de Louvian, Belgium), Emanuele Latini (University of Zurich, Switzerland), Khaled Hassan Ould-Lahoucie (University Ferhat Abbas of Setif, Algeria), Eckehard Mielke (Metropolitan Autonomous University of Iztapalapa, Mexico), Néstor Ortiz, Olivier Sarbach and Thomas Zannias (University of Michoacán, Mexico).We are very grateful to the director Ricardo Becerril and personnel of the Institute of Physics and Mathematics, University of Michoacán, who ensured a smooth and pleasant organization of the meeting. We offer our special thanks to Itzel Alvarez who prepared a beautiful poster to announce the meeting. She also organized the personal part of the material for the proceedings in an outstanding manner.Finally, we would like this meeting and the proceedings volume to serve as a token of our appreciation and admiration for our friend Victor Villanueva. We also hope it serves as an inspiration for Victor’s students and his daughters Paola, Daniela and Mariana to follow in his footsteps and attempt to reach the stars.Adnan BashirChristian Schubert

Tracking the Werther Effect on social media: Emotional responses to prominent suicide deaths on twitter and subsequent increases in suicide

Rises in suicide rates following media reports of the deaths by suicide of public figures are a well-documented phenomenon. However, it remains unclear why, or by what exact mechanism, celebrity suicides act to increase suicidal risk in the wider public due to the lack of data showing how the public understands and reacts to the suicide of well-known figures. This study used a supervised machine learning approach to investigate the emotional content of almost 1 million messages sent on Twitter related to the suicides of 18 prominent individuals in Japan between 2010 and 2014. The results revealed that different demographic characteristics of the deceased person (age, gender, and occupation) resulted in significant differences in emotional response; notably that the suicides of younger people, of women and of people in entertainment careers created more emotional responses (measured as a ratio of emotionally-coded tweets within the overall volume of tweets for each case) than for older people, men, and those in other careers. Moreover, certain types of emotional response were shown to correlate to subsequent rises in the national suicide counts, with “surprised” reactions being positively correlated with the suicide counts, while a high proportion of polite messages of condolence were negatively correlated. The study demonstrates the importance of, and describes a methodology for, considering the content of social media messages, not just their volume, in research into the mechanism by which these widely-reported deaths increase suicide risk in the broader public.

O polskich i słowackich depeszach kondolencyjnych w związku z atakami terrorystycznymi

Occasional magazines were discussed, specifically condolences in the Polish-Slovak comparative approach. We analyzed 44 (22 PL / 22 SK) condolences delivered in the years 2015–2017 by the President of the Republic Andrzej Duda and the President of the Slovak Republic Andrej Kiska in connection with terrorist attacks. The characteristic features of condolence messages sent after terrorist attacks were indicated. Based on the collected material, two compositional diagrams and their obligatory components were distinguished. Many similarities have been found in Polish and Slovak condolence messages, which mainly originates from the diplomatic style, which imposes some formal requirements, but also some differences were noticed.

Pain in advertising: an analysis of the content and design of the advertisements in press after 11-M terrorist attacks

On the anniversary of the attacks of 11 March 2004 which occurred in Madrid, we conducted a study which focused on the advertising published the days following the attacks. This study examines the message content and layout of ads across a sample of 178 advertisements published in the Spanish press. We created a table with 15 variables and 112 subvariables to find out which were the predominant messages in each advertisement and if the advertiser wanted to convey a message of sorrow to the sufferer or implicitly wanted their brand to predominate over the message of shared pain. Among the findings that we obtained was that messages of condolence and sober designs, without pictures or color, in which the advertiser expresses emotions and empathy with the victims are the most numerous. Emotional pain is the dominant feeling in the adverts published after the attacks March 2004 with messages of sorrow and strongly expressed exclamations, followed by messages of condolence and thanks. In the design, the text of the adverts is of great significance compared to the iconic features and the composition looks similar to that of obituaries. In addition, we provide a proposal for joint design of the message as a reference for advertisers in similar circumstances.

A detailed analysis of messages posted on the 'Turk-Orthopod' mailing list over a 13-year period.

The objective of this study was to analyze the content of the 'Turk-Orthopod' mailing list between 2000 and 2013. All messages posted to the 'Turk-Orthopod' mailing list were documented and categorized by 4 orthopedic surgeons who were active members of the mailing list into 11 categories based on the content of the messages. A total of 15,699 messages were evaluated and included in the analysis. The mean number of daily messages in 2000 was 0.98 messages/day and increased to 7.23 messages/day in 2013. The most common type of message was announcements (37.5%) about national or international congresses, conferences, symposia, meetings, and panels. The second most common type of message was condolence messages (11.7%). Case discussions and academic discussions comprised 6.3% and 4.5% of the messages, respectively. The 'Turk-Orthopod' mailing list serves primarily as an information board and a powerful social media platform for communication among Turkish orthopedic surgeons. However, scientific case discussions and other professional issues comprise a minority of the messages.

Pilgrims at the Australia Zoo: Reflections on Being There

Pilgrims at the Australia Zoo: Reflections on Being There Luis A. Vivanco How can you even begin to describe what it’s like realizing a dream? You can’t. I’ve tried; believe me, in the past twenty‐four hours I’ve tried my damndest to comprehend a means of conveying to you, or even to myself, what yesterday was truly like. And believe me, as someone who considers herself to be relatively good with words…I’ve hit a wall on this one. But, I’ll try. I owe it to you. After all, having the opportunity to visit the Australia Zoo is the definitive reason why I’m on this continent to begin with. Thus begins a blog entry by Kristin, a young American in Australia, describing what she calls “The Pilgrimage.” Kristin made this pilgrimage to the Australia Zoo, a small wildlife park on the Gold Coast of Queensland, Australia. Her several‐thousand‐word blog entry describes her activities during her visit, conversations she had with park workers, and her “quest for the ultimate Australia Zoo souvenir.” In one of the more remarkable passages, Kristin describes her visit to the “Crocoseum,” an arena in which trained animals perform tricks for an audience. It was, she writes, “…like a religious experience for me. I’m completely serious…the emotions I felt walking into the 5,000 seat arena can only be compared to how devout Catholics must feel when they visit the Vatican, or the sensation that overwhelms Muslims when they finally reach Mecca.” Kristin is not the only self‐described “pilgrim” to journey to this place. In the past several years, many hundreds, if not thousands, of others have made similar journeys to the Australia Zoo, explicitly framing their visits there as “pilgrimage.” Most of these pilgrims are ordinary Australians and North Americans, and, to a lesser extent, Europeans and East Asians. Add to this list a few global celebrities who recently made what the Australian media has dubbed “pilgrimages”—among them the Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama, the country music group Dixie Chicks, the daughter of boxer Muhammad Ali—and one begins to ask: What is so important about this place? And why would a journey here—it is just a zoo, after all—be so explicitly framed as a “pilgrimage?” Founded in 1970, this small park—“reptile garden” might be a more apt term, as its main attractions include local crocodiles and snakes—would have remained obscure, even in Australia, but for one crucial fact: its association with the life and death of Steve Irwin. Irwin is better known to tens of millions of television viewers around the world as “The Crocodile Hunter.” In the 1990s, the quirky, khaki‐clad Australian gained widespread celebrity for his ability to find, capture, manipulate, and explain dangerous reptiles on his eponymous Discovery Channel program. Irwin worked at the park, which his father built up and passed to the younger Irwin upon retirement. As the Crocodile Hunter’s celebrity grew worldwide, so did the park’s profile, as many of the shows feature segments filmed there. But it was still just a regional “tourist” destination, and a relatively minor one at that, until September 4, 2006. On that day, a stingray barb to the chest killed Irwin while he was filming an underwater special. Within hours of the death announcement on Internet news sites, thousands of people in the area converged on the park’s gates to lay flowers and stuffed animals, write messages of condolence to Irwin’s family and park employees, and to express publicly their dismay and sorrow at the death of someone so vivacious and iconic. People began traveling from longer distances to do the same—many explicitly describing themselves as pilgrims—and they have not stopped, a fact to which park officials have responded by constructing a large memorial area where visitors can appreciate khaki shirts signed by fans, poems dedicated to Irwin, pictures of Irwin in all kinds of poses, and other commemorative objects. They have also created an annual “Steve Irwin Day” in November to celebrate the life of the Crocodile Hunter, and to raise money for the Australia Zoo’s...

Condolence Books: Language and Meaning in the Mourning for Hillsborough and Diana

This article reports empirical research into public books of condolence signed following two key mourning events within British culture: the 1989 Hillsborough soccer stadium disaster and the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, in 1997. The author suggests that not only do condolence books provide valuable historical record of the way contemporary society mourns, but also that they reflect attempts to language loss in ways that can be used to evaluate the extent of society's engagement with death. In so doing, he points to ways in which condolence messages signed following these events oscillate between “conservative structures of meaning” (Marris, 1974) and contemporary “structures of feeling” (Williams, 1971). In turn he suggests that such distinctions—between public and private, modernity and tradition—are destabilized by the postmodern cultural forms that these events appeared to inaugurate. In addition, and in the purported absence of expressivist mourning rituals (Gorer, 1965), the author suggests that condolence books may provide a useful social platform for the social expression of grief.

Diplomatic condolences: ideological positioning in the death of Yasser Arafat

Yasser Arafat wasakey figure in the political life ofthelate20th and early 21st centuries. As Palestinian president, he was a central player in negotiations over the most contentious issue of the time: Middle East peace. But although his significance is unquestioned, his status is ambiguous: for some he was a freedom fighter, for others a terrorist. It is interesting, therefore, to observe the ways in which different world governments marked the death of Arafat in November 2004, in their official condolence messages. Using the tools of critical discourse analysis (CDA) and systemic functional linguistics (SFL), this article treats the diplomatic condolence message as a recognizable text type that has much to tell us about how governments signal and construct ideological positions and in doing so `enact' the international community.

United Airlines’ and American Airlines’ online crisis communication following the September 11 terrorist attacks

The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, provided a challenging series of events for the crisis communication efforts of American Airlines and United Airlines. Based on crisis communication theory and organizational use of the Web, this study examined how the two companies used their Web sites during the first three weeks after the incidents as one means of conveying information following the attacks. Theoretically, analysis of incident-related segments of the two sites showed that the airlines evidenced key elements of crisis response. They provided instructing communication by giving facts, stating how their publics should take action, and providing information regarding how the problem was being corrected. Additionally, they offered adjusting communication through a series of condolence messages and links to relief organizations before emphasizing normal operations. From an online perspective, this study revealed that the Web enabled both companies to provide an immediate response to the attacks. The Web also allowed United and American to offer frequent updates about the incidents to their publics and to communicate their crisis response process to various publics simultaneously.

Death, Grief, and Solidarity: The Polytechnique Case

Following the massacre of fourteen women at Ecole Polytechnique, in December 1989, the content (affective, social, religious, feminist, and anti-masculinist) of 690 condolence messages written by the public at two French universities (Université de Montréal and Université du Québec à Montréal) were compared. The results show that this event did not trigger a homogeneous social reaction, but rather different ones, according to sex and university, suggesting that social investment factors play a role in the codification of events related to public deaths.

Pain in advertising: an analysis of the content and design of the advertisements in press after 11-M terrorist attacks

On the anniversary of the attacks of 11 March 2004 which occurred in Madrid, we conducted a study which focused on the advertising published the days following the attacks. This study examines the message content and layout of ads across a sample of 178 advertisements published in the Spanish press. We created a table with 15 variables and 112 subvariables to find out which were the predominant messages in each advertisement and if the advertiser wanted to convey a message of sorrow to the sufferer or implicitly wanted their brand to predominate over the message of shared pain. Among the findings that we obtained was that messages of condolence and sober designs, without pictures or color, in which the advertiser expresses emotions and empathy with the victims are the most numerous. Emotional pain is the dominant feeling in the adverts published after the attacks March 2004 with messages of sorrow and strongly expressed exclamations, followed by messages of condolence and thanks. In the design, the text of the adverts is of great significance compared to the iconic features and the composition looks similar to that of obituaries. In addition, we provide a proposal for joint design of the message as a reference for advertisers in similar circumstances.

Protesta social a través de la publicidad: 11M

El atentado del 11 de Marzo de 2004 es una fecha que todo español recuerda como el mayor atentado terrorista perpetrado en Madrid a manos de Al Qaeda. En los días posteriores, las manifestaciones de repulsa ante el atentado y las condolencias hacia las víctimas y familiares fueron de todo tipo. En este análisis nos centraremos en el campo de la comunicación y, más concretamente, en la publicidad.Los anunciantes como un sujeto más de la sociedad quisieron expresar su dolor y solidaridad a través de los espacios publicitarios en prensa. El resultado de esta expresión ha sido la identificación de una nueva modalidad publicitaria que hemos denominado de “protesta” que contiene los elementos básicos de la publicidad pero cuyo objeto dista de las modalidades típicamente publicitarias como la comercial, la institucional, la política o la propaganda, entre otras. Se ha elaborado una tipología de mensaje de publicidad de protesta y de códigos visuales más relevantes para poder delimitar la nueva modalidad publicitaria que hasta el momento era inexiste en España.

Herbert Spencer

Herbert Spencer is dead. The last and greatest of the giants of the Victorian age has passed away; and, in the tumult and clamour of evanescent political strife, the country of his birth is strangely indifferent to the portentous loss that it has suffered. From the uttermost parts of the earth—from the length and breadth of the great continent of America; from France, Germany, and Italy; even from far-off Japan—come messages of condolence and appreciation of the mighty dead; but here his loss is scarcely noticed. Truly, a prophet is not without honour, save in his own country and among his own people. Queen Victoria was a great queen, and worthily ruled a great nation; but to distant generations the name of Queen Victoria will mean as little as the name of Semiramis means to us, while the name of Herbert Spencer will loom as large as to us does that of Aristotle. In a future which may be distant, or may be nearer than we expect, when England, after occupying for a time the position of Holland, has become a sort of Isle of Wight for honeymooning Americans, Golders Hill will share with Stratford-on-Avon the honours of a place of pilgrimage for those who desire to honour the greatest of their race. What Sir Isaac Newton achieved in co-ordinating phenomena in space, Herbert Spencer achieved in co-ordinating phenomena in time. His task was almost superhuman, yet through ridicule and neglect at first, and at last in spite of the affectation of prigs, who feigned that his teaching was obsolete, he kept steadily to his task; devoting his life with wonderful purity of purpose to the completion of his great system of philosophy. He began in spite of scorn and ridicule; he lived to see his philosophy well-nigh universally accepted; and he lived to see it sneered at as antiquated by writers with less than a tithe of his knowledge, and with not a twentieth part the tithe of his intellect. He heaved Germany out of the slough of Hegelianism, only to see his own countrymen plunge and wallow in the same mire—to see them, as they struggled against asphyxiation, affect a sublime superiority over those who stood dry upon the bank, with limbs unhampered and breathing unobstructed.