Part of
Changing Genre Conventions in Historical English News DiscourseEdited by Birte Bös and Lucia Kornexl
[Advances in Historical Sociolinguistics 5] 2015
► pp. 103–134
Edited by Birte Bös and Lucia Kornexl
[Advances in Historical Sociolinguistics 5] 2015
► pp. 103–134
Late Modern English death notices
Transformations of a traditional lay audiences
Death notices are traditional texts that have become conventionalised within
a certain speech community. They use highly standardised expressions and
established structural patterns to fulfil the function of informing about an
individual’s death. This paper traces the development and linguistic realisation
of this text type throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. The study is based on a
qualitative analysis of a diachronic corpus, the Corpus of English Death Notices
(CEDN), which consists of 400 death notices published between 1801 and 2012
in four English newspapers (The Morning Chronicle, The Daily News, The Times,
and The Guardian). The pre-set macrostructure of the text type can be described
in terms of a template consisting of thirteen different structural elements. The
analysis of the text samples shows that many of these structural elements display
social and cultural norms and conventions. Ten of the elements can already be
found at the beginning of the 19th century; a further three elements start to
appear within the period of investigation, adding new communicative functions
to the texts. Based on their frequency of occurrence, they can be categorised as
obligatory or optional elements of the text type. The diachronic investigation
shows that some of these components remain stable whereas others change status.
As regards their linguistic realisation, tendencies towards greater precision,
e.g. when mentioning the date of death, as well as tendencies towards more
vague expressions, e.g. when referring to the circumstances of the death, can be
observed.
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CEDN = Corpus of English Death Notices, 1801–2012. Compiled by Sarah Borde. Rostock: University of Rostock.
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