Abstract
The paper reports an empirical study of the official online eulogy request system developed in Taiwan. Through a qualitative analysis of the request system, four extra-linguistic factors are identified as being crucial when analyzing the pragmeme of accommodation, including the affiliation and the job title of the mourner, the occupation of the deceased, the religion of the deceased, and the Taiwanese cultural practice of adopting an English nickname. The cultural meanings of the four variables are also discussed. It is argued that the Chinese concept of miànzi ‘face’ is a main force that not only historically led to the establishment of the request system but also fundamentally shaped the setup of the system. In addition, two linguistic factors are also found to be of relevance, including mode of communication (written) and length of expression (four characters).
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Notes
- 1.
Complicated rules exist governing the delivery of expressions, according to the age and sex of the deceased, but that is outside the scope of this paper.
- 2.
In Taiwan, funerals are of two types—private and public. Private funerals are attended only by blood relatives of the deceased. Public funerals may be attended by anyone connected to the deceased. It is the eulogistic idioms that are delivered at public funerals that are studied in the current paper.
- 3.
As can be seen in the system, the Taiwanese culture assigns different eulogistic idioms for different occupations. Interested readers are referred, for instance, to Lu (submitted) for an analysis of eulogistic idioms for politicians in Taiwan.
- 4.
For a further discussion of Taiwanese people’s obsession with the English language, see Linkov and Lu (2017).
- 5.
Of course, I do not exclude the remote possibility of two deceased people having exactly the same family and given name, but that would be a rare situation.
- 6.
On a similar note, Lu (2016) offers a usage-based account of how the physical context may influence the interpretation of a lexical construction.
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Database Consulted
Taipei Mortuary Services Office. (2014). Electronic eulogy request platform. http://w9.mso.taipei.gov.tw/TPFScroll/login.aspx. Accessed 30 Apr 2016.
Acknowledgements
The completion of this paper was supported by the research grant “The Language of Death in Taiwan: Evidence from Condolatory Idioms, Presidential Eulogies and the Self-introductions of Undertakers” (RG002-N-15) awarded by Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for Scholarly Exchange. I am grateful to an anonymous reviewer for useful suggestions, with the typical disclaimer that applies. I also thank the Taipei City Government for their kind permission to publish snapshots of the system for academic purposes.
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Lu, Wl. (2017). Socio-cultural Factors in Analyzing the Pragmeme of Accommodation: A Case Study of the Official Online Eulogy Request System in Taiwan. In: Parvaresh, V., Capone, A. (eds) The Pragmeme of Accommodation: The Case of Interaction around the Event of Death. Perspectives in Pragmatics, Philosophy & Psychology, vol 13. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-55759-5_7
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