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Cultural differences in conceptualization of loss and grief as expressed by Americans and Poles. A comparative analysis
Abstract
We assume that despite the universal presence of death, the response to it might vary
from culture to culture. The way people think about their loss and grief might be all the more different.
The aims of this dissertation are: to study how Americans and Poles conceptualize loss and grief, to examine cultural differences in conceptualizing loss and grief, and to explore in what ways culture and individual experience might affect conceptualization of loss and grief.
We conducted a qualitative research study (questionnaires). A total of 37 Americans and 42 Poles, who had lost a loved one within 1–5 years, took part in the survey.
The data was analyzed in three chapters. The metaphors and blends (Lakoff & Johnson 1980; Fauconnier & Turner 2002) were grouped according to the semantic patterns we identified. This allowed us to develop the models of the concepts of loss and grief. A separate chapter concerned loss and grief in relation to the mode of death and the type of previous relationship with the lost one.
In general, both Americans and Poles viewed loss negatively. The most common way of seeing LOSS was ABSENCE OF SOMEONE. Other categories were more metaphorical. Although LOSS was mainly viewed negatively, this was not always the case with GRIEF.
We hope that this dissertation will be useful not only to linguists and scholars within culture studies, but also to psychologists, therapists, and anyone interested in the topics of loss and grief.
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Interpreting Figurative Meaning critically evaluates the recent empirical work from psycholinguistics and neuroscience examining the successes and difficulties associated with interpreting figurative language. There is now a huge, often contradictory literature on how people understand figures of speech. Gibbs and Colston argue that there may not be a single theory or model that adequately explains both the processes and products of figurative meaning experience. Experimental research may ultimately be unable to simply adjudicate between current models in psychology, linguistics and philosophy of how figurative meaning is interpreted. Alternatively, the authors advance a broad theoretical framework, motivated by ideas from 'dynamical systems theory', that describes the multiple, interacting influences which shape people's experiences of figurative meaning in discourse. This book details past research and theory, offers a critical assessment of this work and sets the stage for a new vision of figurative experience in human life.
The subject of this paper is loss and grief described by different people from two language groups: Americans and Poles. The analyzed data comes from the responses to two online questionnaires, and belongs to a larger PhD research project. In looking for examples of conceptual metaphors (Lakoff and Johnson 1980, Kövecses 2005) and conceptual blends (Fauconnier and Turner 1996, Dancygier and Sweetser 2014), we present various cases of conceptualization of loss and grief. Given the limited size of this paper, we selected examples referring to loss of a father. The aim is to compare different ways of talking about apparently the same type of loss, highlighting the fact that grief is very subjective and personal. It is also a way to present differences and a variety in viewpoint when talking about this type of loss.
Jeffrey Hammond's study takes an anthropological approach to the most popular form of poetry in early New England - the funeral elegy. Hammond reconstructs the historical, theological and cultural contexts of these poems to demonstrate how they responded to a specific process of mourning defined by Puritan views on death and grief. The elegies emerge, he argues not as 'poems' to be read and appreciated in a post-romantic sense, but as performative scripts that consoled readers by shaping their experience of loss in accordance with theological expectation. Read in the framework of their own time and place, the elegies shed light on the emotional dimension of Puritanism and the important role of ritual in Puritan culture. Hammond's book reassesses a body of poems whose importance on their own time has been obscured by almost total neglect in ours. It represents the first full-length study of its kind in English.