How to Write an American Death Notice: Some Guidelines for Novice Obituarists
Abstract
The article aims at helping non-native speakers of English to write death notices, following the requirements of American tradition of the genre. It is based on the theoretical research into the genre, carried out by its author, who analyzed 1076 contemporary New York Times notices, according to Moves and Steps model of genre analysis by J. Swales and V. Bhatia. Having distinguished the death notice from the obituary, the author presents the communicative functions of the genre and its structure, consisting of seven moves, each made up of one to seven steps. Their presentation and brief analysis is accompanied by 100 patterns and
templates, which allows intermediate (B1–B2) students of English to create their own texts successfully step by step.
Keywords
American obituary; death notice; genre analysis
References
Baranick, A., Scheeler, J. & Miller, S. (2005). Life on the Heath Beat: A Handbook for Obituary Writers. Portland, ORE: Marion Street Press.
Bhatia, V. (1993). Analysing Genre: Language Use in Professional Settings. London: Longman.
Cebrat, G. (2016). Death Notice as a Genre: An Analysis of The New York Times Online Edition. (Unpublished doctoral dissertation).
Sosnowiec: Uniwersytet Śląski.
Encyclopedia of Death and Dying. (2001). Howarth, G. & Leaman, H. (eds). New York: Routledge.
Kolbuszewski, J. (1997). Z głębokim żalem: O współczesnej nekrologii. Wrocław: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Wrocławskiego.
Marzol, C.I. (2006). Dying for more: generic functionality and the representation of social actors in British and Spanish obituaries headlines. In: C. Neumann, R. Alastrué, & C. Auría (eds) Actas de V Congreso Internacional AELFE. Proceedings of the 5th International AELFE Conference. pp. 119–126.
Oxford English Dictionary. (1989). 2nd edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Oxford English Dictionary Online. (2013). www.oed.com
Starck, N. (2006). Life after Death: The Art of the Obituary. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press.
Swales, J. (1990). Genre Analysis: English in Academic and Research Settings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Webster’s Third New International Dictionary. (1961). Cambridge: Mass.: Riverside Press.
Państwowa Wyższa Szkoła Zawodowa w Tarnowie Poland
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
The Copyright Holders of the submitted texts are the Authors. The Reader is granted the rights to use the material available in the TAPSLA websites and pdf documents under the provisions of the Creative Commons 4.0 International License: Attribution - Share Alike (CC BY-SA 4.0). The user is free to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format, and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially.
1. License
The University of Silesia Press provides immediate open access to journal’s content under the Creative Commons BY-SA 4.0 license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/). Authors who publish with this journal retain all copyrights and agree to the terms of the above-mentioned CC BY-SA 4.0 license.
2. Author’s Warranties
The author warrants that the article is original, written by stated author/s, has not been published before, contains no unlawful statements, does not infringe the rights of others, is subject to copyright that is vested exclusively in the author and free of any third party rights, and that any necessary written permissions to quote from other sources have been obtained by the author/s.
If the article contains illustrative material (drawings, photos, graphs, maps), the author declares that the said works are of his authorship, they do not infringe the rights of the third party (including personal rights, i.a. the authorization to reproduce physical likeness) and the author holds exclusive proprietary copyrights. The author publishes the above works as part of the article under the licence "Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International".
ATTENTION! When the legal situation of the illustrative material has not been determined and the necessary consent has not been granted by the proprietary copyrights holders, the submitted material will not be accepted for editorial process. At the same time the author takes full responsibility for providing false data (this also regards covering the costs incurred by the University of Silesia Press and financial claims of the third party).
3. User Rights
Under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license, the users are free to share (copy, distribute and transmit the contribution) and adapt (remix, transform, and build upon the material) the article for any purpose, provided they attribute the contribution in the manner specified by the author or licensor.
4. Co-Authorship
If the article was prepared jointly with other authors, the signatory of this form warrants that he/she has been authorized by all co-authors to sign this agreement on their behalf, and agrees to inform his/her co-authors of the terms of this agreement.
I hereby declare that in the event of withdrawal of the text from the publishing process or submitting it to another publisher without agreement from the editorial office, I agree to cover all costs incurred by the University of Silesia in connection with my application.
