Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

‘I Hope You Can Rise Again’: Linguistic Variation in Online Condolences

  • Published:
Journal of Psycholinguistic Research Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

In the wake of tragic events such as the ‘Paris Attacks of 2015’, the expression of condolences through e-messages has become a common way for individuals to offer support and sympathy to those affected. However, limited research has been conducted on the linguistic aspects of condolence e-messages and how they reflect the speech act of condolence. This study aims to fill this gap by examining the syntactic and pragmatic elements present in these messages. The aim is to understand how the syntactic and pragmatic elements of these messages contribute to the expression of the communicative speech act of condolence. Condolence e-messages were identified and analyzed using an adapted version of Elwood’s (2004) coding scheme. The analysis focused on common themes in the condolence sentences, revealing that some linguistic functions were overtly used to express grief. Additionally, specific words such as ‘pray’, ‘love’, and ‘condolence’ were frequently used in conjunction with the expressions of condolence. The findings highlight the influence of sociocultural factors in shaping the norms and variations in the production of speech acts across different cultures. Understanding these linguistic variations can contribute to effective communication and cultural sensitivity in expressing condolences.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3

Similar content being viewed by others

Data Availability

No data set was generated during the current study.

Notes

  1. Hofstede (1980) came to this realisation that most of the Western industrialized nations are in the small power distance/high individualism cluster (‘independent individualism’). Bond and Smith (1996) also propound that “conformity … was lower in societies valuing autonomy, individualism, and status achievement” (cited in Berry et al., 2002, p. 59). As clarified by Triandis (1995), in individualistic societies personal attitudes outweigh social norms; hence, most English speakers, who represent an individualistic society, put relative importance on their attitudes to the bereaved.

References

  • Al-Shboul, Y., & Maros, M. (2013). Condolences strategies by Jordanians to an obituary status update on Facebook. GEMA Online Journal of Language Studies, 13(3), 151–162.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bardovi-Harlig, K., & Hartford, B. S. (2005). Intercultural pragmatics: Exploring institutional talk. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

  • Berry, J. W., Poortinga, Y. H., Segall, M. H., & Dasen, P. R. (2002). Cross-cultural psychology: Research and applications. Cambridge University Press.

  • Bockelman, W. (1990). Finding the right words. Augsburg Fortress.

  • Bond, R., & Smith, P. B. (1996). Culture and conformity: A meta-analysis of studies using Asch’s line judgment task. Psychological Bulletin, 119, 111–137.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Calderwood, K. A., & Alberton, A. M. (2022). Consoling the bereaved: Exploring how sympathy cards influence what people say. OMEGA-Journal of Death and Dying, 00302228211065958.

  • Capone, A. (2018). Pragmemes (again). Lingua, 209, 89–104.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ellis, R. (2008). The study of second language acquisition. Oxford University Press.

  • Elwood, K. (2004). I am sorry: A cross cultural analysis of expression of condolence. Retrieved April, 10, 2016.

  • Fairclough, N. (2001). Language and power Longman.

  • Hall, E. T. (1976). Beyond cultures. Anchor Books/A Division of Random House.

  • Hei, K. C. (2018). Ethnic variations in malaysian SMS condolences. International Journal of Linguistics Literature and Translation, 1(2), 29–42.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hidayah, A., Laila, M., Maryadi, M. A., & Haryanto, S. (2021). Condolence utterances of the death of Kobe Bryant in Twitter [unpublished doctoral dissertation]. Universitas Muhammadiyah Surakarta.

  • Hinkel, E. (1997). Appropriateness of advice: DCT and multiple choice data. Applied Linguistics, 18(1), 1–26.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hofstede, G. (1980). Culture’s consequences: International differences in work related values. Sage.

  • Hofstede, G. (1983). Dimensions of national cultures in fifty countries and three regions. In J. B. Deregowski, S. Dziurawiec, & R. C. Annis (Eds.), Expectations in cross cultural psychology(pp. 335–355). Swets & Zeitlinger.

  • Huth, T. (2006). Negotiation structure and culture: L2 learners’ realization of L2 compliment-response sequences in talk-in-interaction. Journal of Pragmatics, 38, 2025–2050.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Iqbal, Y., & Bilali, R. (2018). The impact of acknowledgement and denial of responsibility for harm on victim groups’ perceptions of justice, power, and intergroup attitudes. European Journal of Social Psychology, 48(4), 397–411.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kachru, Y. (1998). Culture and speech acts: Evidence from indian and singaporean English. Studies in the Linguistic Sciences, 28(1), 79–98.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kawakami, K., Spears, R., & Dovidio, J. F. (2002). Disinhibition of stereotyping: Context, prejudice, and target characteristics. European Journal of Social Psychology, 32(4), 517–530.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kecskes, I. (2015). How does pragmatic competence develop in bilinguals? International Journal of Multilingualism, 12(4), 419–434.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kecskes, I. (2019). English as a lingua franca: The pragmatic perspective. Cambridge University Press.

  • Klass, D. (2014). Grief, consolation, and religions: A conceptual framework. OMEGA-Journal of Death and Dying, 69(1), 1–18.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kuang, C. H. (2015). Functions of malaysian condolences written in text messages. Pertanika Journal of Social Sciences & Humanities, 23(2), 479–493.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lauder, H., Brown, P., & Halsey, A. H. (2004). Sociology and political arithmetic: Some principles of a new policy science. The British Journal of Sociology, 55(1), 3–22.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Lawless, B., & Chen, Y. W. (2019). Developing a method of critical thematic analysis for qualitative communication inquiry. Howard Journal of Communications, 30(1), 92–106.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Liu, B., & Sundar, S. S. (2018). Should machines express sympathy and empathy? Experiments with a health advice chatbot. Cyberpsychology Behavior and Social Networking, 21(10), 625–636.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Lotfollahi, B., & Eslami-Rasekh, A. (2011). Speech act of condolence in Persian and English: A cross-cultural study. Studies in Literature and Language, 3(3), 139–145.

    Google Scholar 

  • Manning, D. (1987). Comforting those who grieve. Harper & Row.

  • Martin, J. R., & Wodak, R. (2003). Re/reading the past: Critical and functional perspectives on time and value. John Benjamins.

  • Martinelli, A. (2008). Sociology in political practice and public discourse. Current Sociology, 56(3), 361–370.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Medie, P. A., & Kang, A. J. (2018). Power, knowledge and the politics of gender in the Global South. European Journal of Politics and Gender, 1(1–2), 37–54.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Morady Moghaddam, M. (2013). Discourse structures of condolence speech act. Journal of English Language Teaching and Learning, 4(10), 105–125.

    Google Scholar 

  • Morady Moghaddam, M. (2019). Responses to compliments in online English chat: A comparison between iranian EFL learners and native English speakers. Journal of Multicultural Discourses, 14(2), 167–187.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Morady Moghaddam, M. (2021). The Common Good’: Social orders and politeness as conceptualised through other-criticism. International Review of Pragmatics, 13(2), 213–233.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Morady Moghaddam, M., & Esmaeilpour, F. (2023). Persuasive language in ELT-related ads on social media. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10936-023-09942-7.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Olshtain, E., & Cohen, A. (1983). Apology: A speech act set. In N. Wolfson, & E. Judd (Eds.), Sociolinguistics and language acquisition (pp. 18–35). Newbury House.

  • Peneva, D. (2020). The communicative acts of sympathy and condolence in English and bulgarian–pragmalinguistic aspects. Studies in Linguistics Culture and FLT, 8(3), 23–35.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Salmani Nodoushan, M. A. (2013). The social semiotics of funerary rites in Iran. International Journal of Language Studies, 7(1), 79–102.

    Google Scholar 

  • Salmani Nodoushan, M. A. (2016). Rituals of death as staged communicative acts and pragmemes. In A. Capone, & J. L. Mey (Eds.), Interdisciplinary studies in pragmatics, culture and society (pp. 925–959). Springer.

  • Samavarchi, L., & Allami, H. (2012). Giving condolences by Persian EFL learners: A contrastive sociopragmatic study. International Journal of English Linguistics, 2(1), 71–78.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Schmidt-Crawford, D. A., Thompson, A. D., & Lindstrom, D. L. (2021). Condolences and congratulations: COVID-19 pressures on higher education faculty. Journal of Digital Learning in Teacher Education, 37(2), 84–85.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Schwartz, S. H. (1994). Are there universal aspects in the structure and contents of human values? Journal of Social Issues, 50, 19–45.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Schwartz, S. H., & Sagiv, L. (1995). Identifying culture-specifics in the content and structure of values. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 26(1), 92–116.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Searle, J. R. (1979). Expression and meaning. Cambridge University Press.

  • Setiawan, W., Pramono, S. E., & Sanjoto, T. B. (2018). The role of Batik museum as the effort in increasing the cultural awareness of junior high school students in Pekalongan. Journal of Educational Social Studies, 7(1), 45–51.

    Google Scholar 

  • Triandis, H. C. (1995). Individualism and collectivism. Westview.

  • Van Zomeren, M., & Lodewijkx, H. F. (2005). Motivated responses to ‘senseless’ violence: Explaining emotional and behavioural responses through person and position identification. European Journal of Social Psychology, 35(6), 755–766.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Walter, T. (1997). Secularization. In C. M. Parkes, P. Laungani, & B. Young (Eds.), Death and bereavement across cultures. Routledge.

  • Williams, T. R. (2006). Linguistic politeness in expressing condolences: A case study. RASK: International Journal of Languages and Linguistics, 23, 45–62.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wilson, D., & Carston, R. (2019). Pragmatics and the challenge of ‘non-propositional’ effects. Journal of Pragmatics, 145, 31–38.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Yahya, E. (2010). A study of condolences in Araqi Arabic. With reference to English. Adab Al-Rafidayn, 57, 47–70.

    Google Scholar 

  • Zhou, N., & Jurgens, D. (2020, November). Condolences and empathy in online communities. In Proceedings of the 2020 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing (EMNLP) (pp. 609–626).

  • Zunin, L. M., & Zunin, H. S. (2007). The art of condolence. Harper Collins.

Download references

Funding

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Shahrood University of Technology, Shahrood, Iran

    Mostafa Morady Moghaddam

  2. University of Texas at Arlington, Arlington, TX, USA

    Jodi Tommerdahl

Authors
  1. Mostafa Morady Moghaddam
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Jodi Tommerdahl
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Mostafa Morady Moghaddam.

Ethics declarations

Ethics approval and consent to participate

This article does not contain any studies with human participants or animals performed by any of the authors.

Informed Consent

The data in this study were open to public at the time of data collection. Informed consent is not applicable to our study.

Competing interests

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Additional information

Publisher’s Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Morady Moghaddam, M., Tommerdahl, J. ‘I Hope You Can Rise Again’: Linguistic Variation in Online Condolences. J Psycholinguist Res 52, 2793–2809 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10936-023-10020-1

Download citation

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10936-023-10020-1

Keywords

Search

Navigation