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Licensed Unlicensed Requires Authentication Published by De Gruyter Mouton May 24, 2013

“Death is the essence of all evil” – but not equally everywhere: Polish-English study on valuing and masking

  • Aleksandra Biela-Wołońciej EMAIL logo
From the journal Intercultural Pragmatics

Abstract

This paper describes an English-Polish theoretical and empirical cognitive study of the axiological aspects of the concept(s) death/śmierć and conceptualizations to which they refer. The pragmatic tool of a language mask is presented and applied to death, a generally difficult topic. A two-part survey was conducted to test the valuing of expressions where death/śmierć was used in the literal sense and in figurative senses, often idiomatic and not referring to the end of life of an organism (Part 1), as well as expressions where death/śmierć was masked – conveyed indirectly, by means of other concepts – mostly using metaphors and metonyms (Part 2). Death is a carrier of negative axiological charge as a source domain of metaphors (as seen in Part 1). Metaphor and metonymy are treated as language masks, i.e., pragmatic tools of pretending, used to modulate the valuing of death/śmierć (in Part 2). Valuing of seemingly equivalent or similar expressions varies cross-linguistically. Humor is a very controversial aspect in terms of its axiological parameter.

Published Online: 2013-05-24
Published in Print: 2013-06-24

©[2013] by Walter de Gruyter Berlin Boston

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