Abstract
This chapter will treat some pragmatic issues relating to how death is reported and discussed in artificial languages such as Esperanto, and how deaths of people in artificial language movements are announced. Many, if not all, natural languages have euphemisms for dying; this is true of some (but perhaps not all) artificial languages. I will present some euphemisms in artificial languages. Very few books for learning artificial languages give instructions on condolences; I will look at the limited material on this. I will then examine several types of texts (or pragmemes) relating to death, including funerals, obituaries, and epitaphs. The most space will be given to obituaries, as they seem to be the most commonly occurring of these text types in artificial languages. At least some such obituaries are different from the obituaries that occur in ordinary natural language sources such as newspapers in that details about the family of the deceased are not given.
In this paper I have modified the formatting in some quotations for ease of comprehension.
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Notes
- 1.
I will only treat ALs which have been designed for a serious purpose (generally to assist international communication), and not ALs which have been created in connection with a work of fiction or for personal gratification or entertainment.
- 2.
There are two languages named “Interlingua”, one of which is a simplified version of Latin (also called “Latino sine flexione”). I will not bring up this Interlingua; for the sake of clarity authors discussing the Interlingua which I will refer to often add “(IALA)” after it, as I have done. “IALA” stands for the ‘International Auxiliary Language Association’, the organization behind this AL.
- 3.
Normantas (2013: 116) states, “One major limitation of the existing corpora [of Esperanto] is the absence of samples of spoken language either in form of recorded audio or video material, or as transcribed text”.
- 4.
One type of death-related text that I will not be looking at is wills. Since they need to be understood by various people (lawyers, heirs) who would not understand an AL, there are probably very few, if any, wills, in ALs. For a discussion of the pragmatics of wills see Bach (1995).
- 5.
Consider for example the following remarks about Globish, a considerably simplified version of English:
The central ideology of Globish is as a tool of international communication which is not artificial but a language void of all figurative speech that English possess. Globish speakers avoid all figurative language and never tell jokes …
In my view Globish is indeed an artificial language, because it involved a planned and conscious large-scale modification of a natural language. Presumably one would not be allowed to use euphemisms such as passed away in Globish.
- 6.
Attobrah (1973) lacks page numbers.
- 7.
There is at least one word here (in my photocopy of the source) which I cannot decipher, as it is too close to the inner edge of the page.
- 8.
- 9.
In fact, the “A” and the “P” are run together, as were the letters in their logo at that time.
- 10.
This raises the question of which people are given obituaries in a particular publication (and how much space to give them), and how such choices are made. The same question applies to publications in general, although the basis for deciding might be different. In the case of a major newspaper with a global readership such as The New York Times, the choice would largely be based on how well known the deceased was, while with a local newspaper (e.g. of a small town) the choice might mainly be determined on whether someone came from the area served by the newspaper. In the latter case world figures such as national presidents might not be given obituaries.
- 11.
There are several errors in the Esperanto of this passage. They do not affect the analysis and I have not corrected them.
- 12.
Also on p. 18, in a box with the heading “Membraro Membership” are the names of people (presumably members) who have died (and the names of cities, presumably their place of residence), along with names of “New Members”, etc.
- 13.
This is the only obituary of those which we have seen so far whose author’s name is given. Probably in this case it is because the author is related to the deceased, but one might wonder about the presence or absence of bylines with obituaries, both in AL publications and more generally. Three possible reasons for the absence of bylines are the brevity of many obituaries, the intention to focus on the subject of the obituary (as the presence of a byline might slightly diminish that focus), and the desire to make the obituary seem objective. The first of these is probably the main factor, as we will soon see obituaries whose authors are given.
- 14.
Most of these pages are taken up by a list of Kinder’s academic writings; the obituary proper only goes up to p. 382, still rather long for an obituary.
- 15.
- 16.
Note the sentence “Due to his activity in the Esperanto movement people all around the world are mourning”.
- 17.
There is a photo of Enderby and his wife just after the obituary.
- 18.
These ellipsis points are part of the original obituary.
- 19.
There seems to be an error either in the quotation of the original French or in the English translation, since savions is the 1st person plural imperfect form of savoir ‘to know’, while savons is the present tense form. Given the latter part of the sentence, it seems that the error is in the English translation. There is a similar error in the next sentence: French attendions (again 1st person plural imperfect) is translated as ‘wait’ (attendons is the present form).
- 20.
This again seems to be an error, in this case one would expect soldats (‘soldiers’); soldate is a feminine singular form.
- 21.
A photograph of his gravestone can be seen at <https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6c/Zamenhof-grave-2007.jpg. The translation is mine.
- 22.
One would normally spell his name in Esperanto as Ludoviko; presumably the V instead of U is due to the use of Latin orthographical conventions.
- 23.
In English the last line of the epitaph is ‘WRITER, WORLD TRAVELLER’. A photo of Sekelj’s gravestone can be seen at <http://www.bildarchivaustria.at/Pages/ImageDetail.aspx?p_iBildID=7177179.
- 24.
One can see this gravestone and some information about Mudie at <http://mudie.eu/. See also <https://greatwarlondon.wordpress.com/2016/01/06/a-wartime-blow-to-world-esperanto/
- 25.
A photo of the tombstone can be seen at <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karel_P%C3%AD%C4%8D#/media/File:Esperanta_Vikimanio_2011_MB17.jpg.
- 26.
Of course descriptions of deaths occur in Esperanto literaure, but here I am concerned with descriptions of it in works for learning an AL.
- 27.
The quotations in this discussion are from the English version of texts in Hom-idyomo. I am not including the original Hom-idyomo versions, which would not contribute much to the discussion (as it would if we were, for example, studying grammatical features such as choice of tenses).
- 28.
These are Mrs. Pinheyro’s dogs.
- 29.
These ellipsis points, and those which follow, are in the original.
- 30.
I only list linguistic sources and works on AL here; the works in which obituaries occur are given where I quote from them.
References
I only list linguistic sources and works on AL here; the works in which obituaries occur are given where I quote from them.
Attobrah, K. (1973). Ni Afrihili Oluga: The African continental language: El-Afrihili: Book 1 in 10 lessons (2nd ed.). Akrokerri: The Afrihili Centre.
Bach, U. (1995). Wills and will-making in 16th and 17th century England some pragmatic aspects. In A. H. Jucker (Ed.), Historical pragmatics (pp. 125–144). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Capone, A. (2010). On pragmemes again. Dealing with death. La Linguistique, 46(2), 3–21.
Cárdenas, C. (1923). Hom-idyomo. Leipzig: self-published.
Crespo Fernández, E. (2007). Linguistic devices coping with death in Victorian obituaries. Revista Alicantina de Estudios Ingleses, 20, 7–21.
Fowler, B. (2007). The obituary as collective memory. New York/Abingdon: Routledge.
Gledhill, C. (2000). The grammar of Esperanto: a corpus-based description (2nd ed.). Munich: Lincom Europa.
Herat, M. (2014). The final goodbye: The linguistic features of gravestone epitaphs from the nineteenth century to the present. International Journal of Language Studies, 8(4), 127–150.
Labeau, E. (2013). Regrets éternels: Le PS disparaîtrait-il de la rubrique nécrologique? Cahiers Chronos, 26, 95–118.
Molee, E. (1890). Pure Saxon English. Chicago: Rand, McNally & Company.
Normantas, V. (2013). Sources of text for Esperanto corpora. Esperantologio/Esperanto Studies, 6, 109–128.
Ondimu, J. (2014). A socio-cultural understanding of death: A genre analysis of obituaries in a Kenyan newspaper. Language Matters, 45(1), 3–22.
Prist, B. (1998) Vela for children. Apparently self-published, no place of publication given.
Sutton, G. (2008). Concise encyclopedia of the original literature of Esperanto. New York: Mondial.
Waringhien, G. (ed.-in-chief). (1970). Plena Ilustrata Vortaro de Esperanto. Paris: Sennacieca Asocio Tutmonda.
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Libert, A.R. (2017). On Death in Artificial Languages. 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_13
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