Condolence in German culture: Etymological and historical aspects
Year: 2024
Type: article
Abstract: The study aims to identify the extralinguistic factors shaping condolence traditions in the German-speaking world within the frameworks of oral condolences, the epistolary genre of condolence, the speech genre of the obituary, and modern internet genres of condolence. Previously, the speech act of condolence was considered by linguists only from the perspective of pragmatic conditions of realization and selection of speech means. The study is novel in that it is the first one to identify and describe the main stages in the formation of condolence speech genres in German viewed through the lens of the dialectical development of extra-linguistic social reality. The results showed that the following circumstances (extralinguistic factors) had a significant influence on the traditions of expressing sympathy and condolences: the mythological consciousness of the Germanic peoples; the synthesis of pagan and Christian ideas about mercy towards disadvantaged groups of the population; the ritual nature of Catholic burial; and the pragmatic relations in medieval Western European society, which formed a specific etiquette-pragmatic potential of the speech act of condolence represented in various speech genres. Historical and axiological factors in the development of the notions of compassion and condolence are reflected at the language level, as demonstrated in the etymological analysis of related notions: ‘Mitgefühl’ (sympathy), ‘Mitleid’ (compassion), ‘Beileid’ and ‘Kondolenz’ (condolence), which form the semantic field of condolence in the German language.
Source: Philology Theory & Practice
Author: Aleksandra Aleksandrovna Loginova
Institution: Linguistics University of Nizhny Novgorod
Language: English
Subfield: Language and Linguistics
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W4404868278