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Rituals of Death as Staged Communicative Acts and Pragmemes

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Interdisciplinary Studies in Pragmatics, Culture and Society

Part of the book series: Perspectives in Pragmatics, Philosophy & Psychology ((PEPRPHPS,volume 4))

Abstract

Building on Mey’s (2001) notion of pragmatic acts and Capone’s (2010a) thoughts on rituals of death, this chapter borrows ideas from Mey and Capone to address its main claim that death rituals in Iran are pragmatic acts that fit well in the frame of pragmemes as well as staged communicative acts (SCAs). It addresses the rituals of death in the Shiite population of Iran and categorizes the speech acts produced in such rituals into the three categories of language addressed to God, language addressed to the deceased, and language addressed to the grieved relatives of the deceased. Providing samples of speech from all of these situations, the chapter then analyzes them in the framework of staged and conventional speech acts and pragmemes. It compares Shia funerary rites and Catholic death rituals, and concludes that Capone’s (2010a) treatment of the rituals of death as pragmemes is valid. The chapter argues that funerary rites in Iran function on a psychological plane that aims at providing solace for the grieved relatives of the deceased as well as a social plane that aims at enhancing collective social intentionality.

This chapter is dedicated to the memory of Mrs. Scilipoti Venera. May her soul rest in peace.

An earlier version of this work was published in the International Journal of Language Studies, vol. 7. No. 1 (Salmani Nodoushan 2013); the work (with many additions and modifications) is reprinted here with permission from IJLS.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    See also Sbisà (2013) in Capone, Lo Piparo, and Carapezza (eds.).

  2. 2.

    This has a direct bearing on pragmemes as discussed below.

  3. 3.

    See also Mey (2001).

  4. 4.

    For a fuller discussion of Austin’s theory of speech acts, please see Mey (2001).

  5. 5.

    For different classifications of speech acts, please see Vendler (1972); Fraser (1974); Sadock (1974, 1994); Searle (1975); Bach and Harnish (1979); McCawley (1977); Hancher (1979); Sbisà (1984); Croft (1994); Alston (2000); Zaefferer (2001).

  6. 6.

    “Shiite” is an adjective that describes people who believe in Shia Islam. Shia Islam is the second largest sect of Islam after Sunni Islam. For a full description, please see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shia_Islam.

  7. 7.

    Funerary rites in Sunni Islam (and other Islamic sects) are largely different from those of Shia Islam.

  8. 8.

    Three pieces of cloth are obligatorily used for dead males, and five obligatory pieces for females; there are several other optional pieces as well.

  9. 9.

    Azan is the religious call to prayer proclaimed three times a day by official Shiite muezzins in any mosque (in Sunni Islam it is proclaimed five times a day). It is also recommended that azan be proclaimed as soon as a death or a birth happens (but not by official muezzins, nor in a mosque); as such, the meaning of azan has been ‘extended’ beyond what it was originally meant to signify.

  10. 10.

    City life is changing many of these patterns; doctors of forensic medicine see the body to make sure the death was natural and an ambulance carries the body to the cemetery; the rest of the rituals are still more or less the same.

  11. 11.

    See Brown and Yule (1983) for a definition of “paratone.”

  12. 12.

    It is not customary to give gifts to the relatives of the deceased; the only thing that participants may be bring to mourning sessions is a flower bunch with a black ribbon and a card with some “condolence” message on it.

  13. 13.

    It is normally believed that when there is no death people get so overwhelmed by their routine lives that they forget to think about death and to be prepared for it to happen any moment; they forget to do the right deeds that will please God, thereby helping them once they enter the purgatory world after death. When someone dies, people’s attention is suddenly diverted away from the mundane world and focused on the purgatory world and the deeds that will guarantee a safe travel to, and happy life in, that world. Death is in fact an attention getter which gets people’s attention towards the afterworld; people are forgetful and soon get back to the habits of the mundane world. Praise that focuses on the religious virtues and piety of the deceased is an attention holder that will keep people’s attention to death and the afterworld for a much longer time. It is recommended in Shiite belief that people visit cemeteries every Thursday afternoon, and this too is supposed to have the same attention-holding function. Shia Islam recommends that Shiite people be always focused on death and the afterworld, and preaches that they should do deeds that will keep them ready for death all the time.

  14. 14.

    For a detailed discussion of conventional illocutionary acts, please see Strawson (1964); Austin (1975); Bach and Harnish (1979).

  15. 15.

    For a fuller discussion of semiotics, see Burton-Roberts (2013) in Capone, Lo Piparo, and Carapezza (eds.).

  16. 16.

    In Shiite belief, a Muslim lives in three worlds: the earthly world, the purgatory world, and the afterworld. When people die, their bodies remain here, but their souls enter the purgatory world. At a specific point in time after all human beings die and the Sun explodes, the bodies are resurrected and souls return to bodies. The human beings stand in front of Allah and are judged. Then they are sent to either Paradise or Hell, based on their deeds in their earthly lives.

  17. 17.

    It should be noted that, like French, Persians use tu/vous or T/V forms of address which can differentiate between friendly and formal contexts (see also Brown and Gilman 1960; Wardhaugh 1990).

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Iranian Institute for Encyclopedia Research, Tehran, Iran

    Mohammad Ali Salmani Nodoushan

Authors
  1. Mohammad Ali Salmani Nodoushan
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Correspondence to Mohammad Ali Salmani Nodoushan .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Messina, Messina, Italy

    Alessandro Capone

  2. Dept. of Lang & Communication, University of Southern Denmark, Odense M, Denmark

    Jacob L. Mey

Appendix A: Guide to Persian Transcription Symbols

Appendix A: Guide to Persian Transcription Symbols

Symbol

Example

Symbol

Example

Symbol

Example

Aa

arm

p

pen

t

tea

O

or

s

so

j

joke

u

too

ch

change

h

house

a

hat

x

xub

d

door

e

ten

z

zoo

r

red

i

sheep

zh

vision

sh

shoe

q

Qom

n

noon

f

foot

k

kill

y

yard

g

good

l

land

?

?al?aan

m

moon

v

voice

b

bad

  
  1. The/?/ symbol represents glottal stop, and is used at the beginning of Persian syllables followed by a vowel.
  2. The/q/ (i.e., a radical stop) and/x/ (i.e., a radical fricative) represent Persian-specific consonants.
  3. The Persian sporadic feature tashdid is represented by the repetition of the phoneme that receives it.

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Salmani Nodoushan, M. (2016). Rituals of Death as Staged Communicative Acts and Pragmemes. In: Capone, A., Mey, J. (eds) Interdisciplinary Studies in Pragmatics, Culture and Society. Perspectives in Pragmatics, Philosophy & Psychology, vol 4. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-12616-6_36

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