Religiosity and the construction of death in Turkish death announcements, 1970-2009

Abstract

Death and rituals performed after death reflect and reproduce social distinctions despite death's popular reputation as a great leveler. This study examines expressions of religiosity and constructions of death in Turkish death announcements, paying particular attention to gendered, ethnic, and temporal variations as well as markers of status and cultural distinction. Death announcements in Turkey occupy a liminal position between obituaries and death notices: Unlike obituaries, no editorial decisions are involved in their publications. However, unlike death notices, Turkish announcements are venues for expressions of culturally scripted individual decisions. These large and decentralized collections of private decisions display rigid genre characteristics involving formulaic phrases but also change over time to reflect social, cultural, and economic changes in Turkish society. The present study focuses on a sample (N = 2,812) of death announcements in a major Turkish daily newspaper (Hurriyet) from 1970 to 2009. Results show that death announcements in Turkey increasingly rely on an emotional tone of loss and bereavement that replace constructions of death in a more detached and distant language and that religious and secular preferences in the language of announcements are an important domain in which cultural battles are fought and the participation patterns of new middle classes are negotiated.