The Death Taboo: Euphemism and Metaphor in Epitaphs from the English Cemetery of Malaga, Spain

Abstract

In spite of the fact that taboos change over time, death is still a delicate and sensitive subject in today’s Western societies. Our unwillingness to talk openly about death and dying makes people resort to euphemism as a safe way to talk about human mortality and related matters. Following Steen’s Deliberate Metaphor Theory, this study discusses the role that euphemistic metaphors play on a sample of 174 gravestone inscriptions from the English Cemetery of Malaga, the oldest Protestant cemetery in Spain, and, at the same time, examines the social and cognitive aspects of metaphor in epitaph writing. The analysis carried out reveals that most of the 96 metaphorical items observed in the gravestone inscriptions present positive connotations. Indeed, the source domains of rest, peace, new life and journey offer an optimistic and comforting approach to death and dying, whereas the domains of loss and separation refer to the target domain of death in negative terms. All in all, the metaphors encountered in the epitaphs are deliberately used both to help the bereaved confront the loss of a loved one and pay tribute to the deceased.