De mortuis nil nisi bonum dicendum : an exploration of semantic prosody in obituary discourse

Abstract

Motivation for this research project stems from the paradox inherent in obituary discourse: the simultaneous expectation of praise for the deceased and the potential for subtle criticism veiled beneath genre conventions. This paper investigates the semantic prosody of the evaluative items chameleon and chameleon-like in opinative obituaries, aiming to uncover the extent to which such terms may carry covert attitudinal implications. This study is important as it addresses the gap in corpus-based prosodic research applied to the obituary genre and sheds light on how appraisal and social norms interplay in memorialising the dead. The study examines whether these items display genre-exclusive prosodies and how intuitive reader interpretations align with actual prosodic patterns. An interdisciplinary methodology drawing on corpus linguistics, discourse analysis, Systemic Functional Linguistics, and pragmatics underpins the study. A triangulated approach was used to analyse three data sources: a purpose-built obituary corpus, the iWeb corpus for cross-genre reference, and an intuition diagnostic survey administered to native English speakers. Findings reveal that these terms overwhelmingly attract a favourable SP within obituaries, contrasting with both the more neutral prosody found in the multi-genre iWeb corpus and survey respondents' predominantly negative interpretations. These results suggest that obituary writers may subtly shape evaluative meaning while maintaining interpretive ambiguity. This raises questions about the effort required by obituary readers to reconcile intuitive evaluations with the more favourable prosodic patterns embedded in the discourse. The study concludes that genre context significantly influences prosodic perception, with collostructional patterns playing a key role in shaping evaluative meaning.