The final goodbye: The linguistic features of gravestone epitaphs from the nineteenth century to the present

Graveyard epitaphs from the nineteenth century to the present are a rich linguistic resource for investigating attitudes towards death, ritual and identity from a diachronic perspective. Grave inscriptions regardless of whether they are ‘magnificent’ or ‘mundane’ serve as remembrances of the deceased and can be used to study processes of change. In this study, a corpus of 957 epitaphs from the nineteenth century to the present day were examined for evidence of diachronic changes in ritual, identity construction, use of euphemistic metaphors and sacred language. The corpus was categorised according to age and temporality. Corpus methodology was used to analyse data using AntConc and normalised frequency scores per 1000 words. In addition, Log likelihood (LL) scores were used to test results for significance. Findings from the analyses suggest that changes have occurred in linguistic style and attitudes towards death, especially in relation to child death. Coping with the death of a child, appears to pose bigger challenges for modern parents than it did in the nineteenth century. Religion still appears to be the source from which people draw comfort and solace although the influence of religion is now much less than in the past. These findings are discussed in light of the evolution of gravestone inscriptions over time and are indicative of the differing values of the day.